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Will a Low-Carb Diet Lower Your Mood?

Oh, my, the science reporters are at it again. A new study was published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine about diets and mood. Basically what happened over the course of a year was that both the low-carb and low-fat groups had modest elevation of mood over the first 8 weeks. The low-fat group on average sustained the elevated mood, where the low-carb group, on average, returned to the mood they had at the beginning. From this we get headlines such as "Low-Fat Diet Makes People Less Angry Than Low-Carb, Study Says" (neither diet "makes you angry"), "Low carb dieters more grumpy" (no more grumpy than they started out!) and even "Low carb diet may land you in depression" (oh, puh-lease). As I explained to Courtney Hutchinson, reporter for ABC News, many many people have reported improvements in mood in the long-term while following a low-carb way of eating. So, how can we explain this result? There are a few possibilities which occur to me: - The study limited calories in both groups. We know from previous research and experience that limiting calories is not needed to lose weight on a low-carb diet. One of the positive aspects of low-carb eating is that people are able to follow their natural appetites once the carb cravings are elminiated by low-carb eating. Could it be that limiting both carbs and calories is a problem? - We aren't told what people were eating before the study started, or at any point in the study. The "low fat" group was eating 45% carbohydrate, which is lower than usual for a low-fat diet. This probably was a reduction in the amount of carbohydrate the participants were eating. So people that would benefit from a mild carbohydrate reduction could have benefited from this probably unintended effect. - The diet stayed very low in carbs throughout the year. One of the strengths of diets such as the Atkins Diet is that they help people zero in on the best amount of carbohydrate for that individual. 40 grams of carbohydrate is less than optimal for many people over the long-term. Of course, we don't know what the reason was for the difference in the groups in this study, which the researchers admit in their paper. They speculate that low-carb eating is too much of a change from the "normal Western diet". What do you think? Answer in the comments below. Photo: Dimitri Vervitsiotis/Getty Images Related Resources: Insulin Levels Show Who May Benefit from Carb-Cutting Different Diets for Different Bodies Popular Low-Carb Diet Plans Will a Low-Carb Diet Lower Your Mood? originally appeared on About.com Low Carb Diets on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 22:59:33.Permalink | Comment | Email this
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