Just curious, it seems to unlikely that following a diet would cause this kind of reaction and is just the stuff most people have stereotyped this WOL to be: dangerous.

I hope not! Im feeling healthier than ever!
Here's the article posted today:

US Teen Dies After Following High-Protein Diet
1 hour, 43 minutes ago
By Dana Frisch

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Missouri doctors describe the case of an apparently healthy 16-year-old girl who collapsed suddenly and died after spending one to two weeks on a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet.



Electrolyte imbalances due to the diet, and the resulting damage to her heart function, were likely responsible, the physicians who cared for her report in a recent issue of the Southern Medical Journal. The girl had no known illnesses or medical conditions.


The teen had low potassium and calcium levels when she arrived at the University of Missouri Health Sciences Center, most likely as a consequence of the diet, the doctors state in their report. This disrupted the normal electrical function of her heart, leading it to stop and causing her to collapse, they write.


Dietitians and proponents of the Atkins diet, one example of a low-carbohydrate/high-protein diet, say that other weight-loss measures including eating disorders like bulimia or the use of diuretics were far more likely to have contributed to the low electrolyte levels found in the teen's blood.


Dr. D. Paul Robinson, a co-author of the paper, said in an interview that while there might be other explanations for the teen's death, including an abnormal heart rhythm, interviews with her parents did not suggest that she had a history of bulimia or diuretic use. Robinson is an assistant professor of child health in the division of adolescent medicine at the University of Missouri, Columbia.


"Most kids with eating disorders, even if they're able to hide the bulimia, they're constantly talking about being fat or needing to lose weight and exercise," Robinson said. "My indication, from what I understand of the interview with this girl's family, is that none of these things were the case."


Colette Heimowitz, director of education and research at Atkins Health and Medical Information Services, told Reuters Health that the Atkins approach has been used by millions of Americans for 30 years now, and there have been no documented cases of serious reactions or fatalities.


"The actual dietary approaches or practices that this particular teenager followed for days or weeks couldn't possibly account for what (the physicians are) attributing it to," said Heimowitz. She noted that the irregular chemical levels detected during the autopsy could be associated with drugs emergency medical personnel and doctors administered to resuscitate the teen, or with other weight-loss efforts.


Robinson disagrees. "I don't think there is any way the resuscitative drugs would have affected (the teen's electrolytic balance)," he said, noting that when the teen came in, she had low potassium levels.


Very high-protein/low-carbohydrate diets result in a condition called ketosis. In ketosis, the body has used up its preferred fuel reserves, glycogen derived from carbohydrates, and instead burns fat. This generates substances called ketone bodies, which can be smelled in the breath.


Wahida Karmally, a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, told Reuters Health that these diets can cause muscle breakdown, weakness, nausea and dehydration. They limit the intake of entire categories of food that provide certain nutrients, such as potassium, she explained. "These effects can happen right away," she said.

"It is a worrying set of circumstances when kids die suddenly," Robinson said. "The whole point of writing the paper is to ask clinicians to keep their eyes open. If kids come in with sudden death and they're on this kind of diet, we really have to start paying more attention to it."

SOURCE: Southern Medical Journal 2002;95:1047-1049.

There are no details. What was she eating?

If one hears that 'everybody does Atkins', learns from a newspaper clipping that it's deemed 'high-protein', already 'knows' that 'fat is evil' and then puts all the pieces together, one comes up with a chicken and tunafish diet.

Yes, that'll kill you. It's called rabbit starvation. It's also purported to be a torture technique in SE Asia somewhere (don't remember where I saw that).

Good point, Seyont. I found the article disturbingly lacking in content. I also find it telling that it is a young girl who may have been obsessive, unrealistic or simply uninformed.

But of course, Im getting all these people sending me copies of this and telling me how Im in danger! lol Ug. Just goes to show the way the media opperates....

Total fluff piece. They don't even know how long she was doing the diet... 1 to 2 weeks? Maybe it was 1 day for all we know.

Most humans can eat nothing for 2 weeks and they won't suddenly collapse and die, particulary if they are a teenager. I'd be a litte more worried if they had said after 6 months on the diet this had happened.

Maybe she had done an extreme workout and then collapsed. One hears about that happening every once in awhile with people, even teens. Even if they are not on a low carb diet!

