Research from Saint Louis University has found that a high-fat diet orketogenic dietsCan completely prevent or even reverse heart failure caused by a metabolic process. The research team, led by Kyle McCommis, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, investigated such a metabolic process. In this case, a failure of the human heart seemed to be rejected.
How does a high-fat diet affect the heart?
In an animal model, the researchers were able to avoid dramatic heart failure in laboratory mice. The team did this by switching the test animals to high-fat or ketogenic diets. One like thatketogenic dietcould therefore completely prevent or even reverse heart failure. “For this reason, this study suggests that consuming foods higher in fat and lower in carbohydrates may be a nutritional therapy for the treatment of heart failure,” the authors said. The results were published online in “Nature Metabolism.” This research was then completed at the university.
The myocardium of the heart requires large amounts of chemical energy stored in nutrients. This allows the muscle to promote heart contraction. To maintain this high metabolic capacity, the heart is flexible. It can therefore adapt to changing metabolic reserves under different developmental, nutritional or physiological conditions. However, impaired flexibility is linked to cardiac dysfunction in conditions such as diabetes and heart failure. The mitochondrial pyruvate dehydrogenase complex (PDK), consisting of MPC1 and MPC2, is required for pyruvate import into the mitochondria. Thus, this study shows that MPC expression decreases in laboratory mouse hearts and that genetic deletion of MPC in mice leads to cardiac remodeling and dysfunction.
Study results
Diets with higher fat content but enough carbohydrates to limit ketosis also significantly improved heart failure in mice without cardiac MPC expression. This demonstrates a critical role for the use of mitochondrial pyruvate in cardiac function as well as the potential for dietary interventions to helpImproving the heart's fat metabolism. In this way, people can prevent or reverse possible cardiac dysfunction and remodeling caused by MPC deficiency. So diets higher in fat but enough carbohydrates and proteins to limit ketosis were able to significantly improve or even prevent cardiac remodeling and dysfunction in a mouse model.
Like a high-fat diet, prolonged fasting increases the heart's dependence on fatty acid oxidation. This reduces ketolytic flux despite increased release of ketone bodies from the heart. The 24-hour fast lowered blood sugar levels and greatly increased the concentrations of non-esterified fatty acids and ketone bodies. A ketogenic diet with a consumption of just three weeks has been associated with the consistent increase in fat metabolism with reverse and remodeling of the failing heart is essentially normal size. The resultsthis studyAbove all, suggest that ketogenic diets do not improve the body's metabolism of cardiac ketone. Instead, they stimulate the oxidation of fatty acids. This could be responsible for the improved remodeling and performance of the heart.
