by Hussein Manack
Many of us have grown up believing that diets high in fat raises cholesterol and causes heart disease. At the same time, we are being told to eat mostly carbs and to reduce fat consumption.
However, since the low-fat diet was implemented in most western countries about 50 years ago obesity, diabetes and heart disease had spiraled out of control and have now reached epidemic proportions in many countries around the world (including South Africa). Recently however, there appears to be an increased awareness around the numerous benefits of a High-Fat, Low-Carb Diet.
Since 2002, over 20 human studies have been conducted on low-carb diets.
In almost every one of those studies, low-carb diets come out ahead of the diets they are compared to.
Not only does a low-carb diet cause more weight loss, it also has shown to lead to major improvements in most risk factors… including cholesterol (both HDL and LDL), blood pressure, triglycerides, and many more which we are only beginning to find out.
Here are 12 health benefits of low-carb, high-fat and ketogenic diets.
1. Reduces Hunger
Hunger is the single worst side effect of conventional dieting.
It is one of the main reasons why many people feel miserable, eventually give up on their diets and end up on the diet roller-coaster.
One of the best things about eating low-carb, high-fat is that it leads to an automatic reduction in appetite.
The studies consistently show that when people cut carbs and eat more protein and fat, they end up eating much fewer calories.
In fact… when researchers are comparing low-carb and low-fat diets in studies, they need to actively restrict calories in the low-fat groups to make the results comparable.
Remember: When people cut carbs, their appetite tends to go down and they often end up eating much fewer calories without even trying.
2. Leads to Faster and Easier Weight Loss
Cutting carbs is one of the simplest and most effective ways to lose weight.
Studies show that people on low-carb diets lose more weight, faster than people on low-fat diets and can sustain the weight-loss for longer… even when the low-fat dieters are actively restricting calories.
One of the reasons for this is that low-carb diets tend to get rid of excess water from the body. Because they lower insulin levels, the kidneys start shedding excess sodium, leading to rapid weight loss in the first week or two.
In studies comparing low-carb and low-fat diets, the low-carbers sometimes lose 2-3 times as much weight, without being hungry.
Low-carb diets appear to be particularly effective for up to 6 months, after which the weight can start creeping back up if people become complacent and start eating the same old stuff again.
It may therefore be a great idea and beneficial to work with a dietician, weight-loss advisor or health coach to guide you through the first two years of the diet until it becomes a part of your life, especially if you have been on the diet roller-coaster before.
It is much more appropriate to think of low-carb as a lifestyle, NOT a diet. The only way to succeed in the long-term is to stick to it.
However, it may also be a good idea to add in healthier carbs such as vegetables and low GI fruits back again after reaching your goal weight.
This can all be done in the form of a structured, controlled and phased eating plan, where you can start reintroducing carbs in particular
Remember: Almost without exception, low-carb diets lead to more weight loss than the diets they are compared to.
3. Most of The Fat Lost Comes From The Belly (Abdominal Cavity)
Not all fat in the body is the same.
It’s where that fat is stored that determines how it will affect our health and risk of disease.
We have subcutaneous fat (under the skin) and then we have visceral fat (in the abdominal cavity or belly).
Visceral fat is fat that tends to lodge around the organs.
Having a lot of fat in that area can drive inflammation, insulin resistance and is believed to be a leading driver of the metabolic dysfunction that is so common in Western countries today.
Low-carb diets are very effective at reducing harmful belly fat.
Not only do they cause more fat loss than low-fat diets, an even greater proportion of that fat is coming from the abdominal cavity.
Over time, this should lead to a drastically reduced risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
Remember: A large percentage of the fat lost on low-carb diets tends to come from the harmful fat in the abdominal cavity (belly area) that is known to cause serious metabolic problems.
4. Triglycerides Tend to go Down
It is well known that high triglycerides, are a strong heart disease risk factor.
Perhaps counter intuitively, the main driver of elevated triglycerides is carbohydrate consumption, especially the simple sugar fructose which is hidden in most foods today.
When people cut carbs, they tend to have a very dramatic reduction in blood triglycerides.
Compare this to low-fat diets, which can cause triglycerides to go up in many cases.
Remember: Low-carb diets are very effective at lowering blood triglycerides, which are fat molecules in the blood and a well known risk factor for heart disease.
5. Increases Levels of HDL (Good Cholesterol)
High Density Lipoprotein (HDL) is often called the “good” cholesterol.
HDL and LDL refer to the lipoproteins that carry cholesterol around in the blood.
