The Low Fat Diet or High Carbohydrate diet causes heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.
Robert G Carlson, MD, FACS
For decades, high carbohydrate diets (low-fat) have been recommended in order to limit the amount of fat and cholesterol consumed, in the simplistic believe that eating fat will make you fat and eating foods high in cholesterol will cause heart disease. These statements, promulgated by processed food and sugar lobbyists, are so absolutely incorrect. More importantly this low fat diet/high carbohydrate diet has lead to a massive ongoing epidemic of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and inflammation leading to heart disease.
The Atkins diet, a low carbohydrate diet with fats and protein as the main constituents, in fact lowers LDL, Triglycerides, and even raises the HDL levels. The metabolic syndrome, high cholesterol, insulin resistance with high serum glucose levels, hypertension, and increased abdominal fat, which is associated with coronary artery disease and sudden death, is markedly reduced by the low carbohydrate diet because it reduces the persistently spiking insulin and its associated systemic inflammatory changes. Unfortunately when Dr. Atkins died, because he slipped on the ice in New York City, the low-fat diet lobbyists used this to say he died from heart disease. He didn’t. It was just another example of propagating misinformation, just like what has occurred over the last three decades to propel the low-fat diet to the preferred diet for heart patients. Low fat diet or I should say, high carbohydrate diet mixed with the processed grains, has resulted in a major health care crisis filled with obesity and diabetes.
Robert G Carlson, MD, FACS, is a board certified heart surgeon, acknowledged as America’s Top Surgeon in Cardiothoracic surgery three times, and has done extensive research on heart disease and inflammation.