Title says it all. I don’t get it. Normally people complain about this kind of thing during fat adaptation or keto flu and it clears up once they adapt.
I however went off the keto diet and noticed palpitations. Back on and they ceased. Off and they’re back. Strange.
I’ve also recently read that magnesium deficiency can prompt heart palpitations or A-Fib. Something to keep in mind just in case they come back. I guess another case for KCKO!
Magnesium, magnesium, magnesium!!! Read about which kinds you should be taking. Get at least 400mg/day. After you’ve been supplementing with plenty of magnesium for a few months, you should be able to vary your diet a little without any heart palpitations.
@MelTar
So strange! I am so torn because there are studies showing that keto is good for the heart and a couple showing that it is bad. I was going for a classic heart healthy diet (high veggies, fruits and grains, lower meat and dairy) but after a fee days of palpitations I decided to listen to my body and stick with keto.
I need to look into it though because it is odd.
The science of the so-called “heart-healthy” diet is bogus, we know that. The studies that you say show keto as bad for the heart, did they find an association with actual heart disease and death, or did they just assume that because cholesterol increased, the diet had to be bad? Because everyone knows cholesterol is bad for you!
In any case I would say that if your heart is fine on keto, but has palpitations when you eat carbs—then don’t eat carbs!
Thanks. I appreciate the reply. Please note that the following is written with sincerity and zero sarcasm. I am a little confused by your reply and wrote this asking for clarification but upon re reading it it sounds a little sarcastic so please keep in mind that I wrote it with an attitude of appreciation toward your knowledge and sincere inquiry.
One study (linked below) showed that it raised cholesterol and stiffened arteries (the other was on rats so not as relevant). Sorry to ask, but a lot of people have differing opinions on the following and I do not know what you meant: are you jokingly implying otherwise when you said “everyone knows cholesterol is bad for you!”? Your question about assuming the diet had to be bad because cholesterol increased seems to imply that a diet that increases cholesterol can be good, but then the following sentence seems to firmly state that cholesterol is bad. I am confused.
If cholesterol is bad and you were not being sarcastic, then the heart healthy diet should lower cholesterol and therefore be heart healthy (lower saturated fat intake usually lowers cholesterol). However if you were being sarcastic I would love to hear why cholesterol being raised in keto may not be bad for us as this has been a concern of mine and it would be comforting to hear otherwise.
Well, yes, I was being sarcastic, but the sarcasm was not directed at you, sorry! It’s just that there are researchers so bound up in the diet-heart hypothesis that they assume that if a certain behavior causes cholesterol to rise, the conclude it has to be bad, workout looking at actual morbidity and mortality. I did have a real question about how the researchers in those studies came to their conclusions, but I should have asked it more simply.
I think that Ancel Keys was so successful in pushing his cholesterol-causes-heart-disease hypothesis that we are afraid to admit that he manipulated his data. In his Seven Countries Study, the association between dietary fat intake and heart disease vanishes if you include all twenty-two countries for which he had data. His data show a much stronger correlation between sugar consumption and heart disease, but Keys dismissed that as irrelevant. (It has been revealed that Keys was taking money from the sugar industry at the time.)
From what I’ve read, there has been no study that has actually confirmed the link between cholesterol and heart disease. It does appear that a high level of small, dense LDL associated with a greater risk of heart disease, but whether one causes the other or they are both caused by a third factor has not, as I understand it, yet been shown. And high levels of HDL seem to have a protective effect against heart disease.
Dr. Phinney mentioned in one of his lectures that there is a congenital condition of highly elevated cholesterol levels, called “familial hypercholesterolemia.” Remarkably, while 50% of people with this condition do get heart disease and often die of it, the other 50% lead perfectly normal lives, never get heart disease, and die at perfectly normal ages. So it is clearly not the elevated cholesterol that is the problem. I take this to mean that cholesterol levels are in general a non-issue, except for the two types mentioned above.
Oh no, not at all! I didn’t take it personally, I just wanted to know what you meant but I assumed any sarcasm was directed at all the ridiculous studies and what-not that have created a sea of confusion in the health world.
So, in your opinion, one could be in ketosis, show high cholesterol, but not be heading for a heart attack? I really hope so because this has me worried but the diet has waaaaaay too many benefits to quit. Off the diet I have horrid hypoglycemia that makes it nearly impossible to live normally (have to eat every few hours, even wake up to eat at night, to stay functional but on keto three meals a day is fine), awful joint pain and other problems. On the diet I feel like I am a decade younger, all of those problems are gone and so on.
I mistakenly posted my reply before it was ready, and added a long edit which explains my thinking. I believe you are right that it is perfectly possible to have high cholesterol and be completely healthy. Dr. Phinney says that blaming cholesterol for being present in atherosclerosic plaque is like blaming fire trucks for being present at burning houses. The real problem lies elsewhere.
I’m glad you’re finding the keto way of eating so helpful. I am finding it nothing but beneficial, myself. I am a sugar addict, and keto has freed me from that addiction. Not to mention that, the way I was eating, developing diabetes was only a matter of time.
As someone that is now battling Stage 1 Congestive Heart Failure, I can tell you that the heart resorts to ketones for fuel when it is stressed. I’m not saying that it prefers them, because it’s difficult to say that, but it definitely resorts to using them as the primary fuel when stressed. While I have no evidence for this, my conclusion is that it seeks ketones for fuel for various reasons. It may be the it is more difficult to access blood glucose due to impaired pathways, it could be anything.
For some good reading, I provide these:
Thanks! Is there a book by this Dr. Phinney that I could look into where he discusses the cholesterol issue?
Thank you. So do you believe that the ketogenic diet promotes heart disease or helps to prevent (and/or recover from) it?
I believe it helps prevent and recover from heart disease. Most heart disease is a result of inflammation of some source. In my case, I developed an Atrial Fibrillation with Rapid Ventricular Response due to inflammation from viral pneumonia. It had nothing to do with the Ketogenic diet. However, the diet is helping me repair and recover.