One of the leading killers of Americans every single year is heart disease.
While heart disease is an all-encompassing term that actually covers a multitude of different conditions, the fact remains that the health of Americans’ hearts are in danger.
Surprisingly, heart disease can be reversed by adding this “junk food” into your diet three times a day.
Junk food that was demonized for years, but is now finding its way into many healthy diets.
If you’re unaware of what this junk food is, chances are you eat it every single day.
It’s fat.
But not just any fat, mind you.
The junk food that was once the target of many a cardiologist’s wrath are saturated fats. Especially the ones that come from animal products like bacon, steak, and eggs.
That’s right, new studies reveal a diet built on animal-based saturated fats are actually some of the healthiest when it comes to heart health.
But, it’s not as simple as adding more bacon to your BLT.
How High Fat and LOW Carb Are Helping Reverse Heart Disease
A high fat, low carb diet, also known as a ketogenic diet, is fast becoming one of the most popular diets in the West.
Most people who adopt a ketogenic diet do it because they want to lose weight.
Now, research is proving that the itch to shrink waistlines is also helping to improve heart health.
More than 15 years ago the science about a low-carb, high-fat diet and how it related to better heart health was documented. In this study, which was published in Experimental & Clinical Cardiology, 83 obese patients were asked to try a ketogenic diet out for 24 weeks to see how it would improve their health.
This particular ketogenic diet only allowed for the subjects to eat 30 grams of carbs a day and 1g per kg of protein and the rest of their calories came from fat (20% saturated fat and 80% unsaturated fat, which is one of many variations of the ketogenic diet).
After eating that way for almost six months, the researchers concluded several factors that related to heart health all improved based on diet alone. They observed that levels of total cholesterol decreased from week 1 to week 24. HDL cholesterol, which is known as “good” cholesterol went up and LDL cholesterol (bad cholesterol) went down.
Triglyceride levels, which are linked to leading to heart damage, plummeted and blood sugar levels improved to close to the normal range.
Once researchers saw this, additional studies on ketogenic diet and heart health were performed.
Over the past few years, a number of studies on the ketogenic diet and heart health have all pointed to one thing, better heart health.
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published just how well ketogenic diets work to improve heart health and what they wrote in conclusion is shocking.
After reviewing 21 different studies on the subject, they discovered something incredible.
In almost every single study, despite what most people believe about eating fat and how it affects your heart, they concluded that people who adopted a high-fat/low-carb diets had better cholesterol levels when compared to those who ate a traditional diet.
One More Way High Fat, Low Carb Diets Protect Your Heart
In addition to helping normalize cholesterol levels and lower triglycerides, high fat, low carb diets also help to improve blood sugar levels.
The Journal of the American Medical Association has published several articles about how elevated blood sugar levels can increase the risk of heart disease.
Fortunately, there are studies linking low carb, high-fat diets to reversing that risk.
A study found in the New England Journal of Medicine demonstrated when people ate carb restricted diets, they benefited with improved insulin and blood sugar levels. Enough so, that though they didn’t conclude a ketogenic diet would help prevent heart disease, they encouraged future researchers to investigate how the improvements in blood sugar would help people who are in danger of developing heart disease.
Since these studies were performed more than 10 years ago, thousands of people across America have adapted their diets away from high carb, low fat to a ketogenic diet with great results.
If you want to experience those benefits, the only recommendations that are consistent across the board are these:
Your fat intake should be high-quality animal and plant fats and you should avoid processed carbohydrates in order to see results.
