Research Library

Very Low Carbohydrate Diet Improves Cholesterol and Triglyceride Levels

Volek, J.S., Sharman, M.J., and Gomez A.L., et al., "An Isoenergetic Very Low Carbohydrate Diet Improves Serum HDL Cholesterol and Triacylglycerol Concentrations, the Total Cholesterol to HDL Cholesterol Ratio and Postprandial Lipemic Responses Compared with a Low Fat Diet in Normal Weight, Normolipidemic Women," The Journal of Nutrition, 133(9), 2003, pages 2756-2761.

The following information is available at Pub Med and was not written by Atkins professionals. Very low carbohydrate diets are popular, yet little is known about their effects on blood lipids and other cardiovascular disease risk factors. We reported previously that a very low carbohydrate diet favorably affected fasting and postprandial triacylglycerols, LDL subclasses and HDL cholesterol (HDL-C) in men but the effects in women are unclear. We compared the effects of a very low carbohydrate and a low fat diet on fasting lipids, postprandial lipemia and markers of inflammation in women. We conducted a balanced, randomized, two-period, crossover study in 10 healthy normolipidemic women who consumed both a low fat (<30% fat) and a very low carbohydrate (<10% carbohydrate) diet for 4 wk each. Two blood draws were performed on separate days at 0, 2 and 4 wk and an oral fat tolerance test was performed at baseline and after each diet period. Compared with the low fat diet, the very low carbohydrate diet increased (P

The following information was written by Atkins professionals.

The following information was summarized by Atkins professionals. Healthy, normal weight women with normal blood lipid profiles consuming a low carbohydrate diet lost a significant amount of weight after 4 weeks. There were significant improvements in total cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, and triglycerides after consuming the low carb diet from before the study began. These improvements were significantly greater than what was seen after the individuals consumed a low fat diet for 4 weeks. These results suggest that in the short term, a low carbohydrate diet produces weight loss with greater improvements in several heart disease risk factors compared to a low fat diet.