Low carbs, low fat, low cholesterol
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Low carbs, low fat, and low cholesterol
From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
There's more to diets than losing weight, because how you eat can affect your cholesterol levels. At Temple University, researcher Gary Foster looked at two years of data that compared low carb and low fat diets.
Foster says people lost about as much weight on either. But he found a difference in HDL cholesterol - what's called ``good'' cholesterol, because it seems to protect against heart attack:
``Patients on the low-carbohydrate diet experienced a 23 percent increase in their HDL cholesterol, compared to about a 10 to 12 percent increase for those on the low-fat diet.'' (10 seconds)
Foster says it's something for people who need to raise their HDL to keep in mind.
The study in Annals of Internal Medicine was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Learn more at hhs.gov.
HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.