Have just come across this negative Atkins article:

http://www.weightlossresources.co.u...ical_report.htm

Medical Director's Report on the Atkins Diet
Obesity expert, Dr Jeremy Sims takes a closer look at recent studies on the Atkins Diet, and the health risks associated with Atkins

Atkins - The Unhealthy Choice
Dr Jeremy Sims MB BS MSc MRCGP FRIPH FRSH PGDipHI DipN&H MRNT CCCReg, WLR Medical Director


There's no getting away from it. The big craze in the slimming world remains the Atkins Diet.

Low-carbohydrate, high-fat equals weight loss according to the Atkins' philosophy. Flying in the face of all medical recommendations for healthy eating. And yes, there are many quick to tell you of their success in following this quirky "regime". Eating what you like (and as much as you like), as long as it hasn't the slightest whiff of starch.

And this summer's hype has been further fuelled, like petrol on the proverbial BBQ (high fat, of course), by two new studies reported in that epitome of medical greatness, the New England Journal of Medicine.

The big questions remain, however. How reliable are these studies? Is the Atkins diet a suitable option to ensure your long-term health? And are there any specific health risks? More on the latter shortly.

Meanwhile. Let's take a closer look at those two studies supporting Atkins. As a discerning consumer of health information, you need to adopt a slight (if not downright overt) scepticism for any new research. That's not to say that you should dismiss every piece of health news with a contemptuous sneer. What it means is that you need to ask yourself some important questions:

Is the information reliable? - who produced it and why?
Is it unbiased?
Is it relevant to me?

So, how do the two studies shape up? To be honest, not brilliantly.

In both studies, middle-aged obese men and women were randomly assigned to consume either a very low-carbohydrate diet (as Atkins advocates), with no calorie restrictions, or a low-fat diet that limited the total amount of calories consumed per day.

In one of the studies, during the first three months, those assigned to the Atkins diet lost an average of 6.8% of their body weight, compared with a 2.7% loss in the low-fat diet group. Similar results were seen after 6 months. But, and this is very important, after 12 months participants in both groups had regained a portion of the weight they had lost, and while the total amount of weight loss was marginally greater in the Atkins group, the difference was no longer statistically significant.

In the other study, which lasted only 6 months, the average amount of weight loss was significantly greater in the low-carbohydrate group than in the low-fat group (12.8 vs. 4.2 pounds). In other words, Atkins may outperform in the very short-term, most probably due to depletion of body glucose stores, water and muscle protein, but it is not a diet to live on for the rest of your life - it has no long-term advantages over other weight loss programmes.

But are these results reliable any way? Not entirely it would seem. Especially when you consider that they are weakened by the high dropout rate (over 40%) and by the fact that some participants adhered poorly to the dietary recommendations.

And now there’s even more bad news for the Atkins aficionados. Despite the apparent, albeit small, benefits of a low-carbohydrate diet for people who have difficulty losing weight, it is not at all without risk. An earlier study has already highlighted the fact that long-term carbohydrate restriction can increase the risk of osteoporosis, with attendant risks of bone fractures, spinal collapse and nerve damage. What-is-more, although in a few studies it has been shown to improve certain cardiac risk factors, a low-carbohydrate diet limits the intake of a wide range of plant-derived chemicals, such as flavonoids, carotenoids, and antioxidants, that may help prevent heart disease, cancer, and other disorders. Rather cancelling out any claimed benefits, wouldn't you say?

These concerns about the health implications are elevated by the latest news that those following the Atkins diet have a far greater risk of developing kidney stones - as much as double the risk. Indeed, evidence shows that since the craze took hold there has been an incredibly sharp rise in the incidence of this disorder, particularly amongst young women, in whom it is usually relatively rare.

Which really does bring us to the bottom line. The evidence for the Atkins diet is still thin.

What can be said is that in the short-term it may indeed aid weight loss. But, let's face it, any fad diet can claim this - especially if you can stick at it without losing motivation. What is far more important is that any changes in your eating habits for weight loss must be agreeable with long-term health, and that the loss in body weight and the subsequent maintenance at a healthier weight are sustainable for life. The growing evidence is that the Atkins diet is unable to support either of these aims.

Therefore, you need to ask yourself, in all honesty, which would I rather be? Crippled by the physical side-effects of the Atkins diet in five, ten, twenty years time, for the sake of a few more pounds weight loss in the short-term. Or slim, vibrant and physically fit in future life - the results you can expect from well-balanced and healthy lifestyle changes - the sort that don't restrict fruit and veg for instance.

The choice is entirely yours. But I know which I would choose.


