There are more benefits to a low-carbohydrate diet than mere weight loss, as a new study shows a low-carbohydrate diet is just as effective as the weight loss drug orlistat, which is the active ingredient in Alli and Xenical. The drug is used to help the overweight and obese lose weight, however, following a low-carb diet also results in lowers blood pressure to a healthy level.

Researcher William S. Yancy, Jr., MD, an associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University Medical Centre in a news release said, while weight loss was expected to be considerable with both therapies, what was surprising was that blood pressure was seen to improve much more on a low-carbohydrate diet than with orlistat. This means, those with high blood pressure and a weight loss problem would be better off going a low-carbohydrate than taking weight loss medication.

For the study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, 146 obese or overweight adults, with some also having chronic health problems like high blood pressure or diabetes, were randomly divided into two groups.

The first group followed a low-carbohydrate, ketogenic diet comprising of less than 20 grams of carbohydrates per day. The second group were given orlistat, the weight loss drug thrice a day, including advice to follow a low-fat diet of less than 30% of daily calories from fat) over 48 weeks of group meetings.

Weight loss results were similar for both groups, with the low-carb diet group losing 9.5% of their body weight, while the orlistat group lost 8.5% on average, with both methods not significantly different in cholesterol and glucose levels improvement.

However, researchers on looking for changes in blood pressure found nearly half of the low-carbohydrate group decreased or discontinued their blood pressure medication during the study, in comparison to only 21% of the orlistat group.

Overall, systolic (the top number in a blood pressure reading) dropped 5.9 points among the low-carb diet group, compared to a 1.5 points increase in the orlistat group.

According to researchers, typically weight loss results in a healthy reduction in blood pressure, however, the fact that low-carbohydrate diet also lowers blood pressure merits further study.