In all fairness, low carbing can cause low levels of potassium which is why in the initial stages a potassium supplement is recommended, although it's often not necessary if you are eating veggies from the allowed list other than lettuce. Broccoli and spinach are both excellent sources of potassium. Low carbing is not known, however, to cause dangerously low levels of potassium. Diuretics can. Just because she wasn't talking about being fat doesn't mean that she wasn't using a diuretic to help speed her weight loss and it's very unlikely that she would have shared that information with her parents. Teens do some dangerous things on the recommendation of the friend of a friend. Given her sudden collapse, I'm very surprised they didn't do a drug panel in the ER to find out if she was taking anything that could have caused her condition.
The statement that low carb diets cause muscle breakdown is absolutely false. If you are consuming adequate amounts of protein the body has no reason to break down its own muscle mass for the protein or energy that it needs. For energy it will go to its fat stores first.
As for the dehydration, nausea, weakness, etc....yes, those sometimes do happen in the first few days due to carb withdrawal (why do you think it's recommended to drink at least eight 8 oz. glass of water daily?).
If low carb was to blame for this (and I'm not saying it is) it's because this girl was doing her own version of it without any research as to what she should have been doing (note: had she been eating the veggies, it's unlikely she would have had low potassium and had she been eating cheese and/or cream, low calcium would have also been unlikely) and possibly taking things that don't mix with low carb or starving herself.
Low carb without sufficient water, veggies or supplements is not Atkins. As a matter of fact, it's not any low carb plan that I'm aware of.

Two weeks of starvation wouldn't have killed a 16 year old unless there were underlying conditions. I'm not convinced the autopsy was thorough. Some 16 year olds do all kinds of stupid things to their bodies and some teenagers have even been known to experiement with illegal drugs.

The Atkins diet has been around for years and millions of people have been on it for more than 2 weeks. I think the truth is the doctors have no idea what caused her death and they don't want to look stupid, so they're blaming Atkins.
asugar

You could eat nothing but chocolate bars for 2 weeks and it wouldn't kill you. You could eating nothing but water for 2 weeks and it wouldn't kill you.

If humans could die after 2 weeks of a high protein low carbohydrate diet, the human race would have died out a long time ago.

Obviously something else was going on in her case and that needs to be investigated.

This article is completely irresponsible.

The original smj article (don't ask!) is an encrypted pdf, so I can't post the text.

The abstract:


She was apparently following her mother's diet, "...eating meat, cheese, and salads, without fasting". However, elsewhere they also say she was doing caloric restriction, and further: "Caloric restriction is generally not recommended on most low-carbohydrate diets, including the Atkins diet, further emphasizing the danger of using these diets without strict adherence to their recommendations."

Though it's a case study, the authors spend most of the article saying fad protein diets are bad. Ketosis is bad. Losing calcium is bad. Losing potassium is bad. Fat is bad. Because there were deaths reported on the liquid protein diets of the 60's and 70's, they counsel against a high-protein, low-carb diet.

They end the article with, "While it is possible that the patient's dietary regimen had nothing to do with her cardiovascular collapse, continued surveillance for similar cases is suggested."

How, Doctors, exactly, was science or medicine served by your article? How was the mother served?

Yes, this type of diet could cause a death in someone who is not taking the proper supplements, and who may have a potassium and/or electrolyte imbalance the first place. Even though she may have had no known medical conditions or symptoms, doesn't mean that there wasn't any there! There are many many athletes who keel over during sports who have a certain heart disorder, called Marfan Syndrome, that was undiagnosed. It is supposed that Abraham Lincoln may have had this disease. It is an INDIVIDUAL THING... no one can TRULY give cause to what the actual cause of death was... but we do not know what she ate, what was her physical condition BEFORE she started the diet, was she getting enough nutrition.. factors like that. And Seyont.... fooey with your rabbit starvation diet theory... My diet is lean meats and cheeses,eggs and an occasional salad, and I am not only feeling better than I have in years... I also done this diet when I was younger for over a month, and I am still alive! Twenty MILLION people have also been reported to have done a similiar diet, and those people did not all die either!To say that sort of diet is a death sentence is as ludicrious as asserting that it was DEFINITELY the high protein/low carb diet that killed this young girl. LisaN, Stillmans diet had no veggies, although he does/did propose adequate water and vitamin supplements. Stillman Diet Summary And as far as not getting enough food.... I fasted for 6 weeks in 1999, with nothing but water... no supplements or vitamins... if someone dies from lack of supplements... wouldn't I have died? Like I said before, in MY OPINION, there was some underlying cause as to why this girl had a potassium/electrolyte imbalance... I know in cases of extreme diarrhea/vomiting, that this can happen... especially in babies... that is the main reason for pedialyte... and also excessive sweating combined with insufficient water intake can also cause potassium/electrolyte imbalances... it is why they put electrolytes in drinks like gatorade!

