A quantitative, retrospective inquiry of the impact of a provider-guided low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet on adults in a wellness clinic setting

Aims: Despite the critical status of obesity as an epidemic chronic illness in the United States contributing toward diabetic and cardiovascular disease as well as early preventable death, treatment approaches in primary care remain in conflict; providers lack evidence-based guidelines toward impactful disease management, particularly from dietary approaches. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of initiation of a 5-10% low-carbohydrate, 75-85% high-fat diet on specific clinical indicators of obesity, a metabolic disease associated with increased morbidity and mortality, at baseline and six months in an adult population. Materials and methods: Utilizing a retrospective electronic medical record data collection protocol, one hundred patients with obesity in a wellness clinic in the Southwestern United States between 2017 and 2018 prescribed a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet were selected via simple random sampling. Measurements of body mass index, hemoglobin A1C, and lipid levels were extracted at baseline and six months after initiation. Results: Mean differences of each biomarker at baseline and six months were analyzed utilizing paired samples t-testing in SPSS and demonstrated statistically-significant improvement across each category. Body mass index decreased, hemoglobin A1C decreased, and each of three clinically-relevant lipid level measurements moved numerically toward normal-value ranges. Conclusion: Data from this sample of 100 patients with obesity suggest body weight, diabetic, and cardiovascular status improvement from a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet over six months, affording a prescriptive nutrition option for primary care providers to consider prior to or as a complement to pharmacologic management. (C) 2019 Diabetes India. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.