In this YouTube monologue, Dr. David Perlmutter reviews a July 2008 New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) two‑year interventional trial involving 322 moderately obese adults (average age 52). Participants were assigned to one of three diets: a low‑fat, high‑carbohydrate diet; a Mediterranean diet; or a low‑carbohydrate, high‑fat diet. Perlmutter reports that the low‑carb/high‑fat group achieved the greatest weight loss and the most favorable changes in cardiovascular risk markers: increased HDL (good cholesterol), dramatically reduced triglycerides, lowered insulin levels, reduced LDL (bad cholesterol), and decreased C‑reactive protein (inflammation). He concludes that peer‑reviewed evidence supports a diet restricted in carbohydrates and enriched with “good fats” such as eggs, butter, and grass‑fed beef as the optimal dietary pattern for health and cardiovascular risk reduction.
Chapters
What is the very best diet? High fat, low fat, high carb, low carb? Well, recently the New England Journal of Medicine actually did a head-to-head comparison, an interventional trial putting people on different types of diets, and what did they find? They found that with respect to weight loss, with respect to all of the important cardiovascular parameters, A high-fat, low-carb diet was better than the so-called low-fat diet and even the Mediterranean diet. Let's have a look. In this report from July of 2008, 2-year trial, 322 moderately obese subjects, average age 52 years, were given either a low-fat diet, meaning high carbs, Mediterranean diet, or a low-carbohydrate diet with a lot of fat. First of all, who loses the most weight? It's the low-carb diet. Who had the greatest change in the HDL or good cholesterol? Again, low-carb diet had the best effect in terms of raising the good cholesterol or HDL. What about the triglycerides, a powerful risk factor for heart disease? Dramatic reduction in triglycerides in the group eating the low-carb Eating the most fat, and what about changes in insulin? Again, eating a low-carb diet, as you would expect, significantly related to a reduction in insulin level. What about the LDL or the bad cholesterol? A low-carb diet, meaning high fat, dramatically reduces bad cholesterol, while the high fat rather the high carbohydrate diet with with low amounts of fat that everyone has been told to consume. had no effect on the LDL. C-reactive protein is a powerful marker for inflammation. Look who does best— the low carbohydrate diet. So the point is that even our most well-respected peer-reviewed journals have been publishing information now for several years indicating that the very best diet we can consume is a diet that's really restricted in carbohydrates and welcomes back to the table good levels of, of good fats— the eggs, the butter, the grass-fed beef. These are good fats that lead to better health and better cardiovascular risk parameters as well. I'm Dr. David Perlmutter.