Whereas LDL carries cholesterol from the liver and to the rest of the body, HDL carries cholesterol away from the body and to the liver, where it can be reused or excreted.
It is well known that the higher your levels of HDL, the lower your risk of heart disease will be.
One of the best ways to increase HDL levels is to eat fat… and low-carb diets include a lot of fat.
Therefore, it is not surprising to see that HDL levels increase dramatically on low-carb diets, while they tend to increase only moderately or even go down on low-fat diets.
The Triglyceride/HDL ratio is another very strong predictor of heart disease risk. The higher it is, the greater your risk of heart disease is.
By lowering triglycerides and raising HDL levels, low-carb diets lead to a major improvement in this ratio.
Remember: Low-carb, high- fat diets have convincingly shown to lead to an impressive increase in blood levels of HDL, often referred to as the “good” cholesterol.
6. Reduces Blood Sugar and Insulin Levels (Therefore Reducing the Risk of Type 2 Diabetes)
When we eat carbs, they are broken down into simple sugars (mostly glucose) in the digestive tract.
From there, they enter the bloodstream and elevate blood sugar levels.
Because high blood sugars are toxic, the body responds with a hormone called insulin, which tells the cells to bring the glucose into the cells and to start burning or storing it.
For people who are healthy, the quick insulin response tends to minimize the blood sugar “spike” in order to prevent it from harming us.
However… due to excessive sugar and carb abuse over the years many people develop what is called insulin resistance, which means that the cells require more and more insulin to do the job and it therefore becomes harder for the body to bring the blood sugar into the cells.
This can lead to a disease called type 2 diabetes, when the body fails to secrete enough insulin to lower the blood sugar after meals. This disease is very common today, afflicting more than 300 million people worldwide.
There is actually a very simple solution to this problem… by cutting carbohydrates, you remove the need for all of that insulin. Both blood sugars and insulin levels go down.
According to Dr. Eric Westman, who has treated many diabetics using a low-carb approach, he strives to reduce their insulin dosage by 50% on the first day.
In one study in type 2 diabetics, 95.2% had managed to reduce or eliminate their glucose-lowering medication within 6 months.
If you are currently on blood sugar lowering medication, then talk to your doctor before making changes to your carbohydrate intake, because your dosage may need to be adjusted in order to prevent hypoglycemia.
Remember: The best way to lower blood sugar and insulin levels is to reduce carbohydrate consumption. This is also a very effective way to treat and possibly even reverse type II diabetes.
7. Blood Pressure Tends to Go Down
Having elevated blood pressure (hypertension) is an important risk factor for many diseases.
This includes heart disease, stroke, kidney failure and many others.
Low-carb diets are an effective way to reduce blood pressure, which should lead to a reduced risk of these diseases and help you live longer.
Remember: Studies show that reducing carbs leads to a significant reduction in blood pressure, which should lead to a reduced risk of many common diseases such as heart disease, stroke and many others.
8. An Effective Treatment Against Metabolic Syndrome
The metabolic syndrome is a medical condition that is highly associated with the risk of diabetes and heart disease.
It is actually a collection of symptoms which tend to follow one another:
• Abdominal obesity
• Elevated blood pressure
• Elevated fasting blood sugar levels
• High triglycerides
• Low HDL levels
The good news is… all five symptoms improve dramatically on a low-carb diet.
Unfortunately, many government and major health organizations still recommend a low-fat diet for this purpose, which is pretty much useless because it does nothing to address the underlying metabolic problem.
Remember: Low-carb diets have overwhelmingly reported an effective reversal of all 5 key symptoms of the metabolic syndrome, a serious condition known to predispose people to heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
9. Improves The Type of LDL Cholesterol
Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL) is often referred to as the “bad” cholesterol (again, it is actually a protein).
It is known that people who have high LDL are much more likely to have heart attacks.
However… what scientists have now learned is that the type of LDL matters. Not all of them are equal.
In this regard, the size of the particles is important. People who have mostly small particles have a high risk of heart disease, while people who have mostly large particles have a low risk.
It turns out that low-carb diets actually turn the LDL particles from small to large, while reducing the number of LDL particles floating around in the bloodstream.
Remember: When you eat low-carb diet, high fat your LDL particles change from small (bad) LDL to large LDL – which is benign. Cutting carbs may also reduce the number of LDL particles floating around in the bloodstream.
10. Beneficial For Several Brain Disorders (Including Seizures)
"The bottom line is irrefutable. What is good for the heart is good for the brain." Rudolf Tanzi & Anne Parson (Decoding Darkness: The Search for the Genetic Causes of Alzheimer's Disease, 2000).
