I hear alot of people defending Atkins to others. My Question is are there any long term or potential long term effects that could harm us because of what we're eating?

If you look at the program closely, it isn't what we ARE eating, it's all about what we AREN'T eating that sets Atkins apart. I don't eat many frankenfoods, and I don't think natural foods like fresh meat, cheese, butter, healthy oils, veggies and fruit are going to give me health problems. As you read the book and this forum, pay attention to all the health risks/diseases you can leave behind.

Red meat and butter, can that clog our arteries? More or less what I'm looking for is I really want to be heathy and I do think this is the way to go, but growing up my uncle is a veggie head and he has always insisted that red meat clogs arteries, is this true or false? Or is it a matter of how much we consume?

Fat in conjunction with carbs is bad. Pick one or the other. Do you want a low-fat carb laden diet or a fat based diet? I like fat better because it virtually eliminates sugar related disease processes while giving me a wonderful variety of tasty foods to eat-and it lowers my cardiac markers. The carb based diet would be also have to be natural food based-you still have to give up hydrogenated fats, processed sugars and flours , etc or you may end up with health problems like diabetes and heart disease. Personally, I know many people on the low-fat diet and I hate the frankenfoods they end up eating. My dad and cousin both had heart attacks before going low-fat, and even tho they've dropped weight, they continue to battle with high triglycerides and trying to keep HDL at healthly levels. My numbers were in the normal range after only four months! Pick your poison, but I think the answers you are looking for are in the first part of Dr. Atkin's book.

PS
I see by your profile that you've only been to the Atkin's site. You really need to read the book to understand what you are doing.

Red Meat doesn't Clog Arteries...In fact, I'd go so far as to say Red Meat is good for your Heart. Why ? For starters 2g of the 7g of Saturated Fat in a serving of Beef come from Stearic Acid. Stearic Acid Lowers Cholesterol. Another gram comes from Lauric and Capric Acids, which at worst have little to no effect on Cholesterol. 3 oz. of Beef contains 7g of Oleic Acid, the same Cholesterol-Busting fat found in OLIVE OIL. Only 4g comes from Palmitic Acid, which when combined with Hi-TGs, raises Cholesterol. But, there is now some research showing that Myristic Acid [which along with Palmitic Acid is one of the two Cholesterol Raising Fats] mainly raises the light fluffy [beneficial] LDL, not the small dense [damaging] LDL created by Trans-Fats. If Myristic Acid raises the beneficial kind...whose to say that Palmitic Acid doesn't also. Even if the 4g of Palmitic Acid raised your Cholesterol slightly...the 10g of Cholesterol-Lowering Fats would more than undo any damage.

I started reading the book the night before last and i don't know a whole lot about health problems so I thought I would ask the people that do know. Need a little reasurance. I appreciate the input.

check out the review of low-carb diets that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association last Spring. An exhaustive review of all pertinent studies found that "Low-carbohydrate diets had no significant adverse effect on serum lipid, fasting serum glucose, and fasting serum insulin levels, or blood pressure."

even if you do not read the book or take to heart some of the research, think back a minute...

people think today, in this society, we are healthiest because we live longest. they accosiate long life with health. but I completely disagree. I wasn't alive 500 years ago, but I do not think people had the same health problems that we do now. they're complications arose from bacterias on their food. lack of preservation. harder lifestyle.
the human body was not made to lounge around like a cat. but we just might as well be curled up sleeping, some of us, for the amount of sitting that we do.
now for foods, before there was sugar, there was fruits used to sweeten things. honey was also used. before there was sodium nitrate, things were dried and cured with salt. before there was hormones put in chicken to make it grow almost 4 times as fast as normal, poultry and beef used to graze and eat from the land, then man in turn ate them. The ONLY thing unhealthy about eating the meat untended for us to eat is the fact that we ourselves posion it with chemicals. I won't post here and cover that fact up. It is healthier to eat organic meat. And as far as saturated fat and cholestoral is concerned, that is one of the biggest myths of our society.
cholesterol has a purpose. it makes hormones. it lines the nervous system and allows electrical flows. it heals damaged tisses. it feds the eye.
If you look at outside information having nothing to do with atkins or low carb, you will find that there are many doctors who oppose the American Heart Associations diet, especially for children, because it can increase susceptibility to disease. Cholestoral is essential to a long term immune system.
I could go on and on and on about fat, low-fat, cholest., grains, starch, and related topics, but the only long term effect a person on atkins should be aware of is the fact that a lot of the meat that he is eating may be very high in chemicals. this is a valid concern and most people do not realize it. The diet itself is the healthiest diet in exsistance if that answers your question, especially since it is rich in the omega 3 and 6 fatty acids.

