| Vegan Health News | March 21 2006 |
Atkins diet safety questioned
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The high-protein Atkins diet has caused a "life-threatening complication" for a woman who strictly followed the diet, say US doctors.
Dr Tsuh-Yin Chen of Lenox Hill Hospital in New York and team report the case in today's issue of The Lancet.
The Atkins diet stresses lashings of meat, butter and other dairy products - high-fat foods typically limited in classic diets - but cuts potatoes, rice and pasta to negligible levels and greatly limits intake of fruit and vegetables.
The diet's premise is that a carbohydrate-starved body will start to burn up stored fat cells, a process called ketosis.
Chen and team report seeing a 40-year-old obese woman a month after starting the Atkins diet.
She reported losing 9 kilograms after eating only meat, cheese and salads, supplemented by minerals and vitamins sold by Atkins Nutritionals Inc., the company founded by diet pioneer Robert Atkins in 1989.
The woman was admitted for emergency treatment, complaining of a shortness of breath, nausea and repeated vomiting that had lasted several days, as well as mild gastric pains.
Urine and blood analysis showed she had severe ketoacidosis, a condition in which dangerously high levels of ketone acids build up in the liver as a result of a depletion of the hormone insulin.
Ketoacidosis, which is more usually seen among diabetics and victims of starvation, can lead to a coma.
The patient responded well to rehydration and glucose infusion and left hospital after four days.
"Our patient had an underlying ketosis caused by the Atkins diet and developed severe ketoacidosis", say the researchers, adding that mild pancreatitis or stomach infection may have contributed to the problem.
"This problem may become more recognised because this diet is becoming increasingly popular worldwide."
In a commentary also published in The Lancet, Dr Lyn Steffen and Jennifer Nettleton of the University of Minnesota's School of Public Health blasts the Atkins diet as "clearly ... not nutritionally balanced".
"Low-carbohydrate diets for weight management are far from healthy, given their association with ketosis, constipation or diarrhoea, halitosis, headache and general fatigue to name a few," they say.
"These diets also increase the protein load to the kidneys and alter the acid balance of the body, which result in loss of minerals from bone stores, thus compromising bone integrity."
Steffen and Nettleton add: "Our most important criterion should be indisputable safety, and low-carbohydrate diets currently fall short of this benchmark."
The Atkins diet builds on a long history of low-carbohydrate diets that reaches into the 19th century. More than 45 million copies of Atkins diet books have been sold, and the impact of the fad has been far-reaching, elevating meat and "low-carb dishes" over pasta, potatoes and rice.
Atkins Nutritionals Inc. emerged from bankruptcy protection earlier this year, specialising as a company that sells low-carb bars and shakes.
A US firm that handles the company's relations with the media says it is can not comment on the paper published in The Lancet.
Reference: ABC Australia Science News.
