Heart disease - low carb/keto diet

Welcome to the forums.

I guess the first question is, are you diabetic or prediabetic? On medication?

Lots of people do well on plant based diets, but they become a little problematic if you are carb intolerant like most T2s.

If you were gluten intolerant you probably wouldn't keep eating bread just because it was supposedly healthier for your heart?

A lot of modern dietary recommendations are based on a (now discredited) 1970s nutritional study that promoted low fat high carbs as better for the heart. The big food industry got on board and reduced the fat content in foods and replaced it with sugar. The obesity epidemic followed, though I should stress that this is not necessarily cause and effect.

Honestly, dietary advocates seem a bit like religious proponents to me, and the hard evidence for the benefits of different diets is a little sparse. Pick a diet, you can probably find a study to recommend it.

I can think of a number of reasons why plant based diets might be a good idea
1) ethical (you don't believe in the food industry's treatment of animals) and/or you don't want to kill living beings. (Though most people are selective about the animals that can be killed: mosquitos and rats are fine, puppies and kittens are not.)
2) environmental (planet doesn't have the resources for 7 billion human carnivores)
3) you don't trust the meat processing industry in the country where you live (eg the US?)

Now most of the people on here are going to recommend a low carb diet to you, since this seems to be the only non medication route that regulates the blood sugars of T2 diabetics. They use their blood sugar testing meters to determine how many carbs their bodies can tolerate. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend low carb to any T2 or prediabetic, because otherwise you get onto the T2 is a progressive disease bandwagon, with more and more medication culminating in insulin. (Now, as a T1 diabetic, I'm a big fan of insulin, as it keeps me alive, but I don't think it's a good solution for a T2 who is over producing the stuff in the first place).

High cholesterol may or may not be bad, but high blood sugars definitely do damage to multiple organs, including your heart.
So if you're T2 or prediabetic, in my opinion low carb is the way to go.

Gaz88 said:

For the last 2 years, after receiving my total cholesterol score of 297, I have constantly been searching for the best diet for my needs and lifestyle. To be honest, I feel like I have gone backwards as I’m constantly changing the way I eat. I can never say I have been low carb, as I eat a fair amount of bread and white rice, but I have had my fair share of eating plant based as I was scared into thinking that high cholesterol was the end for me, according to the vegan doctors. What’s made it worse was that my fitness levels have plummeted in the last 2 years.

What I would love to know is. Is there anyone here that has heart disease or possibly heart attacks that is now following the low carb or keto lifestyle? I love eating veggies and small amounts of fruit, but I just can’t handle the way the vegan diet is making me feel within myself. My stomach has never once felt truly comfortable eating that way.

I guess, I’m terrified that a low carb diet will eventually give me that heart attack that the plant based docs claim it will.

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Hi, I had a 3x bypass 4 yrs ago - does that count as heart disease?
I have been doing a very ow Carb Way Of Eating since diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes almost 2 yrs ago.
Depending upon whether you thinks that LDL Cholesterol is evil or not, you could interpret my Cholesterol/Lipid figures as being much better or much worse than before I went Low Carb. Personally I believe they are much better, since to me the following facts make me doubt all the emphasis on LDL:
1. People with higher LDL live longer than those with lower LDL
2. The older you are, the higher your LDL is likely to be - which is a good thing because older people are more at risk of infections (and death from those infections) as their immune system gets weaker.
3. LDL is required by the immune system and also in producing hormones
4. Although people on Statins die slightly less frequently from 'Heart Attacks', they die more frequently from 'Heart Failure' and unsurprisingly this is hardly ever mentioned even though it is known that Statins reduce the production of CoQ10 which is require to enable cells to power themselves. People on statins apparently also die for frequently from Infections and Cancers.

Before Low Carb my figures : HbA1C 53 Tot Cholesterol 3.6, HDL 1.2, LDL 1.9, Triglycerides 1.93 Trig/Hdl > 1.0 not good.
Latest Low Carb figures: HbA1C 37, Tot Cholesterol 7.7, HDL 2.17, LDL 5.02, Triglycerides 1.13 Trig/HDL almost 0.5 v good