It is often claimed that glucose is necessary for the brain… and it’s true.
Some part of the brain can only burn glucose. That’s why the liver produces glucose out of protein if we don’t eat any carbs.
But a large part of the brain can also burn ketones, which are formed during starvation, fasting or when carbohydrate intake is very low.
This is the mechanism behind the ketogenic diet, which has been used with a high percentage of success for over 90 years by the Mayo Clinic and John Hopkins Hospital to treat epilepsy in children who don’t respond to drug treatment.
In one study, over half of children on a ketogenic diet had a greater than 50% reduction in seizures. 16% of the children became seizure free.
In 1994 Charlie Abraham’s family started The Charlie Foundation after his complete recovery from daily seizures despite trying all available anti-seizure medications and enduring a futile brain surgery. Charlie started the diet as a toddler and remained on it for 5 years. He is now a college student and remains seizure-free.
"Becoming diabetic also doubles your risk for Alzheimer's disease" according to David Perlmutter, MD in his book Grain Brain and it therefore stands to reason that if a low-carb diet reduces your risk of diabetes it may well reduce your risk of Alzeimer's as well.
Low-carb, ketogenic diets are now being studied for other brain disorders as well, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
Remember: "Becoming diabetic doubles your risk for Alzheimer's disease" and a low-carb diet significantly reduces the risk factors for diabetes.
11) "Starves Cancer Cells"
While medical science has made great strides in treating cancer, ground-breaking research indicates that a low-carb, high-fat, calorie-restricted ketogenic diet literally starves cancer cells.
According to Dr D'Agostino, an assistant professor at the University of South Florida College of Medicine.
research has confirmed that a high-fat ketogenic diet successfully manages even advanced cancer.
"We've found that diet therapy can be effective in prolonging survival in mice with aggressive metastatic cancer."
These same anti-cancer properties have also been observed in human cancer patients and reported in published studies. The cancer-fighting ketogenic diet "formula" is roughly 75% fat, 23% protein, and 2% carbs.
According to Dr. D'Agostino, all the cells in our body can use both fat and glucose (a carb), but cancer cells thrive on glucose and cannot survive on ketones. So by limiting carbohydrates (which turns into glucose inside the body), we can starve cancer cells.
While the exact cause of cancer can't be pinpointed, we know that genetics and lifestyle (such as smoking) play key roles in determining who gets cancer and who doesn't. But D'Agostino says inflammation promotes cancer and a host of other illnesses, such as heart disease, diabetes, obesity and Alzheimer's. A high-carb diet is very inflammatory.
When we restrict carbs in our diet, we can prevent pro-inflammatory spikes in blood glucose and blood insulin.
He underscored that a ketogenic diet that's low-carb, low-calorie, high-fat and moderate-protein is the most effective at starving cancer, especially when combined with hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
Remember: Spikes in blood sugar and insulin promote inflammation, and a low-carb, ketogenic diet reduces inflammation and also "starves cancer cells."
12) Slows the Aging Process
In a study conducted by Duke University in 2009, the authors concluded that, "a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet with nutritional supplementation led to improvements in serum factors related to the aging process."
Ketogenic diets and the resulting ketosis and ketone bodies slow the aging process in several ways by:
• reducing oxidative damage within the body, and increasing the production of uric acid and other potent antioxidants,
• increasing mitochondrial glutathione, an important antioxidant which works directly within the mitochondria where antioxidants in our food can't reach,
• reducing baseline blood sugar levels, which reduces the rates of glycation and the formation of advanced glycation end products (AGE's),
• reducing triglycerides (fatty acids in the blood stream) which can also cause advanced glycation end products.
Remember: A low-carb,high-fat, ketogenic diet increases longevity and well being by reducing insulin, advanced glycation end products (AGE's) and inflammation. These three factors are closely associated with higher mortality rates from all sorts of diseases.
Hussein Manack is a Health & Wellness consultant based in Johannesburg and is helping countless people to manage their lifestyles and live a more holistic and balanced life which includes a healthy and nutritious diet, an easy but effective exercise plan and improved emotional health.
Specifically he can help you to:
• Lose weight & look great,
• Maintain your weight-loss for life,
• Achieve good health (feel less tired & more energetic),
• Change your life by laying the foundation for prevention of diseases (such as cardiovascular disease, hypertension and diabetes).
For further information go to or call:
E mail: hamanack@gmail.com
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