Browse evidence-based analysis of health-related claims and assertions
Even when rats eat fewer calories, a keto-like diet can still cause liver problems — like making too much sugar and messing up how the body uses protein — so the weight loss might not be worth the harm.
In rats, eating a diet high in fat and low in carbs changes how the liver handles certain fuels — it makes more sugar from lactate but gets worse at using alanine, especially when fewer calories are eaten.
Rats on a low-carb, high-fat diet have trouble handling sugar—even if they're not eating extra calories—and their insulin seems to be working fine, which is weird because those two things usually go together.
In rats, eating a diet super high in fat and very low in carbs for a month leads to higher blood sugar and more fat in the liver—even if they're not eating too many calories.
If you're overweight and have fatty liver, going on a keto diet for just 6 days might supercharge your liver's energy system and shift it into fat-burning mode, possibly helping your body make more ketones.
If you're overweight and have fatty liver, going on a keto diet for just 6 days might reduce how your liver burns fuel, pushing your body to make more ketones instead.
If you're overweight and have fatty liver, going on a keto diet for just 6 days might make your liver burn fat for fuel way more—like over 3 times as much—instead of storing it.
Even though fat levels in the blood go up, a super low-carb diet for just 6 days seems to dramatically improve how well the liver responds to insulin in people with fatty liver and extra weight — which goes against what doctors usually expect.
If you're overweight and have fatty liver, going on a keto diet for just 6 days might cut the fat in your liver by over a quarter—even if you barely lose any weight.
In Mongolian adults with type 2 diabetes, eating meat affects both ferritin levels and heart disease risk, but ferritin doesn’t seem to be the reason for that link.
In Mongolian adults with type 2 diabetes, high ferritin levels don’t seem to be linked to body-wide inflammation — they might just come from eating a lot of iron-rich foods instead.
If you're a Mongolian adult with type 2 diabetes and have high levels of a protein called ferritin in your blood, you might be at greater risk for heart problems over the next 10 years — and this seems to be true even if your other signs of inflammation are normal.
In Mongolian adults with type 2 diabetes, people with more stored iron in their bodies tend to have higher 'bad' and total cholesterol levels — which might mean how the body stores iron affects cholesterol.
If you're a Mongolian adult with type 2 diabetes and eat a lot of meat, your body might store more iron — and this could be because meat adds extra iron to your system.
Keto diets might boost testosterone in overweight or insulin-resistant guys, but could lower hormone levels in lean guys who aren't eating enough calories.
If lean, active guys follow a keto diet with very few calories for a long time, it might lower key hormones that affect energy and sex drive — even if they're otherwise healthy.
If overweight or obese guys who have trouble using insulin stick to a keto diet for a short time, their testosterone levels might go up — probably because they lose weight, get better at handling sugar, and have less inflammation.
For people with high blood pressure, two body chemicals—endothelin-1 and 8-ISO-PGF2alpha—are better at predicting kidney problems than a common inflammation marker, and endothelin-1 is the most accurate of all.
For people with high blood pressure, a certain blood marker linked to body stress is closely tied to how well their kidneys are working, and a level of 329 in the blood can spot kidney issues with high accuracy.
In people with high blood pressure, having more of a substance called endothelin-1 in the blood is linked to worse kidney function. When this substance reaches 4 pg/ml, it’s a strong sign their kidneys aren’t filtering blood as well as they should.
If we keep bad cholesterol levels low over time by adjusting treatment, it might help stop heart disease before it starts.
Tracking your bad cholesterol levels over many years — not just once — gives doctors a better idea of your real risk for having a heart attack or stroke right now.
Keeping your 'bad' cholesterol low for a long time helps slow down the buildup of gunk in your arteries and lowers your chances of having heart attacks or strokes later in life.
The longer and more your arteries are exposed to bad cholesterol (LDL), the more likely you are to develop heart disease because that cholesterol builds up over time and can lead to heart attacks or strokes.