The dangerous condition is called ketoacidosis . It is different from ketosis you get with a low-carb diet.

Ketoacidosis is a potentially fatal condition, which is why the nurse mentioned it. The nurse should also have mentioned that your blood sugar levels would be very high.

There is a lot of information on this topic - try the search function using "ketoacidosis," and you'll get far better and more technically correct answers than mine.

Bottom line - Dr. Atkins refers to the diet-related ketosis as benign dietary ketosis - nothing to worry about.

HTH