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Obviously an extremely anti-low carb article, but not at all surprised as this site (for which you have to pay a subscription to use) is an advocate of a low-fat, low-cal regime and is against low carb 'diets' (see: http://www.weightlossresources.co.u...lowcarbdiet.htm).


An earlier study has already highlighted the fact that long-term carbohydrate restriction can increase the risk of osteoporosis, with attendant risks of bone fractures, spinal collapse and nerve damage.
Hmmmmmm - what study was that then?? Unfortunately no references given.

These concerns about the health implications are elevated by the latest news that those following the Atkins diet have a far greater risk of developing kidney stones - as much as double the risk. Indeed, evidence shows that since the craze took hold there has been an incredibly sharp rise in the incidence of this disorder, particularly amongst young women, in whom it is usually relatively rare.
Anyone heard anything about this???


IMO this site is obviously applying scare tactics in order to solicit new customers

This also goes to show that all those cryptic degrees and titles after one's name like Jeremy's excessively lists add up to ZILCH if one is, first and foremost, an industry whore, charlatan or just plain biased.

What's funny is how he counsels folks to be skeptical of "new research", for us to question whether it's unbiased/reliable/relevant... yet, these same kooks demanded us to take as gospel the very minimal studies that they insisted to force the 1st World in the 80's to dive into the low-fat paradigm. Maybe they're subconsciouly admitting that THIS time around, folks need to be more careful, since low fat dieting's not the panacea it was ushered in as.

Funny too, is with all those professional titles to his name, he can't even figure out how to punctuate: "the Atkins' philosophy" should have no possessive apostrophe (ok, ok, a minor quibble, but work with me here, heh-heh... this guy boasts of being Mr. Big, so I've raised the bar in my standards of critique only to find he falls flat on the ground).

A further hypocrisy of his "Is the information reliable? - who produced it and why?" supposed litmus test, I echo Demi's observation that Jeremy himself fails this self-imposed standard by curiously refusing to cite references to a number of supposed studies he indirectly refers to. Not a good start to his Brave New Standards.

That he can't even accurately cite the A-B-C's of the Atkins Diet's guidelines:

"Eating what you like (and as much as you like), as long as it hasn't the slightest whiff of starch"

...draws into further question his ability to even recite common information. If he can't even accurately recite what it is that he's criticizing, how can we trust much of anything he spouts off? It does, however, help expose how he can similarly distort the results of other studies.
I vaguely recall, months ago, we came, saw and mostly laughed past the kidney stone red herring study. Without rehasing it in full, there are too many variables affecting what could cause kidney stones, and nobody's truly pinned it on low carb dieting. Period.

He touts long term health and long-term sustainability issues, and then leaps to claim:

"The growing evidence is that the Atkins diet is unable to support either of these aims"

One wonders what growing evidence he refers to. While politicians may temporarily get away with lies to the public simply by stating and restating them, e.g. Iraq's teeming with WMD's just outside Baghdad while buying uranium from South Africa, we should instead hold these certified health industry mouthpieces to higher scrutiny.

He then really presses his luck in thinking he's created an unbroken chain of logic by employing a final, unfounded scare tactic:

"Crippled by the physical side-effects of the Atkins diet in five... years for the sake of a few more pounds weight loss in the short-term"

... his own house of ill-constructed cards come tumbling down under his own overstressing them. I'd love for the five-year Maintenance Phase graduates to deluge this quack with their own letters of how they lost a heck of a lot more than just a few short term pounds, kept it off *more* than five years, and are fitter and healthier than they've ever been.

Granted, more unbiased research will better help define all this and extend even further the evidence that this diet heals rather than harms, but his manipulative writing style attempts to close the door to even that, for all the wrong reasons.

Surgeons can be sued for malpractice against a single patient... tis a shame Jeremy can't have some of those abused titles stripped for a dereliction of professional duty. The Court of World Opinion at large, however, will render a verdict... maybe one reason these goons are working overtime is to save up for the early retirement they'll be faced after they're run out on a rail.... "getta rope" says I!

I'll refer back to this later...



I am sick of hearing that "no longer statistically significant" crap...Granted, the pound difference was very little...But, because both groups lost so little, the percentage difference in weight was about 60% [if I remember correctly.] Hardly insignificant.



Let me give a personal comparison. I've done numerous Low-Fat/Low-Calorie diets over the years...Every time, I would lose for a short while (a few weeks/months) and then lose nothing for weeks or even months. Worse, I might even start gaining the weight back, despite not changing my Caloric or Fat intake. I have been on Atkins for over 9 months now. I have lost weight the whole time. My weight loss has not stopped [for more than a week] and sure as hell has not gone back up.



Yet, he uses this self-admitted unreliable data to conclude that Atkins is no more effective than a LF Diet ???



