In light of the “Freshman 15,” I have been looking into different types of diets and a type of diet I have come across several times is the Low Carb diet. Obviously with a low carb diet, you eat a significant amount less of carbs, but what do you replace them with? Usually while on this type of diet, carbs are replaced with proteins and lot of veggies. But what can be some issues regarding the low carb diet? When starting a new diet, your body will often take some time to get used to it. MD Stephen Sondike said “”Any time you make a fundamental change in your diet your body is going to react — and when it does you are bound to experience certain symptoms or problems.”

Regarding the low carb diet, a lot of time what can occur when cutting down on carbs is constipation. The reason this is, is because a lot of fiber comes from high carb food such as white bread and pasta, so removing these from your diet can throw your body into a tizzy. But a study found that if you eat 5 servings of low carb veggies a day, your bowel system should remain the same and reduce your chance of constipation. This seems like a pretty easy fix to a simple problem, but are there other health risks involved in this type of diet?

Another concern with the low carb diet is dehydration. The reason this becomes a factor is because eating a low amount of carbs begins a fat burning process called “dietary ketosis.” Because a large amount of ketones are being produced, it can cause dehydration easily. So this seems to be a problem with another easy fix: drink more water!

Also drinking more water can help elevate any bowel problems. Ketones can also cause bad breath, which you may think you can just brush or floss away, but this is not the case in these terms. Here, your bad breath is being caused by metabolic changes, so brushing your teeth more will not help. Drinking water can help this issue because it will dilute the ketones.

So overall, it does not seem like there are any large concerns with the low carb diet. But I decided to do more research and came to find that there are some more and higher risk concerns that everyone needs to take into consideration before starting this diet. One concern is getting enough folic acid, a B vitamin critical to everyone, but especially pregnant women says NYU nutritionist Samantha Heller. Folic Acid is critical in controlling homocysteine (which is linked to heart disease). So if you are already at risk for cardiovascular diseases, dropping your folic acid could cause serious health concerns. There has also be evidence that a low carb diet can take its toll on calcium levels (but that is more of a concern for in the long run).

Another major health risk of the low carb diet is the higher likely hood of osteoporosis and kidney stones. Since a low carb diet usually causes people do also go on a high protein diet, this can cause you to urinate more calcium than normal which could cause osteoporosis and kidney stones. So overall, this type of diet may be healthy for some people but unhealthy for others, especially if they have previous health issues or women who are or considering getting pregnant. Before starting a diet like this, you should talk to your doctor and nutritionist and see if they believe it is healthy for you. You also cannot go into this diet thinking you are going to lose weight right away or lose a very large amount of weight. Diets work differently for everyone so just because it works for one person does not mean it will work for you.

While doing research for this blog, I began to wonder if reverse causation could have any play in this diet. I don’t believe reverse causation could have any play in this because that would be saying that you are losing weight, therefore you must be eating less carbs and this is by no means correct. People lose weight in all different ways and on all different diets. So reverse causation could play no part in this. Also, when on a low carb diet, there is a possibility for false positives. While on this diet, you may believe that you are losing weight strictly because you are eating less carbs, but you could be losing weight for other reasons too. Maybe for example, you started to go to the gym more often resulting in you losing more weight. Because of things such as this, the results from the studies could be flawed. Or maybe because you are eating less carbs, you are eating less overall which could lead to your weight loss. So there are chances for a false positive in this type of diet.