Transcript for Can the keto diet cause heart rhythm disorders?
There you go, that’s “Pop news.” A health alert on keto diets. A new study found those on a low-carb regimen are significantly more likely to develop a health rhythm disorder. Pretty groundbreaking? Attention grabbing headline and first the caveat. This is a classic example of what we talk about all the time, association not cause and effect but this study looked at almost 14,000 people, followed them for an average of 22 years then had them fill out a food questionnaire about what they ate and then followed them for how many developed a heart rhythm disorder, very common called atrial fibrillation and what they found the people on the low carb diets were 18% more likely to develop AFib than those on a moderate carb diet. Interestingly, a lot of data has shown what tree call a u-shaped mortality curve to low carb diets meaning people who eat very, very low carb and people who eat very, very high carb have higher risks of death. Describe low carb. That’s the interesting thing. Two things I want to do a deeper dive on. Low carb for this was less than 44% of your daily calorie intake from carbohydrates which is not that low. That’s almost half our calories coming from carbs. But when we talk about atrial fibrillation, what I want people to understand, you hear about it, see commercials about it, if you look at the anatomy of the heart, the upper two chambers get dilated and beat irregularly and then they get filled with blood. A blood clot can form there and that can become dislodged then cause a stroke. It affects about 2.7 million Americans. So, again, not cause and effect but an association and it’s a trade-off, George, because we talk about low carb. If that’s effective in losing weight and therefore reducing risk of coronary heart disease, that might be worth it if you have to trade a little for the risk of AFib. There are benefits to a low carb diet. This is kind of a typical low carb or very low carb way of eating so you do have some fruits and vegetables but you have eggs, you have Greek yoga. You have chicken. You have lean protein, fish. And, again, if you eat like this for sure you will lose weight. Are you missing the healthy grains and more fruits and vegetables, yeah, so, again, balanced diet. Good advice. Thanks very much. Michael. Thank you, George.
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