BULLSHIT !!! As long as they are getting enough Calcium, that should not be a problem.



Again, he does not know what he's talking about... because Atkins focuses on the most antioxidant-rich carb sources such as berries, persons on Atkins Maintainance should be getting an excess of antioxidants, etc...

Most-Effective Fruit-Vegetable Sources of Antioxidants:

1) Blueberries*
2) Blackberries*
3) Tomatoes*
4) Prunes***
5) Oranges*
6) Red Grapes**
7) Cherries*
8) Kiwifruit**

Most Potent LDL-Reducing Fruits-Vegetables:

1) Blackberries*
2) Raspberries*
3) Sweet Cherries*
4) Blueberries*
5) Strawberries*

1/2 cup of Blueberries has 1,600 ORACs of Antioxidants, about the same as 5 servings/day of most other fruits and vegetables. To recap, 5 of the 8 most potent sources of Antioxidants are listed as "Eat Regularly" in
AFL...including the Top 3 most potent sources of Antioxidants: Blueberries, Blackberries, and Tomatoes. AFL lists all 5 of the Top 5 most potent LDL-Inhibitory/Reducing Fruits and Vegetables...as "Eat Regularly."



That is an outright lie. Which would you rather be for the rest of your life: On a LF/HC diet and Hungry all the time or on a HF/LC diet and never hungry ??? I know my answer.



I think the more appropriate question would be:

Therefore, you need to ask yourself, in all honesty, which would I rather be? A 400/500 pound Diabetic w. Hi-Blood Pressure and Hi-Cholesterol/Triglycerides, because I followed a "balanced" LF diet in five, ten, twenty years time, for the sake of eating "normal." Or slim, vibrant and physically fit in future life - the results you can expect from Atkins - the sort that don't restrict healthy fats and for instance.

Despite what he claims about LF Diets not restricting fruits...it's not true. Avocados are fruits...yet, they have 72% of your daily limit of Fat [on a LF Diet]...despite the fact it is healthy Monounsaturated Fat. Fresh Coconut fares even worse. One medium Coconut has 205% of your daily limit of Fat and 590% of your daily limit of Saturated Fat. That, in effect makes Coconut [a fruit] a forbidden fruit on a LF Diet. Even 1 cup of Coconut exceeds the daily limit of Saturated Fat on a LF Diet.

I stopped reading the article as soon as I read the bit about missing out on important plant flavenoids. Yeah, for some reason, there are NO flavenoids in the huge handfuls of vegetables and berries I eat. If you bash the plan without having read the book, your opinion is null and void to me - I don't care if you portray yourself as an expert.

Do medical doctors in Britain not get the MD, or is this guy's string of alphabet soup an attempt to disguise the fact that he's no more a "real doctor" than is Dr. Science ? "How does Dr. Science know the secrets of the universe? He has a Masters Degree ... in Science!"

I don't call the end of my frequent migraines a "small" benefit.

grr
S

Nor I the disappearance of my diverticulitis symptoms....and no more excema!

Granted those are likely related to food allergy issues (wheat the likely culprit)....but would I have found out if not for LCing. Prolly not

You can add to that...that I no longer have Acid Reflux [which I had for about 6-7 years.] I also sleep normal hours now. I used to go to schedule all my classes for night...because I slept during the day.

You are right...that stopped as well....but I won't bore you with all my belly troubles...that are troubles no more

Define "restrict". You can get an awful lot of antioxidant and flavanoid-rich veggies and fruits for 60 grams of carb per day (maintainance levels of low carb) or less than that even, especially given that those fruits and veggies that are highest in those substances also tend to be the lowest in carbs and GI. As a matter of course, I'd wager that most low carbers eat more servings of fruit and veggies than your average low fat dieter who is spending all their calories on Snackwells, fat-free pretzels, Twizzlers and the like. I've seen what the low fat crowd in my office eats on a regular basis and baby, it's not veggies or even fruit for that matter! Someday, I'd really love to be on a talk show and show people physically how many servings of fruits and veggies you could eat and still stay under 60 grams of carb per day by having it all laid out on a table plate by plate.
I have to wonder what physical side effects he refers to that are going to leave me crippled in the future? Could it be my now normal blood pressure? Hmmm...I've never heard of normal blood pressure crippling someone. Maybe it's my now normal blood sugars? Nah...couldn't be that either or the entire non-diabetic population would be keeling over en masse.
Maybe I'll injure myself because I have so much more energy now than I did on that high carb low fat junk. That's it!!

Shoot! I love to see that myself Hey, here's an idea....put those 60g out on your table and take a pic and post it!! That would sure get passed around to various LC sites.

