Cutting your carbohydrates will invariably raise your LDL cholesterol as well as your HDL cholesterol, which can cause your doctor to be concerned. So let's unpack this as well as a recently published feeding study that randomized endurance-trained athletes to adhere to one of three different feeding arms of the study over the course of 10 weeks. And they wanted to look at how these different ways of feeding, including one arm of the study, was a low-carb, high-fat, ketogenic-style diet. The other feeding arm of the study included a low glycemic index diet, a diet that was rich in carbohydrates.
About 65% of the carbohydrates were from low glycemic index carbohydrates. And another arm of the study was a high glycemic index carbohydrate arm of the study. So carbohydrate concentrations were similar in the low glycemic as well as the high glycemic index arm of the study. And they were low in the low carb, high fat ketogenic style arm of the study. Energy was accounted for.
This was an ad lib feeding study, so these people were at home adhering to recommendations followed by dieticians and the team over in Austria that conducted this study titled, A Low-Carbohydrate, High-Fat Diet Leads to Unfavorable Changes in Blood Lipid Parameters Compared to Carbohydrate-Rich Diets with Different Glycemic Indices in Recreationally Active Men. What was unique about the study involving 65 male runners, They add an average VO2 max of 55 milligrams per minute per kilogram, which is quite high. I mean, that shows that people are physically fit. Last time I tested mine, it was 54. So these people are anything over 50. If you're over the age of 30, it's great. So these are physically fit men.
And what I want to focus here is on table three. Table three shows the lipid changes between time point zero and time point after 10 weeks. And what you see here is As you might guess, when you cut your carbs, your cholesterol goes up, both your HDL as well as your LDL. This is not news to anyone who's been doing this for a long time.
You reduce your intake of carbs. Your body depends more upon fat for its primary fuel maintenance functions. Your triglycerides often go down, but your lipids go up.
Your HDL goes up, your total cholesterol, your HDL cholesterol, or your LDL goes up as well. So total cholesterol in the low carb, high fat diet group increased from 175 milligrams per deciliter to 196 milligrams per deciliter. Now it went down in both the high glycemic index carb group as well as the low GI group respectively.
So we're talking about 167 milligrams per deciliter down to 152 milligrams per deciliter in the high glycemic index carb group, which is not surprising. We would absolutely expect that. In the low glycemic index group, it... dropped from 191 milligrams per DL to 171 milligrams per DL. Now, what I want to focus on here is not just talk about cholesterol, but talk about HGL.
Remember, high-density lipoprotein has on it a lot of antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anticoagulant-type proteins that are associated with HGL, that are involved in reverse cholesterol transport, preventing atherosclerosis, preventing clots. HGL needs to be looked at in context. It turns out that HGL increased in the low-carb, high-fat group, which is exactly what we would might... expect, but it went down in both the other carbohydrate interventions, the high glycemic index carb group, as well as the low glycemic index carb group. It both decreased.
Why aren't we talking about that? Again, if you look at the title, all you hear is, wow, cholesterol goes up, but why don't we talk about how HDL went up as well? Now, what was interesting in this study is triglycerides went down in the low glycemic index carb group, but not in the high glycemic index carb group.
Remember, triglycerides are a nice marker to assess metabolic health. I'm going to share with you the statistics here shortly because it's actually quite interesting how triglycerides change. But at first, I want to say thank you for being here.
I appreciate your comments, your likes, your shares. If you're enjoying this video, hit that like button. Let me know what you think in the comments section below.
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You have a 30-day money-back guarantee on this formulation that is best used during exercise or right after exercise. You can save with a code podcast over at myoscience.com. I'll put links in the description below. So getting back to the triglyceride changes, as we've talked about before, there was a feeding study in Japan that found that triglycerides increased significantly after just one week of eating. junk food that are matched for energy and calories compared to real food.
We saw triglycerides increase before insulin and glucose. So this is a sensitive biomarker that will increase in a short-term study like this. It turns out that the high glycemic index carb group had a triglyceride increase of, it's not that significant because again, these people are running, but six milligrams per deciliter. In contrast, the low glycemic index group decreased.
by about 15 milligrams per deciliter. And what they found here is the low-carb, high-fat group increased by four points. So I think this is interesting. We like to look at triglycerides and follow that, but there were significant between-group differences in triglycerides, as well as total cholesterol. Now, figure one really conveys the story here.
You can see the different changes in total cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, LDL, and triglycerides. Obviously, We do see a rise in LDL cholesterol with the low-carb, high-fat style group and compared to the other different high-glycemic index versus low-glycemic index groups. But you also see the low-carb, high-fat increase HDL. So we got to look at this from both sides. We can't just be like, we'll see it increase LDL.
What did it do to HDL as well? I think that's important. Not just looking beyond total cholesterol and LDL.
We need to look at HDL as well because historical studies show that The presence of cardiovascular risk factors do not always predict outcomes. This was a study going back to 1998 titled High Prevalence of Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Girona, Spain, a province with low myocardial infarction incidence. Well, what do you see here?
Total serum cholesterol comparing people in Finland to Girona, Spain to Minnesota. It turns out that the population adjusted rate of heart attacks is significantly higher in Minnesota. compared to Spain, despite the fact that individuals who live in Girona, Spain have significantly higher cholesterol levels. So again, we focus so much on this one biomarker, LDL cholesterol and total cholesterol, but that doesn't totally explain the incidence of adverse outcomes like heart disease and strokes. And so I think you would like this figure too, that really highlights this.
You know, if we want to enumerate this a little bit more granularly, you know, the incidence of having a heart attack in Spain for men is 207 events per 100,000 men. And then it's about 75% less in women is 48 events per 100,000 women. Now in terms of Minnesota, it's quite higher here. When we look at women, it's 203 heart attacks per 100,000 women. Remember in Spain, it was just 48. So it's almost four times greater incidents.
And then for the men in... Minnesota, the population adjusted rate of heart attacks are 613 per 100,000 population. Remember in Spain, in Girona, it was just 207. So you're talking about, again, a threefold increase, despite the fact that in Girona, Spain, people have higher serum total cholesterol during the same time period compared to people in Minnesota. So cholesterol doesn't fully explain everything. Now, when we look at Finland, it turns out that Finland actually has a much higher rate of heart disease compared to...
Girona, Spain, as well as Minnesota. And the cholesterol levels are quite similar. So if you look at the population adjusted rate of myocardial infarctions in Finland, it's 915 men per 100,000 population.
And for women, it's 165, which is higher than Spain and kind of mixed between Minnesota and Spain. So again, the point here is cholesterol levels don't totally predict outcomes or risk of events. They can be associated in certain studies, but not all. And so when I see a study like this saying a low-carb, high-fat diet leads to unfavorable changes in blood lipids, we need to look at the whole picture and also consider how a low-carb, high-fat diet increases HDL and consider how a low-carb, high-fat diet increases protective HDL and can lower reliably triglycerides. So I would love to know what you think in the comment section below, my friends.
What I think is... would be even more interesting is seeing how these dietary changes affect blood parameters with respect to exercise, whether it's VO2 max or exercise performance or lactate threshold and beyond. So as always, I'm grateful that you tuned all the way to the very end. Thanks for hitting that like button. Let me know what you think of this video and this study in the comment section below, and we'll see you next week.