Eating this much protein can be bad for your heart health

Consuming more than 22% of daily calories through proteins may increase the risk of atherosclerosis and even worsen the condition, according to a studyTrusted Source completed at the University of Pittsburgh and published today in the journal Nature Metabolism.

To reach their conclusions, the researchers used human trials along with experiments involving mice and cells in Petri dishes. The human studies had a total of 23 participants.

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Researchers used two different study set-ups for the human studies. Both involved asking participants to have two liquid meals – one with standard protein and one with high protein – about one to two weeks apart.

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The first set-up involved 14 participants. The standard meal had 10% of total energy as protein, 17% as fat, and 73% as carbohydrates. The high protein meal consisted of 50% of energy from protein, 17% as fat, and 33% carbohydrates.

The second setup involved nine participants and was designed to mimic a “real-world” scenario. In this setup, the standard meal was representative of a person’s average protein intake and had 15% of total energy as protein, 35% as fat, and 50% as carbohydrates. The high protein meal represented the upper quartile of protein intake and consisted of 22% of energy from protein, 30% as fat, and 48% carbohydrates.

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The scientists noted that leucine is an amino acid that contributes to the development and worsening of atherosclerosis. They found that higher dietary protein intake, specifically intake of more than 25 grams of protein per meal or 22% of daily energy requirements, led to higher leucine levels that activated a specific pathway in immune cells that is associated with atherosclerosis.

The second part of the study involved mice.

The researchers first created diets for the mice with graded protein contents that mimicked the average (15%) and high (22%) protein intake for a typical adult living in the United States.

They reported similar results to the human studies.

They added that the same pathway was activated in mice receiving more than 25 grams of protein per meal, or 22% of total energy intake, and that these mice were also more likely to promote atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease.

The researchers conclude that high protein intake can contribute to atherogenesis.

The authors suggest that people approach high protein diets cautiously and that dietary guidelines are revised accordingly.

The authors note the recommendation from several organizations is that protein intake be about 11% of daily energy requirements to maintain nitrogen balance.

“High protein diets are very popular with the public, used for weight loss, bodybuilding, and an overall healthy lifestyle. For many years, reports in the research world using experiments in animal models showed that high protein diets can increase cardiovascular disease (also called atherosclerosis or hardening of the heart arteries), but no one knew why,” said Dr. Babak Razani, a professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and one of the authors of the study. “In our previous 2020 paperTrusted Source, we used mouse models to define the mechanism for this by showing that protein ingestion activates macrophages, an immune cell that is a key driver of atherosclerosis, and we identified an important protein in the macrophages called mTOR that mediates this process.”

“Now, in the current study, we pin down the reasons why high protein diets are risky for our heart arteries,” Razani told Medical News Today. “First, we did several studies in humans to demonstrate that when people eat higher amounts of protein, our macrophages and the mTOR pathway get activated just like we found in animal models. Then, we identified, for the first time ever, the role of leucine – an amino acid highly enriched in animal-based proteins – as the driving force of atherosclerosis risk. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins and there are 20 of them that make up any protein we ingest. But it is only leucine that is the bad actor in worsening the heart artery disease. We determined that eating meals containing about 22 percent kilocalories of protein is the threshold at which the protein and its leucine elevate risk.”