WEB SITE DISCUSSING COMPLICATIONS OF EATING DISORDERS including FLUID AND ELECTROLYTE ABNORMALITIES (click here)



These are just a few of the abnormalities that eating disorders can cause:
Cardial effects (conduction abnormalities, irregular rhythms and sudden death,Effects of resultant metabolic alkalosis, potassium and chloride deficiencies,Electrolyte Imbalance ,

suze_c:

I think you are saying "hey, bonehead, *I* eat a high-protein diet!". But lean meats, cheese, and eggs is hardly a high-protein, low-fat diet. Your egg, for instance, can be up to 70% fat. Even lean sirloin is over 40% fat by calories. Cheese, of course, is mostly fat.

Tunafish is 93% protein. Eaten to the exclusion of all else, THAT's high-protein. And that's where I was just supposing a fatal misunderstanding could have occurred.

But that was just speculation, which is apparently good enough to get published in a medical journal.

They have no idea why she died. Her calcium and potassium were low, and they guess her magnesium was probably also low. They don't know if she was bulimic, anorectic, or abusing diuretics or laxatives. They caught right on to the fact that her heart stopped, though.

Now that you explain it that way... it makes a little more sense... Although Stillmans is primarily a very high protein diet, more so than any other LC plan I know of, with emphasis on lean meats, low fat cheeses... the addition of eggs is not a low fat thing, although they are high in protein: Eggs= 75 calories/6.5 protein gm/ carb gm 0.6/5 gm fat.

p.s. seyont... I would not call you names just because you had a different opinion than I do, although I was pointing out that my diet is more protein than Atkins, and a lot less fat.

Low carbing (unless you eat no veggies whatsoever) does not eliminate foods high in potassium or calcium. Broccoli, Spinach and Avocados are all excellent sources of potassium and are not eliminated by the Atkins plan. Cheese, cream and broccoli are good natural sources of calcium and are not eliminated by the Atkins plan.
I already addressed the inaccuracy of the statement about muscle breakdown; this only occurs when protein consumption is very low as in fasting, starvation or low fat diets where protein consumption is likely to be low.
It's sad that the medical profession and the media are so quick to blame this girl's death on how she was eating instead of looking for the real cause and in the process unduly alarming a lot of people. IMHO, this young lady had some underlying medical condition that may have been aggrivated by what she was doing or had an eating disorder that her parents were not aware of and was even possibly abusing diuretics or over the counter diet pills. There's a good reason that Dr. Atkins recommends a complete medical exam before beginning....to make sure that you don't have an underlying medical condition that would make low carbing unadvisable.
Toxicology reports, by the way, only test for illegal substances and commonly abused substances, not over the counter diurectics or over the counter diet pills.
In healthy individuals, the body can go for up to 40 days without food (longer if you have a lot of fat stores), so I have a hard time with even speculating that eating meat, cheese and salads for a week or two caused this poor girl's death.
Suze_c....I never said that someone would die from lack of supplements, but they make it a lot less likely that you will develop a deficiency in something like potassium, calcium or magnesium which is important when you are following a diet plan like low carb, that has a diuretic effect where you will be losing more of those minerals that you would normally through your kidneys, especially at the beginning when carb levels are low and your body has not adjusted to the new way of eating yet.

I just did a quick check of our nutrient data tool, and I find it hard to believe that she could become hypokalemic (pathologically low in potassium) in such a short time.

(note - 100g = 3½ oz)

- 100g average beef cut provides 380 mg potassium

- 100g average pork cut provides 390mg potassium

- 100g tuna packed in water provides 240mg potassium

- 100g chicken .. 230mg potassium

- 100g plain sole fillet ... 360mg potassium

- 100g cheese provides 750mg calcium

Low calcium levels tend to be a chronic condition ... it doesn't just happen in 2 weeks. If there's insufficient calcium coming from the diet, then the body turns to bone and uses that. Unless there's a metabolic disorder, such as hypoparathyroidism or kidney disease.

I'd stamp this one with a big question mark.

Doreen

regarding the hypokalemia, some more from the smj report:



Was she low on minerals or, if that K level is also normal for a normal pH, was her pH off? It's that "(normal..." bit that made me wonder.