If you read this article entitled Guts and Grease_ The Diet of the Native American, you will see how great this diet is and you will see a long term results from eating a majority of meat and vegetables. You can read about it at
http://www.westonaprice.org?traditi..._americans.html It also presents the plight that the Native Americans faced after altering their diet, thanks to the US government. Diabetes, which was once non-existant, became commonplace among this former hunter/gatherer culture. If nothing else, read the last subject on this research paper.

Let's see, I eat meat, eggs, mushrooms turnips and greens, peppers ( all the diferent colors ), broccoli, asparagus, squash, cauliflower, cukes, tomatoes,strawberries, raspberries, butter, olive oil salad dressings, low carb breads, pastas and cereals-just to name a few. I once had hypoglycemic symptoms which have vanished. These symptoms are symptoms of pre-diabetes. Diabetes is what I would develop if I continued on a high carb diet, if you really want to discuss long term results. In the mean time I have blood glucose, cholesterol and triglyceride readings that are perfect-not borderline but perfect. My diet isn't as extreme as the Native American's in comparison to modern, low carb eating but By reading about this culture's diet, I think there is plenty of evidence that this diet can be done on a long term basis with no adverse effects.

Black57

P.S. I have another article where a doctor amits that his family had consumed a low carb diet for 40 years. That is long term.

Black57

While I agree that longevity may not be a good indicator of overall health, I always have to laugh when I see this argument. It simply fails the most basic test of logic. If you go back 500 years you'll find that life expectancy was something like 40 years, which, for one thing, means that most people did not live long enough to experience many of the health problems that plague us today. Sure, even today, there are some cases of heart disease or stroke or cancer that show up relatively early in life. But the incidence of those problems is much greater at ages that were rarely reached prior to the last few hundred years. If most people don't live long enough to suffer from heart disease, you're not going to see much heart disease, whatever the cause.

The diet of medieval or renaissance man may have been healthier than today's Western diet (all things considered, I rather doubt it), but the absence of heart disease, et al doesn't prove it.

To see the fallacy of this argument in a clear light, consider an equally ridiculous hypothesis: Relatively few people died in traffic accidents 500 years ago, therefore we can conclude that traffic laws were better, vehicles were safer and people were better drivers way back then. Logical? Not hardly.

swtdrae,

I had some blood work done last September for a Lyme disease check. The results weren't good. My triglyceride level (a measure of fat in your blood) was 827. It's supposed to be under 150. My total cholesterol was 328. It should be under 200.

This past May I bought Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution and decided to give it a try. I just had my bloodwork redone and the results were staggering. My triglyceride level has dropped to 65 and my total cholesterol has dropped to 188. I eat butter, eggs, and red meat (lots of it)and sausage every darn day. Dr. Atkins said in his book that I'd be healthier eating this way and the results speak for themselves. That man was truly a genius. It's too bad he was looked upon as a quack for so many years.

Don't be afraid. It works.

When we say things like "Years ago, life expectancy was forty years old," it doesn't mean what it sounds like. It means the life expectancy averaged out at forty years, because so many people died as small children from diseases we have stopped with hygiene and immunization.
500 years ago, people still lived into their 70's and 80's and beyond... the way they do now.
The real clue is in the transition to agriculture. Type in "diseases of civilization" into google and you'll find that dental caries and heart disease started around the same time people started eating more grains and sugars.

