Keto Diet And Diabetes Risk
A new mouse study finds potential risk of taking up the popular diet.
Keto Diet And Diabetes Risk
Though many people claim the keto diet to be a game changer or a lifesaver, a newly released study raises questions about its ability to cause type 2 diabetes.
Keto Diet And Diabetes Risk
The study, which was conducted on mice, evaluated the keto diet.
Keto Diet And Diabetes Risk
The keto diet is a low-carb, high-fat diet plan that causes the body to burn fat instead of carbohydrates — a process known as ketosis. This is said to help with weight loss.
Keto Diet And Diabetes Risk
The Journal of Physiology published the research, which said following the diet in its early phases could boost the risk for type 2 diabetes.
ETH Zurich along with the University Children’s Hospital Zurich conducted the study.
They fed mice ketogenic diets and high-fat diets and then tested their metabolisms and sugar responses.
They found that keto diets don’t allow the body to properly use insulin, so blood sugar isn’t properly controlled. That leads to insulin resistance, which can raise the risk for type 2 diabetes.
The researchers say they didn’t evaluate if the diet causes obesity after long-term use.
They called for additional research to better understand how keto diets affect the body. Researchers want to look at the mechanism behind the effects.
“Although ketogenic diets are known to be healthy, our findings indicate that there may be an increased risk of insulin resistance with this type of diet that may lead to type 2 diabetes,” said Christian Wolfrum, PhD, a professor at ETH Zurich and co-author of the research.
Gerald Grandl, PhD, co-author of the study and professor at the German Research Center for Environmental Health, said that insulin resistance and the keto diet have been studied before.
Studies on mice report different things, mostly improved or maintained insulin in muscle but impaired glucose tolerance systematically or in the liver alone.
A century ago, doctors had recognized that fasting or starvation for several days, or strict carbohydrate restriction (without starvation), can cause something called ‘starvation diabetes’ in rodents, dogs, and humans. Now Grandl thinks that’s similar to the findings in his paper.
“No one will get type 2 diabetes while on keto,…