A diet that’s low in carbs and high in protein will probably lead to weight loss. But are high protein diets a healthy way to lose the weight? The controversy surrounding this type of eating plan is seemingly endless. A new study is further stirring the pot with a startling new finding about cardiovascular health.
The senior author of the study is Anthony Rosenzweig, MD, director of cardiovascular research at the Cardiovascular Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He is also professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. According to Dr. Rosenzweig, the study was an effort to determine whether a low-carb/high-protein diet was healthy. Mice that were bred to have atherosclerosis were fed one of three diets for 12 weeks. One group ate a standard diet of mouse chow with 65% carbohydrates, 15% fat and 20% protein. Another group ate an approximation of the typical Western human diet with 43% carbs, 42% fat and 15% protein. A third group ate an approximation of a typical human low-carb/high-protein weight loss diet with 12% carbs, 43% fat and 45% protein.
What’s the Surprise?
Not all the findings were surprising. As expected, the mice in the low-carb/high-protein group put on less weight as they matured than those on the Western diet. In addition, their markers for vascular disease were either no different or slightly better. These included cholesterol and triglyceride levels, oxidative stress, insulin and glucose levels, as well as some inflammatory cytokine levels. Researchers got a big surprise when they examined the blood vessels. The low-carb/high-protein eating mice had far more atherosclerosis as measured by plaque accumulation than the mice in the Western diet group. Huh? Turns out maybe you can’t eat a strict diet of bacon, eggs, cheese and butter without some negative health consequences.
Seriously though, this could be big news for human dieters. The researchers sought an explanation for this unexpected and worrisome finding. Since none of the standard vascular health markers, things your doctor checks at your annual physical, indicated anything was wrong, the researchers theorized that something might have interfered with the mice’s natural ability to repair injuries to vessels and return them to normal function. The team focused on a special bone marrow cell thought to play a role in blood vessel regrowth and injury repair called endothelial progenitor cells, or EPC. They found that in the low-carb/high-protein group, levels had dropped 40% after only two weeks on the diet.
What does this mean for us non-mice? The study shows a correlation between reduction of the cells and an increase in arterial plaque which Dr. Rosenzweig believes may be of great importance. Other studies have demonstrated that people with heart and cardiovascular disease tend to have fewer of these cells. In contrast, people who exercise regularly have more of them. So now we must wonder, can a low-carb diet reduce EPC levels and possibly lead to or contribute to serious heart disease? More research is required, as we still don’t know whether this would happen in people, but it certainly convinced Dr. Rosenzweig to go off the low-carb diet he was on.
Related Diet News
You may also be interested in Dr. Rosenzweig’s research from Mount Sinai Medical School in New York City (“The Brain-Shrinking Diet”). This earlier, and unrelated, study found brain shrinkage in mice fed a low-carb/high-protein diet. This is another finding that raises concerns about the potential for harm in such a diet. While it’s too early to draw conclusions, the two studies do ring some cautionary bells about diets loaded with protein and light on carbs. As Dr. Rosenzweig says, the best message for now is to stick with “all the things we know are good for us, including a balanced, nutritious diet with lots of fruits and vegetables.” Those are the types of carbs we all need to eat anyway.
Source(s):
Anthony Rosenzweig, MD, director of cardiovascular research, CardioVascular Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston.
Reprinted with the permission of:
Bottom Line Publications/Daily Health News
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