Research
Hormonal
Low-carbohydrate diets (≤60 g/d) do not have a significant adverse effect on serum lipid profiles, fasting serum glucose, fasting serum insulin levels, or blood pressure compared to higher-carbohydrate diets.
You can use a low-carbohydrate diet without fearing immediate harm to your heart health, blood sugar control, or blood pressure based on this review. The safety profile appears comparable to higher-carb diets for these specific markers.
ModerateRefutesMEDIUM confidence
Low-carbohydrate diets had no significant adverse effect on serum lipid, fasting serum glucose, and fasting serum insulin levels, or blood pressure.
Why this rating
Meta-analysis of heterogeneous studies.
Source
Efficacy and Safety of Low-Carbohydrate Diets
Dena M Bravata et al. · JAMA · 2003
DOI 10.1001/jama.289.14.1837
Meta-analysis · 94 studiesCited 563×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- There is insufficient evidence to recommend low-carbohydrate diets for use longer than 90 days, for participants older than 50 years, or for diets providing 20 g/d or less of carbohydrates.Good
- Low-carbohydrate diets (≤60 g/d) produce greater short-term weight loss than higher-carbohydrate diets, but this effect is driven by reduced caloric intake and longer diet duration rather than carbohydrate restriction itself.Moderate
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