By the time you read this, every husband in America will be waking up from a nacho hangover and panicking about where to find the best last-minute deal on roses and chocolates. (Hint: It’s Trader Joe’s)
Yes, it’s the feast day of St. Valentine, patron saint of lovers and epileptics (and, of course, beekeepers). Judy and I had the chance to visit ol’ Valentino during a trip to Rome a few years ago. He’s looking a little lean these days, but still dresses quite well:
This year my amazing mother, knowing about my ketogenic diet, commemorated the occasion by sending me a care package from Lewis Cattle Company, a terrific local farm here in Virginia (big thanks to Mom, and to my wife Judy for the assist).
All of which got me thinking — what a perfect time to address a seeming paradox that plagues ketogenic dietary therapy. “Sure,” folks say, “a ketogenic diet may be good for the brain, but you’ll sacrifice your heart in the process.” After all, everyone knows all that fat will clog up your arteries and kill you.
(True story - I had a coworker once who, every time he saw me eating a slice of bacon, would say, “You know, you might as well staple that directly to your coronary artery.” He was the head of our biology department.)
It’s strange, when you think about it: why would a diet that’s so beneficial for one organ, be so detrimental to another? Did Mother Nature really design us in such a way that our two most vital organs live at odds with one another, like some kind of medical Battle of the Network Stars? How does that make any biological sense?
The short answer: It doesn’t.
heart health on the brain
One of the highlights of writing my book was the chance to interview journalist and bestselling author Nina Teicholz. Her 2014 masterpiece The Big Fat Surprise paved the way for the explosion of the low-carb diet.
The book’s subtitle says it all: “Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet.” In it, Teicholz reviews 50 years of nutrition science and nutrition politics, and systematically dismantles what has been called the “Diet-Heart Hypothesis.” That is, the theory that dietary fat — saturated fat in particular — causes heart disease. After 479 pages, and hundreds of scientific citations, Teicholz has thoroughly vindicated the world’s most vilified nutrient.
Teicholz says that despite the entrenched thinking on saturated fat and heart disease, the past few decades have seen more than fifteen meta-analyses, or systematic reviews of all the studies ever done on saturated fat. And what have they shown? “Saturated fats have no effect on cardiovascular disease mortality or total mortality.”
In fact, she says, “Saturated fats have been tested in gold-standard trials more than any other nutrient in the history of nutrition science, and resarchers cannot find that they cause heart disease.”
Ok, so maybe that delicious Delmonico won’t send you to the cardiac ward. But surely a ketogenic diet can’t actually be good for your heart?
Indeed, it can. That was the finding of study published just last month in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. In a randomized, controlled trial, subjects were assigned to either a low-, moderate-, or high-carb diet (20%, 40% or 60% of calories, respectively), with each diet designed to maintain the person’s current weight. The low-carb group got 21% of their calories from saturated fat (which, by the way, is more than twice the limit recommended by the USDA’s dietary guidelines).
And what happened to the folks in this risky, fat-filled group? According to the researchers, they showed “striking improvements in a variety of metabolic disease risk factors,” including dyslipidemia and lipoprotein(a), both of which are leading indicators of heart disease. The study’s authors concluded that even in a diet with high saturated fat, “Carbohydrate restriction might lower cardiovascular disease risk, independently of body weight.”
In fact, if you really want to geek out on fats and heart health, it turns out that ketones can actually be used by the heart as fuel to keep it pumpin’ away.
A review paper came out last year in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The researchers found that not only are ketone bodies a major fuel source for powering your favorite fist-sized muscle, but they seem to have protective effects for heart disease patients. “According to the researchers, ketones may also have positive effects on common cardiovascular risk factors, including blood pressure, body weight, blood glucose or blood sugar, and cholesterol, though research is ongoing.”
So the tide seems to be turning on the low-fat dogma that we’ve all been fed since the 1980s, and in its place is a new look at the role of fats in a diet that’s healthy for both the brain and the heart. The long and short of it? This Valentine’s Day, give your heart a break from those sugary candies and go enjoy a heart-healthy steak instead.