Keto diet: good for weight loss, bad for your health

The keto diet may be good for losing weight quickly—but it’s not something to stay on for long.

The high-protein, low carb diet affects metabolic health, leading to fatty liver disease and dangerous blood sugar spikes, at least in mice.

Researchers from the University of Utah Health reckon that staying on the diet for up to a year could affect our overall health.

They tested four diets on groups of mice: a high-fat Western diet, a low-fat high-carbohydrate diet, a traditional ketogenic diet where nearly all calories came from fat, and a protein-matched low-fat diet.  The mice were on the diets from between nine months to a year.

Although the mice on the keto diet gained the least amount of weight, they started to display changes to their metabolism, and some of these were seen in just a few days of starting the diet.

The researchers believe that the changes happen because the lipids from a high-fat diet end up in the blood and liver, and this triggers metabolic changes that can lead to serious health problems.  Excess fat accumulation in the liver, known as fatty liver disease, is a key marker of metabolic disease and, paradoxically, can lead to obesity.

It’s a reaction that seemed to affect the male mice; females didn’t develop fatty liver disease, even when they were fed fats for nine months.

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