A recent study on people who follow the popular Keto diet for losing weight or for treating diabetes found that they should prevent their body from a sudden increase in the blood sugar levels.
Dieting is not that easy and it becomes more difficult to follow it without indulging in a cheat day.
One whole day may not make a major difference in the long run. However, a recent scientific study has revealed that a single portion of carbs can have dangerous effects. The study was conducted by the University of British Columbia in Okanagan, Canada (UBCO).
People following the keto diet get more calories from proteins and fats and less from carbohydrates. The percent ratio totally depends on the body weight and the activity level of the individual. However, generally, the percent ratios fall in the range of 60-75 percent calories from fat, 15-30 percent calories from protein, and 5-10 percent calories from carbohydrates.
When the body gets less than 50 grams of carbohydrates per day, glucose, the energy source of the body, starts depleting and ultimately, the body will run out of its preferred energy source. This process takes place a few days after starting the keto diet. At this stage, the body will start to breakdown the proteins and fats to obtain energy. This process of breakdown of proteins and fats is termed as ketosis.
Keto diet for obesity and diabetes
People with obesity often follow the keto diet. Nowadays, people with diabetes also follow the diet to manage their blood sugar levels. Various research studies have indicated that the keto diet may assist in controlling the hunger, help in reducing the body weight, and control blood sugar levels in diabetics.
Senior author of the study Jonathan Little, who is also the associate professor in the School of Health and Exercise Sciences at UBCO, said, “The ketogenic — or keto — diet has become very common for weight loss or to manage diseases such as type 2 diabetes.”
Little elucidates that the body’s chemical makeup changes during the process of ketosis. The process of ketosis may aggressively start burning the body’s fat stores to obtain energy, which may lead to significant weight loss and improvement in blood sugar levels.
The effect of a dose of glucose
Most people are likely to indulge in “cheat days” so the researchers at UCBO were keen to find out what happens when people reintroduced a dose of glucose into their body. The study was conducted to check out the inflammatory responses or reduced glucose tolerance.
The first author and doctoral student at UBCO, Cody Durrer, said, “Since impaired glucose tolerance and spikes in blood sugar levels are known to be associated with an increased risk in cardiovascular disease, it made sense to look at what was happening in the blood vessels after a sugar hit.”
The researchers asked nine healthy young males to follow a low-carb diet, similar to the keto diet, for seven days, consisting of 70 percent fat, 10 percent carbohydrates, and 20 percent protein. They were also asked to consume a 75-gram glucose drink before and after the diet.
The researchers did not find any inflammatory response or reduced tolerance to the blood glucose level. Durrer said, “What we found instead were biomarkers in the blood, suggesting that vessel walls were being damaged by the sudden spike in glucose,”
The results showed that even though the participants in the study were young men, the state of their blood vessels after consuming a glucose drink was more similar to that of people with compromised cardiovascular function.
One of the scientists stated that the damage to the blood vessels is due to the body’s own response to the sharp increase in the blood sugar levels, which may result in the death of the blood vessels cells.
As these results were only obtained after study on nine healthy males, researchers were of the opinion that more studies involving a larger population would be required to prove the results.
“My concern is that many of the people going on a keto diet — whether it’s to lose weight, to treat type 2 diabetes, or some other health reason — may be undoing some of the positive impacts on their blood vessels if they suddenly blast them with glucose,” Little concluded.
The study suggests that the keto diet is not something that people should follow six days a week and take a day off; especially, people who are at the risk of cardiovascular disease should not do so.