This WOE has been healthy for me. Just check out my lipid profile over the last few years. Last summer I ate this way, but stopped from about Nov - May. I started again in May. In 2000 I ate low fat high carb. Just compare:


March 2000: (eating low fat, high carb)
Total Cholesterol 226 (Normal <200)
HDL 57 (Normal >34)
LDL 144 (Normal 0-130)
Chol/HDL Ratio 3.96 (Normal <4.45)
Triglycerides 127 (Normal <200)

September 2002 (Atkins but not seriously)
Total Cholesterol 231
HDL 75
LDL 145
Ratio 3.1
Triglycerides 54

Last Week (Sep. 03) (Atkins more seriously)
Total Cholesterol 246
HDL 90
LDL 146
Ratio 2.7
Triglycerides 47

In addition to the great lipid profile, the rest of my blood work came back normal, and all my other health indicators are great. I have always been hypoglycemic but since eating this way my blood sugar levels have been steady with no drops. Ya can't beat it!

Joan

thank you adkpam for explaining that. I wanted to introduce that line of thinking into the conversation, but I didn't want to type it.
fender you have a point about many people not living that long in some areas years ago. but it was an incomplete point just like mine.

we can also say that in Asian countries, like China and Japan, because it seems we like to use those as comparisions a lot, that rice was such a main stavel in the diet.
High Carbohydrates is not so much the culprit as is REFINED carbohydrates. Today they are unavoidable. They are nearly in everything that is grained, and nearly everything is processed and sweetened. People that do low carb diets and incoorporate grains into their daily meals do so and must turn to unrefined sources and soy flours, flaxseed and steel cut grain that is so much lower in carbos it will make your head spin. Now if we as people had ate that way our whole life, then we wouldn't have weight to lose, so there for we wouldn't need to decrease our normal consumption of such healthy foods in order to initially lose weight.
As for the rice...which no matter how you cut it is high in carbs...I would like to point out that foremost, the Asian cuisine has always been heavily reliant on oil for frying. Vegetables accompany rice in almost all incidents. I learnt a lot about Chinese food in general when my best for two years was from China.
The portions are smaller. The tea is unsweetened. There is nothing like preserves. Milk is drank with meat as a desert. Before Westernization in the last 10 years, there was not a high rate of obesity there-in, because most nations are more physically laborous than the US and Canada and the UK. We three really share the same palette of food, albeit slightly different naming conventions. If you in Britan aren't getting a good slab of white bread along with a hot dog in the park, then you'll be having it in your pudding in a traditional bowl of berries made with saturated white bread. And the country where my father is from is almost is worst with potatoes and pork. I never really liked pork, but I always ate pierogies and sweetened saur kraut.
I think it is important to identify exactly what you are realizing you will be eating and not eating in this WOL. It is simple really. Yes, you need to not eat over 20 CARBS at first. Then you add a few more. 25 or 35. You continue to lose weight or return to healthy cholester. levels. No, there is nothing to fear from eating fat and cholesterol.
Fat is neutral in your body and does not cause blood sugar to soar, making burning your fat impossible. Cholesterol is an important part of your body and if you cut back on it dramatically, your body will overproduce it to compensate in the same way it hordes calories when you are on a low calorie diet. The body strives to maintain a normal level.
If you want, I have read a study somewhere about some Risk Trial, talking about cholesterol and risk for hearth disease, but I don't know where it is in my bookmarks. I also have studies on adoptive tissue andeven though I don't have the book, a very good reading material is called Guyton's Physiology, which explains exactly how fat is stored and burned. It is a complicated read, sort of, kind of like reading a health book. But if you want to find the puddle of truth in the world which is a sea of mythical propoganda, it takes personal exploration or a really expensive nutritionalist who isn't afraid of the FDA.