Now, you're giving me ideas...Unfortunately, I probably couldn't find all of these fruits and vegetables in the local Grochery Stores. From Atkins for Life:

#1 Eat Regularly (Fruits) --

Apple; Blackberries; Blueberries; Cherries; Cranberries; Grapefruit; Grapefruit Juice, Unsweetened; Orange; Peach; Pear; Plum; Raspberries; Strawberries; Tangerine

Total Net Carbs for 1 serving of Each: 101g (25g Fiber)

#1 Eat Regularly (Vegetables) --

Artichokes; Asparagus; Bamboo Shoots; String or Green Beans; Bok Choy; Broccoli; Broccoli Rabe; Brussel Sprouts; Butter Beans; Cabbage; Cauliflower; Celeraic; Celery; Chard; Chayote; Collards; Cucumber; Dandelion Greens; Eggplant; Endive; Fennel; Jicama; Kale; Kohlrabi; Lettuce; Baby Lima Beans; Mushrooms; Mustard Greens; Okra; Onion; Snow Peas; Peppers; Radishes; Rutabaga; Sauerkraut; Spinach; Zucchini Squash; Tomato; Turnip Greens; Water Chestnuts

Total Net Carbs for 1 serving of Each*: 80g (46g Fiber)

*I could not find Bok Choy, Broccoli Rabe, Butter Beans, Celeraic, and Water Chestnuts in Fitday's Database.

I didnt read all of the posts here. This guy didnt even bother to read the book obviously, this just annoys me....

I for one dont bother with any of the studies, pro Atkins or against it. I am a big skeptic of all funded research. I go for common wisdom rather than professional rantings.
Biggest question is can you stick to a plan for life? There is no conflicting opinion on the benefits of exercise, the limiting of processed foods, eating until satisfied not full, eating everything in moderation and eating a good breakfast. If you stick to the things that are not controversial, that all people can agree upon you dont have to get upset about diverging well funded opinions! We can all get along in our life changes. I think that the biggest problem is we look at the differences between the low carb and low calorie approach, when they do have much in common. If we look to those common principles there will be no reason to get upset.

Fairchild, while I sympathize with your general wariness that not all published research is necessarily valid (especially when the spin doctors get a hold of the material) on the other hand..

Speaking just for my personal experiences, one critical difference for me between low calorie and low carb is that one of the two violates your own principle of even being able to eat until satisfied... I can't do that on random-food low-calorie dieting (nor low-fat-low-calorie dieting), where I can easily do that on low carb eating. Apparently I'm not the only one who observed the problem of generic low-calorie dieting, as we see by a thread right on our own board here about failure-prone Weight Watcher's dieting:

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=136308

My best fat loss results are after I've eaten three meals a day; when I eat just two, my metab slows down, and I frequently stall. Countless others mention this too, in greater detail. So much for the Common Wisdom of low-calorie eating being the cure for all. A calorie is just a calorie in a bunson burner in a clinical lab, but the human body is a marvelously more complicated instrument in how we process those varying caloric sources via our varying digestive pathways and nutritional biochemistry. Why don't you agree?

Also, the "Common Wisdom" of applying Cause and Effect is what misled (in another recent post) a British actress to wrongly associate her recent kidney infection with low carb dieting (see the post for the great posts easily explaining why it was likely due to causes other than low carb dieting - she wasn't even doing the Atkins Diet correctly anyhow).

It's also "common wisdom" by some that "bread's been around since Day One and therefore wholesome" (forgetting that what people at as bread back then isn't overprocessed white Wonder Bread)

It was also Common Wisdom for quite a long time that the sun revolved around the earth. The only way we moved past that was to question Common Wisdom and conduct studies, theorize and question that Common Wisdom.

The term Common Wisdom, I think, is somewhat even of a misnomer. What's Common Wisdom for one group of people/culture/region/era is not such for another group.

Again, while I sympathize with your rightly pointing out that one shouldn't take as gospel whatever latest "study" supposedly claims, on the other hand, we do need to learn more and not rely solely on the subjective limits and variations of past wisdom - and which past era does one refer to... William Banting's overall latter-19th century era had it wrong, although his published empircal research being a light shining forth against it, just as Dr. Atkins' latter-20th century book in his era.

Perhaps with enough peer-reviewed studies (these *are* important to do, Fairchild... if enough of them are properly done, it will help The Cause by providing more definitive information, longer-term clinical results tracking, etc.) combined with successful healthy low carb dieters shouting at the rooftops of their own empiracal research, there will become a non-controversial "core" of "common wisdom" about low carbing someday soon, with the "controversial" part merely being in the variations within the low carb WOE.