this post was submitted on 21 May 2025
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That is interesting, what study was that? What were the markers they used?
Potentially is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. The only group following keto which see a increase in LDL is the lean-mass-hyper-responder phenotype. There is some interesting research being released on this group Paper - Plaque Begets Plaque, ApoB Does Not: Longitudinal Data From the KETO-CTA Trial - 2025. However, Cholesterol is not a disease - its essential for life - the concern has never been cholesterol but atherosclerosis - if someone has elevated LDL, undamanged and unglycated (as on keto) and they are concerned they should get a CAC score so they can see their actual plaque burden.
I'd like to learn what those problems are, I'm currently following a carnivore diet and as far as my reading has gone there are not any downsides.
This study shows inflammatory markers are increased on a ketogenic diet: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6922028/
This rat study shows increased senescence in heart and kidneys in long term ketosis: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ado1463
What you're asking for is being studied. Here's a meta study from 2013:
Their results:
Along the same lines, here's another study with arterial measurements that shows reduced blood flow and arterial function for those who stuck with a high protein diet: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000331970005101003
Look, none of these studies are, standing alone, enough to really change things. But it seems to me, from the outside that you're cherry picking your own results to justify carnivore diet.
The high carb versus low carb discussion is complicated and has a lot of factors at play. But the evidence for animal versus plant based low carb suggests that animal product diets are more harmful than plant product diets of similar macronutrient profiles.
Moreover, the overall trends show that those who eat a lot of whole grains (which are, by their nature, high carb plant based foods) have lower mortality than those who don't. The same is true of those who eat a lot of fruit (again, high carb plant based food).
Trying to tease out which of a million variables is truly responsible for cardiovascular health isn't easy, but a lot of the overall trends can be seen:
Now, you can quibble with confounding variables, but at a certain point trying to argue that minutiae starts looking like religious apologetics, really cherry picking examples in favor while ignoring examples against. Coming up with a coherent theory of "fiber not important" or "the foods our genetic ancestors ate are somehow bad for us now" is an uphill battle, and I'm not convinced that the carnivore diet is anything more than a scam designed to sell books.
Wow, great response - it's going to take some time to read the papers and get back to you, but i'll start here with the first study.
This was a 4 week high carb, 4 week low carb group. The order was not randomized!!! Adapting to a new metabolism takes on the order of 12 weeks (from the Noakes athletic performance studies)
Here is a 12 week study https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3845365/ Consuming a hypocaloric high fat low carbohydrate diet for 12 weeks lowers C-reactive protein, and raises serum adiponectin and high density lipoprotein-cholesterol in obese subjects
I'll make each of these papers a post in the keto group here and go over them in detail. This is a great set of research to dig into, thank you.