this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2025
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Low Carb High Fat - Ketogenic

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A casual community to talk about LCHF/Ketogenic lifestyles, issues, benefits, difficulties, recipes, foods.

The more science focused sister community is !metabolic_health@discuss.online

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Summary


Detailed summary — "The Real Cause of Clogged Arteries and how fasting can help"

  • Core claim: Atherosclerosis (clogged arteries) is primarily driven by chronic inflammation, not merely passive cholesterol deposition, and plaque is a metabolically active, inflammatory process that can rupture and cause heart attacks.

  • Primary triggers that cause vascular inflammation:

    • Metabolic dysfunction (insulin resistance, prediabetes) which promotes harmful lipid profiles including small, dense LDL.
    • Dietary factors (processed foods, high omega‑6 intake, advanced glycation end products) that drive inflammation and oxidative stress.
    • Toxins and impaired detoxification, which increase systemic inflammatory burden.
    • Gut problems (e.g., leaky gut / dysbiosis) that seed inflammation systemically.
    • Lifestyle stressors (poor sleep, chronic stress) that amplify inflammatory cascades.
  • Nature and consequence of plaque: Plaque is described as an inflammatory, metabolically active lesion; when plaque becomes unstable and ruptures the ensuing clot formation leads to heart attacks — so reducing inflammation and stabilizing plaque is central to preventing acute events.

  • How fasting counteracts the causes (mechanisms):

    • Lowers insulin levels, improving insulin sensitivity and reducing production of small, dense LDL, thereby decreasing a major driver of inflammation and atherogenesis.
    • Stimulates autophagy and mitophagy, promoting cellular and mitochondrial cleanup which reduces oxidative stress and inflammatory signaling.
    • Supports detoxification by enhancing liver processing and elimination of toxins that contribute to vascular inflammation.
    • Resets gut health, helping reduce inflammation originating from a leaky or dysbiotic gut.
    • Promotes ketogenesis and fat mobilization during extended fasting, which is framed as anti‑inflammatory and metabolically beneficial.
    • Overall effect: fasting lowers measurable inflammatory markers, improves metabolic health, and creates conditions that can halt or reverse drivers of plaque progression.
  • Practical fasting approaches recommended:

    • Time‑restricted feeding as a daily lifestyle (example: 18:6, eat within 6 hours, fast 18 hours).
    • Periodic prolonged fasts (example: a 3‑day water fast done periodically — cited as helpful for metabolic reset, stem cell mobilization and deeper detoxification; suggested timing varies by individual needs).
    • Use of fasting to achieve ketosis for added anti‑inflammatory and fat‑mobilizing effects.
  • Overall strategy and expectations: Adopt an anti‑inflammatory lifestyle (fasting, improved diet, sleep, stress management, and addressing toxins/gut health) to manage plaque — the goal is usually to prevent progression and rupture rather than promise complete elimination of existing plaque; with these measures individuals can often live with plaque without experiencing fatal events.

  • Takeaway (concise): Targeting systemic inflammation and metabolic dysfunction — with fasting as a central tool among dietary and lifestyle interventions — is presented as the most effective approach to preventing plaque progression and reducing risk of heart attacks.

Dr Jamnadas shares his experience holistically treating patients with heart disease. There is a lot of content, and it's hard to do a write-up when all of it is interesting, so I'd recommend watching the video to anyone who's even at all interested in managing heart disease and staying healthy, since there is a lot of actionable advice.

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[–] xep@discuss.online 2 points 3 days ago

Our thesis is that when it comes to plaque or blood clots, inflammation is at the root, and this is a systemic process.

I found that 70% of the patients with what they call prediabetes had extremely high insulin levels. So, in spite of decent sugars, they had so much insulin. That identified a whole group of patients at extremely high risk of having a new event—another stent, progressive disease, increasing coronary calcium, heart attacks. So your metabolic condition matters. The biggest metabolic condition I found was prediabetes.

I can walk into the room and tell which patient has fatty liver and visceral fat—and therefore is metabolically abnormal and likely has high insulin levels.

What I often call “leaky gut”—more precisely, intestinal permeability—also plays a role, because inflammation from the gut is first processed in the liver.

You can be inflamed because of your lifestyle. Generally speaking, you’re inflamed because you’re nutritionally insufficient, so you can’t handle even normal stresses, and you develop inflammatory stress responses.

I’ve evolved to include toxicity workups as part of my plans, and I’ve mapped out the biochemical pathways by which toxicity creates atherosclerosis and inflammation in the body. So if you’re heavy-metal toxic, if you have a lot of mycotoxins from mold, if you have a lot of glyphosate, other herbicides and pesticides, plastics, BPA, and phthalates in your body—they don’t belong there. You didn’t evolve with them. Evolution did not include them. Your body’s chemistry—this is common sense, but we don’t want to accept it because we’re so used to this Western lifestyle—was not designed for those chemicals. They’re not supposed to be in your body, and you do not have the mechanisms to cope with them.

The next cause of small, dense LDL is omega-6. If you eat a lot of vegetable oils, it’s almost guaranteed that those oils enter normal LDL, displace cholesterol, and take up space. Now you’ve created small, dense LDL: cholesterol is gone and replaced by omega-6. Omega-6 is pro-inflammatory. That’s why none of my patients eat vegetable oils.

The most compelling case for me for being on a LCHF diet is the fact that multiple independant medical practicioners and researches, in various fields of expertise, have remarkably consistent experiences, theories, and approaches to treating chronic inflammation and improving metabolic health. It makes such a strong case.