Is a keto diet sustainable for the long term. I'm Dr. Brett sure the medical director at diet doctor calm and this is a question we get a lot and a lot of people are probably confused about this because depending on who you talk to, some people start right away with putting up a blog against a very low carb or keto diet saying ah is not sustainable. Nobody can stick with it. But usually those are people who don't have a whole lot of experience with it. If you've been on the diet doctor website, you've likely seen hundreds of examples of people who who have success stories on a ketogenic diet for not just one year or two years, but multiple years. And we have a few that have been on it for a decade. And we have a number of clinicians giving their personal experience of using keto diets for 510, even more 20 years with Dr. Westman. So there's lots of anecdotal experience of people being able to maintain keto diet long term, but what about the evidence? What does the evidence show, because that's what we really want a lot of people really need to grab on to. Now when you evaluate evidence, you know, everything has sort of this bell curve, usually right? There are people on either end of the spectrum. And then there's the middle ground. So the people who who can give personal experience have been on a keto diet successfully for 10 years. They're on the end of the spectrum, because they were earlier adopters, they were able to commit to it when there weren't a lot of resources available. But now there are so many more resources available that more people can stick to a keto diet easier. And this is the point I'm getting to verta Health just recently published their three and a half year data when they started people on their keto diet with their program to treat diabetes. And they followed them for two years. Now the study was originally a two year study, but at the end of that they offered people to continue up to a five year study. So the five year data will come out in 2022. But right now we have the three and a half year data. So just as a recap, at two years, they had 74% compliance with their program so 74% of the people who started stayed with
Have it two years, at three and a half years, it went down to 64%. But still 64% at three and a half years for dietary trial is really good. And here's the thing, some people may hear that 64% and say, that's not that great. I mean, I'd expect 90% of this thing was so perfect. But dietary adherence is so difficult in clinical trials, or even in observational trials, really. So it's important to have some sort of a reference. Now, there are, you know, there's a low fat low carb adherence trial at one year showing 60% adherence, the low fat group, there's a
well publicized vegan trial to treat diabetes that was about one and a half years, it was 1.4 years. And they said 51% were compliance in that in their data. So, you know, putting things into perspective, any dietary compliance tends to be challenging. But this one, three and a half years for this study 64% compliance, that's pretty good. That's pretty good, and is starting to show that we can't dismiss a keto diet or low carb diet is saying, it's difficult to maintain, I mean that that conversation has to disappear. Now, the same is true of Oh, it's easy. Everybody can stay with it. That's not true, either. Right? Depending on people's preferences, some people have a hard time eating that much fat, either psychologically or physically.
Some people just miss their carbs so much that they ended up going back to a higher carb diet. So again, it's that bell curve of where people stand. But absolutely the discussion of it's too hard. Forget, it is not long term, the the verta Health trials and all the clinical experience, we have an anecdotal experience on diet doctor shows that that's not the case. But again, it may not be the right diet for everybody. So if you're interested in trying it, we have a two week keto challenge you can try with five weeks keto with Christie, you can try we even have a 10 week weight loss for good course we have all these different options for you how to get started, if it's something that you think is right for you, and then you can decide for yourself whether this is sustainable for the long term, rather than somebody telling you that it is or it isn't. Alright, thanks a lot, everybody. Hope this was helpful. If it was click subscribe down below. So you'll get all our updates on our news stories, and all our other YouTube features like our podcasts, and our cooking demonstrations, and so much more. Have a great day. Take care.
