Your Low Carb Diet Won't Kill You, But It's Probably Not a Good Idea

Could cutting carbs cut your life short? A new, preliminary study suggests that there may be a link
between a low-carb diet and an increased risk of early death, but more research is needed before
doctors will advise loading up on bread and pasta.

The findings were presented today (Aug. 28) at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Vienna.
The study has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

In the study, researchers in Poland looked at data on nearly 25,000 Americans who had participated in
the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) at some pointbetween 1999 and
2010. After a six-year follow-up period, the researchers found that people who reported following a low-
carb diet (like the Atkins diet, the keto diet or just a diet that cuts out carbs) had a 32 percent higher risk
of death during the follow-up period compared with those who didn't follow a low-carb diet. What's
more, people following a low-carb diet were 51 percent more likely to die from heart disease, 50
percent more likely to die from cerebrovascular disease and 35 percent more likely to die from cancer
during the follow-up period than people who didn't follow a low-carb diet.

"The message from our study is clear," Banach told Live Science. "Very long-term [low-carb dieting]
should be avoided."

Alice Lichtenstein, director of the Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory at Tufts University and a nutrition
expert who was not involved with the new study, said there are some important holes in this study that
lead her to be skeptical of its claims.

For example, people who already had a higher risk of developing heart disease, stroke or hypertension
might've been the ones who were more likely to adopt a low-carb diet, Lichtenstein told Live Science,
but it's unclear from the data if that was the case.

Still, Lichtenstein said that she doesn't recommend low-carb diets for most people, because people
don't tend to stick to them.

"You really need to think in the long term rather than the short term," she said. "Any of these diets that
are relatively extreme and [that], in some cases, can inhibit people's social interaction — because they
start worrying, 'If I go out, will I be tempted?' — the long-term data isn't particularly solid."

Citation

Rettner, R. (2019, April 9). Vitamins from Food - Not Supplements - Linked with Longer Life. Retrieved
from https://www.livescience.com/65186-vitamins-minerals-food-supplements.html