This was a 4 week high carb, 4 week low carb group. The order was not randomized!!! Adapting to a new metabolism takes on the order of 12 weeks (from the Noakes athletic performance studies)
Here is a 12 week study https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3845365/ Consuming a hypocaloric high fat low carbohydrate diet for 12 weeks lowers C-reactive protein, and raises serum adiponectin and high density lipoprotein-cholesterol in obese subjects
Relative to the LFHC group, the HFLC group had greater improvements in blood lipids and systemic inflammation with similar changes in body weight and composition. This small-scale study suggests that HFLC diets may be more beneficial to cardiovascular health and inflammation in free-living obese adults compared to LFHC diets.
I'll make each of these papers a post in the keto group here and go over them in detail. This is a great set of research to dig into, thank you.
I live in a part of the world where beef is not subsidized. Even here the butchers give away fat (the cuttings / trimmings from their other products). The protein requirements on a carnivore diet are not different then any other diet, the rest of the diet can be made up of inexpensive fat.
The value of seeing how long adults live tells us alot about our history. If we know historically adults could live into old age we can learn about disease progression over historical records as well as from archaeological bone surveys.
LDL is not a disease, its necessary for human life. Damaged (Oxidated, and Glycated) LDL is a indicator of significant cardiovascular problem, but undamaged LDL is not a disease. If someone has elevated LDL and they are not eating a sugar heavy diet, they should get plaque imaging to see what their actual atherosclerotic risk is.
Most recent studies of long term ketosis show accelerated aging markers
That is interesting, what study was that? What were the markers they used?
some potentially harmful increases in LDL and VLDL cholesterol
Potentially is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. The only group following keto which see a increase in LDL is the lean-mass-hyper-responder phenotype. There is some interesting research being released on this group Paper - Plaque Begets Plaque, ApoB Does Not: Longitudinal Data From the KETO-CTA Trial - 2025. However, Cholesterol is not a disease - its essential for life - the concern has never been cholesterol but atherosclerosis - if someone has elevated LDL, undamanged and unglycated (as on keto) and they are concerned they should get a CAC score so they can see their actual plaque burden.
There are plenty of issues with people on carnivore diets
I'd like to learn what those problems are, I'm currently following a carnivore diet and as far as my reading has gone there are not any downsides.
I highly recommend getting a home blood pressure cuff, and recording your blood pressure readings in the spreadsheet. It'll be great for you to see trends over time. And your doctor will like it too if you can bring the spreadsheet into next visit.
I had very high blood pressure, I did keto for 6 months and completely resolved it. And I have the spreadsheet documenting the entire journey. It's gratifying to look backwards at
This is exactly why the office of the President requires a minimum age of 35. It wasn't because they were going to die in 4 years, it was because they had the expectation they had lived for a lot longer.
If you want a bunch of paper references I recommend https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/science every statement has a number, and those numbers directly linked to the scientific articles to back the statement
The nut of it is, most of the modern non-communicable diseases are based in sugar and carbohydrate consumption. The world has about a billion people with type 2 diabetes documented, and that is strictly because of excess carbohydrate consumption.
Of course there's more nuance, inflammation plays a significant factor, and combining fat and carbohydrates at the same time create cellular inflammation due to the Randall cycle (not a cycle) cross inhibition.
There's excellent work going on about the impact of constantly elevated insulin levels, and how that causes most of the manifestations of metabolic disease. And insulin levels are directly driven by carbohydrate consumption, persistently snacking all day means all day elevated insulin.
Most people would be better off eating a whole food diet, no processed foods, nothing from a factory. That eliminates most of the easy sugars, most of the carbohydrates. If somebody wants to eliminate even more, they could try out a low carb, or even a ketogenic diet or even a zero carb diet.
A minority of us, but a growing minority, look at the data and come to the conclusion that the meat isn't the problem. It's the sugar and carbohydrates people eat with the meat that are the problem.
If you cut out all of the fructose, glucose, and carbohydrates from your diet. Your health outcomes are going to be amazing regardless of your meat consumption
Every study conflates high sugar consumption with meat consumption. If a pizza is considered a serving of meat, in all fairness it should also be considered a serving of plant based foods. Carbohydrates make up the bulk of pizza. And those come exclusively from plants
We know sugar is bad for health. These observational studies are useless unless they can control for sugar and carbohydrate intake as a factor.
The left/blue side of the graph are outcomes that show meat decreased all cause mortality, the right/red side of the graph are outcomes that show meat increases all cause mortality. If you were a hungry researcher, you could publish unending papers indicating either way from this same observational data pool! - Hence the constant news cycle driven by dietary agendas - not based on hard science RCTs.
The problem with open-ended observational studies, is you can't prove causation, and you can find tons of associations for or against whatever you like.
when investigators analyze data from observational studies, there are often hundreds of equally justifiable ways of analyzing the data, each of which may produce results that vary in direction, magnitude, and statistical significance
Evidence shows that investigators’ prior beliefs and expectations influence their results 5]. In the presence of strong opinions, investigators’ beliefs and expectations may shape the literature to the detriment of empirical evidence
Then somebody will come along and do a metanalysis of the studies that were just basically association farming. And claim to find some universal truth.. at a certain point we have to look at these observational studies as not science, hell it's not even academics, it's advertising, propaganda, and agenda pushing. These are hypothesis generating, they should be the beginning of science, they are not the conclusion of science. And they should never be used for policies, or even marketed to lay people.
The observational weak relative risk studies can be pumped out infinitely, they do not inform on cause and effect sadly. The best data we have of prewesternized cultures eating meat heavy diets shows no incidence of cancer in these populations (first tribe nomads, inuit, etc). Humans have been eating meat for at least 2.5 million years, yet cancer has only jumped up to the epidemic it is today in the last 150 years. Something in the environment and diet has changed, absolutely. What is the causative factor? The anti-meat papers with weak relative risk tells me that its not the meat, we should be looking for a very strong signal (50% of people born today will have cancer in their lifetimes - 150 years ago basically nobody got cancer).
I could speculate, and I have my own theories, but we are looking for a significant change in the last 150 years as our culprit. Meat is not a new invention. Processed food, fructose, sugar, industrial food oils, pesticides in the food supply - all have bloomed in the last 150 years, I would hazard a guess and say these are the real harbingers of modern disease we need to focus on. Curiously these epidemiological food questionnaire papers don't look at these factors, maybe because its hard to fill in a survey for sugar (its in all processed food).
Not to mention most of the antimeat studies are observational food surveys with weak hazard ratio outcomes.
Most annoyingly the classification of "meat" is infuriating and biased. In some of the studies any sandwich, any pizza, any sugar covered possible meat containing item counts as meat. It's well established that sugar is very detrimental for health.
The only people avoiding sugar at large care about their health, so there is tremendous healthy user bias, and the advice for the last 50 years or so has been to avoid meat if you want to be healthy... Reinforcing the healthy user bias.
A high quality disciplined study to show the effect of meat on health would include metabolic markers like ketones, track sugar independently, and not use a once every 4 year food questionnaire.
The key to knowing if the study is serious, or sensational, is if they use relative risk or absolute risk in their findings. Nobody publishes absolute risk with respect to meat consumption....
Disinformation is often a term thrown about when there is some fundamental disagreement. It's so overused as to be meaningless to talk about actual astroturfing
Scihub, LibGen quietly golf clapping in the background