A REAL Study Showing the Effects of a REAL Low Carb Diet on Inflammation and Blood Lipids

I love this. Only days after I start my blog a second study reveals the first "study" I blogged about is true garbage. The Abstract of this new study can be found here. It is a bit over my head in some spots but I get the idea. Why should we believe this study over the previous? Well, for starters, it will be published in a peer reviewed journal but is currently available on PubMed.com. PubMed is "A service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health."

The new study actually discusses the participants whole diet on each protocol:

Overweight men and women with atherogenic dyslipidemia consumed ad libitum diets very low in carbohydrate (VLCKD) (1504 kcal:%CHO:fat:protein = 12:59:28) or low in fat (LFD) (1478 kcal:%CHO:fat:protein = 56:24:20) for 12 weeks.

Quick math (see previous post) tells us the low carb diet was about 45 grams of carb/day. About 1 and 1/2 slices of white bread. Now that is low carb! The low fat diet served a whooping 207 grams of carb/day. Yikes! That's almost 14.5 tablespoons of sugar!

So what can we take from this? So much of the abstract is over our heads, except the last sentence,

In summary, a very low carbohydrate diet resulted in profound alterations in fatty acid composition and reduced inflammation compared to a low fat diet.

But what is all this talk of inflammation about? Does it have something to do with disease? Ask you doctor someday and see what he says. Hopefully he knows that Total Cholesterol means nothing. Also, I hope he knows it is not the LDL (Bad Cholesterol) that is an indicator of heart disease, its the particle size of the LDL and the triglycerides that are important. Chronic inflammation is actually a far better indicator of heart problems. Dr. Michael Eades has a very interesting post on inflammation here and is one of the reasons I will be seeking some dental work in the new year. I STRONGLY recommend reading this post. Inflammation is such a strong indicator of disease, we could all live a little longer for having this info.

But why has this info been under reported or never reported? Would it grab headlines? Does big Pharma have a pill for it? Is it easy to test for?

It did grab headlines, years ago. Big Pharma does have a pill for it, its called Tylenol or Aspirin, and nobody is getting rich off of those sales. Finally, I don't know about testing, but I do know how to avoid it, a Low Carb diet, the Universal Cure All.