Fancy dieters may be eating excessive amounts of heart-damaging fats. However, these dietary regimens are currently demonstrating cardiovascular benefits.
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It looks like the ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting may be good for heart health. But scientists believe that their benefits are unlikely to exceed the effect of diets, which are now widely used in the prevention of cardiovascular disease. This is stated in a large review published by The American Journal of Medicine.
Keto Diet
The keto diet is very low in carbs and high in fat. This leads to the fact that the metabolism in the body changes slightly — it begins to receive more energy not from glucose, but from ketone bodies, which are formed during the breakdown of fat.
Scientists have found that The current scientific evidence supports the keto diet as a weight loss factor. However, it is still difficult to judge whether this is better than the more common calorie-restricted diet.
The keto diet is showing promise as a potential part of diabetes management. Some scientific papers have shown that it helps lower blood sugar levels. However, this effect of the diet should be clarified in large studies.
The risk that the keto diet can carry is that its adherents often choose unhealthy, saturated, fats for their diet. This may increase the risk of heart disease. Some studies have shown that on the background of a keto diet, people can become denser in the walls of blood vessels and increase the risk of death.
Intermittent Fasting
This method allows people to eat whatever they want, but limits their eating time to a few hours a day. You can't eat outside of this «window». Scientists have noted that intermittent fasting can be accompanied by hunger, leading to overeating. For the same reason, people may choose unhealthy foods, which can potentially lead to heart and vascular disease.
Most of the available research on this type of fasting has been done on animals. There is evidence that this diet can help prolong life, reduce weight, lower blood pressure, improve glucose and lipid metabolism. In general, scientists are positive about the future of intermittent fasting. But they warn that it may have more side effects in the future.
What's the conclusion?
On the one hand, both diets help people lose weight. On the other hand, they can lead to the consumption of a large number of foods that increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. Today's scientific evidence suggests that these diets improve heart and vascular health. It is possible that in the future more will become known about the undesirable effects of these diets.
Scientists emphasize that intermittent fasting and the keto diet are no better for the heart than the recognized Mediterranean diet, plant-based diet and DASH diet.