Oh boy. I received this article on the diet

[ConfusedAndNeedHelp]

And within 2 more minutes, 2 other people emailed me regarding it.


High-fat Atkins diet damages blood vessels: study

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor 10 minutes ago


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The high-fat Atkins diet can cause long-term damage to blood vessels, as well as some of the inflammation linked with heart and artery disease, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

In contrast, low-fat regimens such as the South Beach and Ornish diets lowered cholesterol and appeared to benefit artery function, they said.

"It really is the Atkins diet that is the worst," Dr. Michael Miller, director of preventive cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, said in a telephone interview.

"The Atkins diet caused the LDL levels to go up by about 7 percent, whereas in the Ornish and South Beach diets ... they went down 7 to 10 percent."

Low density lipoprotein or LDL is the "bad" cholesterol that clogs blood vessels.

Various researchers have tested the benefits of the popular diets and reached wildly differing conclusions. Miller designed what he said was a unique approach -- to see how people fared once they stopped losing weight on any of the diets.

Studies show that people usually lose weight rapidly on any diet if they follow it properly and the weight loss itself can cause cholesterol to plummet.

"When you lose weight everything looks good but after a while you plateau and you hit a maintenance stage," said Miller, who presented his findings to a meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando, Florida.

His team studied 18 people, each of whom completed a full month on each of the three diets. They were carefully monitored to ensure that they did not lose weight.

The Atkins diet was set to deliver 50 percent of calories as fat, the South Beach was 30 percent fat and the Ornish diet, designed by nutritionist Dr. Dean Ornish, was 10 percent fat.

While on each diet the volunteers were tested for levels of blood fats, including cholesterol and markers for inflammation.

The researchers used ultrasound scans to measure the flexibility and dilation of blood vessels and measured proteins in the blood that can indicate inflammation.

"Some markers of inflammation were increased by as much as 30 to 40 percent during the Atkins phase, whereas during the South Beach and Ornish phases, the markers either were stable or went down, some by as much as 15 to 20 percent," Miller said.

Most studies have shown that diets that stress vegetables, low-fat sources of protein such as beans and legumes, and whole grains provide the best long-term weight loss. Many low-fat diets allow processed carbohydrates such as white flour, which have also been shown to be unhealthy, experts agree.

"We don't recommend the Atkins diet," Miller said. "Why not start out with a diet that will be healthier for you in the long run after weight loss?"










My issue is Atkins does stress veggies.

[hrgillespie]

Just another article written in the perspective of what people "think they know" about Atkins instead of what is real .......... yes this WOE does emphasize eating lots of veggies. And while I can't speak for everyone my Blood levels came back fantastic after being on this "high fat artery clogging diet" In fact my cholesterol levels were signifigantly lower and my good cholesterol was nice and high where it should be. The best response to people sending you things like this is either "thanks for the information I will definitly research it more" or just say nothing ...........


Don't let yourself get sidetracked .......... this is a wonderful WOE and a proven way as well.

Heidi

[not2late]

Ornish does work...the problem is that it's so restrictive that it has a high drop-out rate.

South Beach was called "dangerous" by Mary P. Enig, PhD, the researcher who found that butter had less trans fats than margarine.

I don't know where they get off saying Atkins doesn't stress vegetables....during Induction you eat the 3-5 vegetable servings recommended by the USDA and most nutritionists. Also as Dr. Atkins wrote in the book, the majority of your carbs comes from vegetables...so it all depends on how you choose to do your Atkins. If you choose to eat your carbs in the form of eggs, cream, processed meats, artificial sweeteners and lettuce for your veggie, you won't be eating the way Dr. Atkins outlined in the book....

[ConfusedAndNeedHelp]

I truly never eaten as much veggies than on atkins. I mean I'd never eat pumpkin unless it was in a real sugary pie and I wouldn't eat eggplant unless it was breaded and fried. Every twist on a veggie that I ate was a bad one and I didn't eat any of them truly healthy like I do now. Boiled cauliflower mashed, grilled eggplant, pumpkin without sugar and on and on.

And 50% from fat? No. That is wrong as well. I think I'm just going to ignore the emails. It's like people only look out if they want you to quit something. Never do I get a positive atkins article emailed to me.

[kate58]

After reading Gary Taubes book I am extremely hesitant to believe any scientific paper of this type without more information.

The people on the study were on the diet for a month. Fine, but that's not Atkins, it is a long term plan. Here are some questions that would need to be answered before this could be interpreted in any real sense.

• What phase of the diet were they following?
• The people on this diet were NOT overweight. Were they restricted to induction ranges of food or the wider range available at maintenance? Maintenace includes of grains, legumes, lots of veggies, fruit etc - were they eating this wide range of food?
• What version of the diet? Was it full of shakes and Atkins bars etc or was it real whole food?
• Bearing in mind that they were not overweight - and not allowed to lose weight and forced to eat more if they did. Did making them eat enough not to lose weight if they were on induction type food would mean that they were essentially stuffing themselves with too much food?

Also one of the main measures they use is raised cholesterol, and again anyone who has read about this will know that raised cholestorol may or may not be associated with heart disease - it is far from the clear cut connection that we are led to believe.

It's all far too vague as reported to really draw any conclusions from it.

Plus it's a cornerstone of science that results should be capable of being replicated, and that until they are there cannot be any firm conclusions drawn.

Let's wait and see, but my gut feeling is that if the effects were so dramatic and so bad for the circulatory system then people who are on Atkins long term - and there are millions of them - would be dropping like flies from heart disease - and they are not!!

[Miss Phode]

Confused...people think they're helping when they send articles and emails like that. You could simply reply to them and say, "Thanks for the info, I'll be sure to look into it." and then quietly delete or disregard it all together if you so choose. I think they mean well, and are just misinformed.

[ValidRouge]

His team studied 18 people, each of whom completed a full month on each of the three diets. They were carefully monitored to ensure that they did not lose weight.

The Atkins diet was set to deliver 50 percent of calories as fat, the South Beach was 30 percent fat and the Ornish diet, designed by nutritionist Dr. Dean Ornish, was 10 percent fat.

A "study" that has 18 test subjects for a duration of ONE MONTH?

50 percent of calories as fat...Did they start with the maintenance phase?? What "version" of Atkins are THEY doing?

Or, do you think they just didn't read the booK?

My personal experience has been that my cholesterol keeps going lower and lower and the ratio of the good to bad keeps going lower and lower the longer I'm on Atkins, through premaintenance and now into maintenance. I just had a full metabolic panel done and everything about my health numbers is perfect.

More low-fat propoganda.

[montanaman]

I didn't get it in an e-mail, but right now it's on the MSNBC.com homepage.

[Hudson]

I have a few questions:

1. Who paid for this study?
2. What long term damage did they see in this one month study?
3. What were the actual diets - what real food did they eat?
4. Some markers got worse - what about all the markers? Better yet lets disclose the starting and ending markers for all involved.
5. How about some info on these 18 people - are they overweight etc?
6. I'm guessing 6 on each different diet. Can you draw a conclusion based on 6 people? I've got a one person study that contradicts their 6 person study!!

???

[kate58]

I'm guessing 6 on each different diet.

I found the full article at the Maryland Medical Center website. It was actually weirder than that.

They put 6 people on each diet for a month. Then rested them for a week. Then put them all on a different diet for another month, then another weeks rest and another month of dieting. So all of the participants spent a month on each diet.

So basically the seriously messed about with their metabolism for over 3 months. Brilliant plan!