“Low” Carbohydrate Diets and Metabolic Health: What Does the Research Show?

Commercial support has been provided by Simply Good Foods. Dr. Jim Painter was sponsored by an unrestricted grant from Simply Good Foods to speak on the podcast. No products or brands are discussed or promoted.

Lower carbohydrate, higher protein and higher fat dietary patterns have seen a resurgence in interest in both the research community and in popular culture in the past decade. This has been accompanied by a clearer understanding of who may benefit from dietary patterns that reduce carbohydrate and increase other macronutrients and the ways in which these approaches change human metabolism to facilitate weight loss and improve glycemic control.

While often regarded as fad diets, there is a significant amount of clinical evidence that can be used to evaluate the potential upsides and downsides of these types of dietary approaches. This research can be leveraged to understand what dietary factors should be considered when trying to optimize lower carbohydrate diets and how other macronutrients need to be shifted in order to provide sufficient nutrition. It should be noted that there is a large body of evidence that can be used to help answer many of the outstanding questions related to carbohydrate reduction or restriction. Furthermore, this large body of clinical research has resulted in many high-quality meta-analyses that help give a clearer picture of the utility of such alternative dietary patterns, especially regarding improving glycemic control in those with type 2 diabetes.

Tune into this episode with Dr. Jim Painter to learn about:

● Research studies on low/lower carbohydrate diets and metabolic health

● Research related to diabetes, prediabetes, inflammation

● How “low carbohydrate” is defined in various research studies

● Ketogenic diet research

● Higher protein and fat intake related to lower carbohydrate diets

● Popularity of higher protein diets

● How the quality of carbohydrates, protein and fat may impact health

● Intermittent fasting research

● Insights on ketosis, autophagy

● diabetes remission

● the “best” diet(s) for diabetes

● 2025 Diabetes Standards of Care

● If the Mediterranean diet can be considered low carb

● Potential health benefits with or without weight loss

● resources for health professionals and the public

Full shownotes, transcript and resources: https://soundbitesrd.com/286