Disease Proof: Nutritional Wisdom

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Thursday, May 10, 2007 Posted By Gerald Pugliese In Full Text Feed , Nutritional Wisdom

Nutritional Wisdom: Removing Disease Causing Chemicals from Your Home

Nutritional Wisdom: Dangers of the Atkins Diet

I admit. It’s easy to poke fun at the low-carb lifestyle. What can I say? I’m a sucker for low-hanging fruit. But truth be told, Dr. Fuhrman makes it pretty clear that carbohydrate restrictive diets—like the Atkins Diet—are no way to achieve optimal long-term health. You only have to check out these posts to see why:

But despite all this, millions of people pledge allegiance to a fad diet centered on animal fat. A huge concern for Dr. Fuhrman because—as he points out in the posts above—any diet where the majority of calories come from animal products increases your risk of cancer, heart disease, and a whole host of life-shortening maladies.

As you’ve seen, I’m quick to knock low-carb living. And so is Dr. Fuhrman, but, he’s smarter than me—yes, a little brownnosing here—so when he takes Atkins-type diets to task, he really exposes them for the over-hyped danger zones that they are.

Curious to hear what that sounds like? You’re in luck. Because it just so happens this week’s episode of Nutrition Wisdom is on that very subject. Here’s a bit I transcribed from the show. In it Dr. Fuhrman talks about how dangerous an Atkins-type diet can be for children and others. In fact, it can have deadly consequences. Take a look:

In recent years with the skyrocketing popularity of the Atkins Diet, there’s been a proportional skyrocketed increase in sudden cardiac death in young women. That parallels the increase in ketogenic diets. Right now we know that sudden cardiac death means irregular heart beat, as in cardiac arrhythmia. There has to be a warning on the Atkins Diet! There must be a warning that severe carbohydrate restriction—restricted ketosis—when you go into ketosis because of severe carbohydrate restriction, as a weight control method. There could be a traumatic increase in sudden death.

There was an important study in the Southern Medical Journal about a sixteen year-old girl who died after two weeks of following an Atkins Diet. They found that she was in profound acidosis, with about a twenty point base deficit because undeniably keto-acidosis caused acidosis in the blood. In other words, you can become highly acidic. We get dramatic lowering of potassium levels, especially when you first start out on the diet.

The continual denial of the dangers by the people who embrace and promote this ketogenic diet—it’s understandable why—because people are often economically invested with their egos and their food preferences into this diet. But, the risk of carbohydrate restriction ketosis is very powerful and with a lot of studies done on children who were put on ketogenic diets for seizure disorders and they use this for people who have seizures that are retractable—meaning they can’t be helped any other way—and they warn the parents of these children that it increases the risk of kidney stones, kidney failure, increases the rate of infection, and sudden cardiac death, including cardiomyopathy and cardiac-arrhythmias. For example, one study following children put on ketogenic diets—like an Atkins-type diet—they showed fifteen percent developed cardiac enlargement and dilated cardiomyopathy. Of course the diet had to be stopped.

Another study followed 129 children and found that seventeen developed severe complications and four people died out of the 129; two of sepsis because of the increased risk of infection, one of cardiomyopathy, and one of lipoid pneumonia. The point is when doctors are very careful they know these are dangerous diets, and they advise people of the dangers, but if a person wants to try it it’s their right. But the claims made by the Atkins people, for example, Atkins himself used say prevent breast cancer with butter, reverse heart disease with fillet mignon, it’s all the lying and misinformation and lack of telling people the risks of a diet that has such a great amount of dangers.

Lying? Of course they’re lying. There are millions of dollars at stake here. Can’t let unsightly truths get out—politicians have known this for years, but fortunately the truth does eek its way out every once and a while. For example, get a load of this study in European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Dr. Fuhrman emailed it to me the other day. Apparently prolonged consumption of a low-carbohydrate–high-protein diet is associated with an increase in total mortality. Read on:

Subjects methods:
Follow-up was performed from 1993 to 2003 in the context of the Greek component of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and nutrition. Participants were 22 944 healthy adults, whose diet was assessed through a validated questionnaire. Participants were distributed by increasing deciles according to protein intake or carbohydrate intake, as well as by an additive score generated by increasing decile intake of protein and decreasing decile intake of carbohydrates. Proportional hazards regression was used to assess the relation between high protein, high carbohydrate and the low carbohydrate–high protein score on the one hand and mortality on the other.

Results:
During 113 230 persons years of follow-up, there were 455 deaths. In models with energy adjustment, higher intake of carbohydrates was associated with significant reduction of total mortality, whereas higher intake of protein was associated with nonsignificant increase of total mortality (per decile, mortality ratios 0.94 with 95% CI 0.89 –0.99, and 1.02 with 95% CI 0.98 –1.07 respectively). Even more predictive of higher mortality were high values of the additive low carbohydrate–high protein score (per 5 units, mortality ratio 1.22 with 95% CI 1.09 –to 1.36). Positive associations of this score were noted with respect to both cardiovascular and cancer mortality.

But sadly, this won’t phase the low-carb lemmings of the world. They’ll just yammer on and on about how much weight they lost and how great it feels not to give up their emotional attachments to fatty foods. “Whaa-whaa-whaa! Why can’t I eat steak wrapped in bacon and fried in butter every night—but I want it!”

Wednesday, April 25, 2007 Posted By Gerald Pugliese In Full Text Feed , Nutritional Wisdom

Disease Proof

Published By Joel Fuhrman, M.D.

Nutritional Wisdom: Removing Disease Causing Chemicals from Your Home

Nutritional Wisdom: Dangers of the Atkins Diet

Nutritional Wisdom: How to Get Off Your Blood Pressure Medications

Nutritional Wisdom: Dancing and Dining With the Stars

Nutritional Wisdom: "Healthy to 100: Achieving a Long Healthy Life"

Nutritional Wisdom: The Danger's of Dieting

Nutritional Wisdom: Nutritional Wisdom:

Nutritional Wisdom: Preventing Sarcopenia: The Major Cause of Age-Related Disabilities

Nutritional Wisdom: You Don't Have to Be Sick - The Miraculous Self Healing Body

Nutritional Wisdom: Art and Life - Think like an Artist for Life Extension

Nutritional Wisdom: Nutrition Can Defeat Autoimmune Disease

Nutritional Wisdom: Why All Diets Fail

Nutritional Wisdom for Your Cell

Nutritional Wisdom: Strong Bones for Life - with special guest John Abramson, M.D.

Nutritional Wisdom: Feeding Kids Right

Nutritional Wisdom: "Nutrition Beats Drugs for High Blood Pressure and Cholesterol"

Nutritional Wisdom: "Why Eat to Live - the Basics"

Nutritional Wisdom: "Banish Your Headaches"

Nutritional Wisdom: "Childhood Diets Can Create Adult Cancers"

Nutritional Wisdom: "Don't Control Your Diabetes - Get Rid of It!"

Nutritional Wisdom: "The Secret Weapon for Permanent Weight Loss"

Nutritional Wisdom: "Food Addiction - the Cause of Obesity"

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Nutritional Wisdom: Nobody Should Die of Heart Disease

Nutritional Wisdom: Nutrition Can Win the War on Cancer

Announcing Radio Fuhrman