We've been conditioned to believe that eating a diet that's in high fat isn't a good thing since eating a lot of fat can lead to unhealthy cholesterol levels. However, if we eat the right type of fats it can lead to excellent benefits and an improvement in health.

We learn in the book the Body Reboot that dietary fat is the cornerstone of the ketogenic diet. In fact, it's the high fat and low carb intake that makes the diet effective while keeping your body in ketosis. During ketosis, the body uses ketones for fuel by burning through fat.

Recently a study was done on obese premenopausal women. They ate a high-fat diet for 16 weeks and the results are very promising for the future improvement in cardiovascular health!

Objective
Inflammation, insulin resistance and vascular dysfunction characterize obesity and predict development of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Although women experience CVD events at an older age, vascular dysfunction is evident 10 years prior to coronary artery disease. Questions remain whether replacing SFA entirely with MUFA or PUFA is the optimal approach for cardiometabolic benefits. This study tested the hypotheses that: a) body composition, inflammation and vascular function would improve with a high fat diet (HFD) when type of fat is balanced as 1/3 SFA, 1/3 MUFA and 1/3 PUFA; and b) body composition, inflammation and vascular function would improve more when balanced HFD is supplemented with 18C fatty acids, in proportion to the degree of 18C unsaturation.

Methods
Obese premenopausal women were stabilized on balanced HFD and randomized to consume 9 g/d of encapsulated stearate (18:0), oleate (18:1), linoleate (18:2) or placebo.

Results
Significant improvements occurred in fat oxidation rate (↑6%), body composition (%fat: ↓2.5 ± 2.1%; %lean: ↑2.5 ± 2.1%), inflammation (↓ IL-1α, IL-1β, 1L-12, Il-17, IFNγ, TNFα, TNFβ) and vascular function (↓BP, ↓PAI-1, ↑tPA activity). When compared to HFD+placebo, HFD+stearate had the greatest effect on reducing IFNγ (↓74%) and HFD+linoleate had the greatest effect on reducing PAI-1 (↓31%).

Conclusions
Balancing the type of dietary fat consumed (SFA/MUFA/PUFA) is a feasible strategy to positively affect markers of CVD risk. Moreover, reductions in inflammatory molecules involved in vascular function might be enhanced when intake of certain 18C fatty acids is supplemented. Long term effects need to be determined for this approach.

For 16 weeks these women consumed a balanced high fat diet and the researchers discovered that this diet improved their body composition, inflammation, and vascular function parameters. In other words, eating a high diet can help predict the development of cardiovascular disease, and you can do that by implementing a low carb high-fat diet.

At the time of writing this article, there are a few free copies left of the Body Reboot Book. Head on over to this page and see if there are any left now. If you're willing to cover the cost to ship it to you… the book is 100% free (we normally sell it for $29.95).

For more on this insightful study head to US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health.