New research has found that a keto diet can raise levels of LDL cholesterol in the blood and can lead to serious cardiac events such as stroke.
What is a keto diet?
This low-carbohydrate diet forces your body to rely on ketone bodies, which is a type of fuel that the liver produces from stored fat, instead of the usual reliance of sugar that comes rom carbohydrates. Because this diet demands a requirement of high fat levels, fat must be consumed in each meal.
The study
Senior study author, Liam Brunham, says: “If you are following a carbohydrate-restricted diet, our data suggest that it may be important to monitor your cholesterol levels.
“If cholesterol levels are super high, consult with your doctor because there may really need to be careful attention paid to managing the risk of heart disease.”
Researchers on the study examined data from over 70,000 people in the UK who had completed a 24-hour diet questionnaire. At the same time the researchers took bloods to check the subjects’ cholesterol levels.
From the questionnaire responses, 305 individuals stated they followed a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet.
The average follow-up time for the study participants was close to 12 years. Those who stated they were following a keto diet had more than double the risk of having several major cardiac events such as stroke.
9.8 per cent of the group who follow a keto diet experienced a new cardiac event, whilst 4.3 of those following a standard diet had a new cardiac event.
Those following a keto diet also had significantly higher levels of both LDL cholesterol and apolipoprotein B (apoB), a protein on the surface of cholesterol, which could potentially be a more accurate indicator of cardiovascular risk than LDL.
When focusing on the percentage of people in each dietary group would be defined as having severely high levels of cholesterol, the researchers recorded 5 per cent in the standard diet group versus 10 per cent in the low-carb, high-fat group.
