Research
Hormonal
The 5:2 diet improves liver stiffness (a marker of fibrosis/inflammation) and reduces LDL cholesterol, whereas LCHF does not improve liver stiffness and may increase LDL.
If you have high cholesterol or heart disease risk, the 5:2 diet might be a better choice than LCHF because it lowers LDL and improves liver stiffness. LCHF reduces liver fat just as well but may not help with stiffness or cholesterol as much.
GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
Liver stiffness decreased significantly from baseline to EoT in the 5:2 and the SoC group but not in the LCHF group... A significant reduction of total serum cholesterol and LDL levels was observed in the 5:2 group but not in the LCHF or SoC groups.
Why this rating
RCT data, though liver stiffness is an indirect measure of fibrosis.
Source
Treatment of NAFLD with intermittent calorie restriction or low-carb high-fat diet – a randomised controlled trial
Magnus Holmer et al. · JHEP Reports · 2021
DOI 10.1016/j.jhepr.2021.100256
rct · n=74Cited 213×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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