Dr. Atkins died

[Elana]

NEW YORK (April 17) - Dr. Robert C. Atkins, whose best-selling low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet was dismissed as nutritional folly for years but was recently validated in some research, died Thursday, his spokesman said. He was 72.

Atkins died at New York Weill-Cornell Medical Center, surrounded by his wife and close friends, said Richard Rothstein, his spokesman.

Atkins had suffered a severe head injury April 8 after falling on an icy sidewalk while walking to work.

Atkins first advocated his unorthodox weight-loss plan - which emphasizes meat, eggs and cheese and discourages bread, rice and fruit - in his 1972 book, \'\'Dr. Atkins\' Diet Revolution.\'\'

Its publication came at a time when the medical establishment was encouraging a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet. The following year, the American Medical Association dismissed Atkins\' diet as nutritional folly and Congress summoned him to Capitol Hill to defend the plan.

Labeling it \'\'potentially dangerous,\'\' the AMA said the diet\'s scientific underpinning was \'\'naive\'\' and \'\'biochemically incorrect.\'\' It scolded the book\'s publishers for promoting \'\'bizarre concepts of nutrition and dieting.\'\'

Despite this, his books sold 15 million copies, and millions of people tried the diet. Atkins\' philosophy enjoyed a resurgence in the 1990s with \'\'Dr. Atkins\' New Diet Revolution,\'\' which sold more than 10 million copies worldwide and spent five years on The New York Times best-seller list.

But criticism of the diet lingered, with many arguing that it could affect kidney function, raise cholesterol levels and deprive the dieter of important nutrients.

Atkins said no study showed that people with normal kidney function developed problems because of a high-protein diet, and he never gave in to his detractors.

Defending his plan at the American Dietetic Association\'s convention in 2000, Atkins quipped, \'\'I\'m very happy to be here. Not as happy as Daniel in the lion\'s den.\'\'

This year, his approach was vindicated in part by the very medical community that scorned him. In February, some half-dozen studies showed that people on the Atkins diet lost weight without compromising their health. The studies showed that Atkins dieters\' cardiovascular risk factors and overall cholesterol profiles changed for the better.

Still, many of the researchers were reluctant to recommend the Atkins diet, saying a large new study now under way could settle lingering questions of its long-term effects.

On the Atkins diet, up to two-thirds of calories may come from fat - more than double the usual recommendation, and violating what medical professionals have long believed about healthy eating. Carbohydrates are the foundation of a good diet, most say. Eating calorie-dense fat is what makes people fat, they say, and eating saturated fat is dangerous.

To Atkins, the key dietary villain in obesity was carbohydrates. He argued they make susceptible people pump out too much insulin, which in turn encourages them to put on fat.

Fat in foods can be a dieter\'s friend, Atkins said, in part because it quenches appetite and stops carbohydrate craving.

Atkins, a graduate of Cornell University\'s medical school, first tried a low-carbohydrate diet in 1963 after reading about one in the Journal of the American Medical Association. He said he lost weight so easily that he converted his fledgling Manhattan cardiology practice into an obesity clinic.

Besides his work on nutrition, Atkins also argued that ozone gas can kill cancer cells and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and he claimed to have treated more than 1,000 patients with ozone therapy.

The ozone treatment is a common alternative therapy in Germany and some other nations but has not gained acceptance in the United States.

In 1999, Atkins established the Robert C. Atkins Foundation to finance diet research. It has sponsored research at Duke University, the University of Connecticut and Harvard.

Last April, Atkins was hospitalized for cardiac arrest, which he said was related to an infection of the heart and was not related to the diet.

Besides his wife, Veronica, Atkins is survived by his mother, Norma, of Palm Beach, Fla.

AP-NY-04-17-03 1219EDT

[Phantom]

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[**DONOTDELETE**]

Me, too. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[Elana]

In his honor, everyone should go out and have a big juicy steak tonight. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[upsidedown]

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In his honor, everyone should go out and have a big juicy steak tonight. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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Will do. With bold and spicey A1 steak sauce. Yum, yum. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[BassMan]

Yeah, me, three [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img].

Never did lose wait on his diet, but ya gotta admire a man who challenged conventional medical wisdom for so many years.

I\'ll join you guys and gals in that steak.

[nonscents]

I\'ve always been thin. If anything is hard for me, it\'s hard for me to gain weight. But I always had a weak digestion, so I was constantly tinkering with my diet.

Almost by accident I discovered that if I ate very little else but meat, I felt much much better. This was a shock to me since, from the mid-1970s on, I was under the illusion that fat in general and meat in particular were evil incarnate (ha! gotta laugh at my puns, since no one else will).

So, I figured, this Atkins guy, whom I knew only as the man who had been vilified in the 70s, had it right all along. Since his medical center was in Manhattan, real close to where I was working at the time, I went there. It was a real medical factory. It didn\'t do a thing for me.

Still, I learned a heck of a lot from Atkins who had a nightly show on local radio. I was scared to eat so much meat. I had been totally brainwashed into thinking I was going to be giving myself heart disease and cancer. Listening to Atkins on the radio was a big moral boost for me since he made me aware of the science behind low-carb diets.

That truly was Atkins\' gift. He was a marketing genius. He marketed his dietary beliefs like no one else. He could treat the masses at his medical factory, he could enlighten them with his mass paperbacks, and he could feed them with his signature food line.

I still eat low-carb and I\'ve gained a lot of lean muscle mass. I am currently partial to dietary approaches like Wolcott\'s Metabolic Typing, Rudolf Wiley\'s Biobalance, and George Watson\'s Nutrition and Your Mind. They attempt to provide a general theory of diet explaining why Atkins-type diets are perfect for some people (like me) and evil incarnate for others. (A great book for low-carb folk is published as Life Without Bread in the USA, and Leben Ohne Brot in Germany.)

I give Atkins a lot of credit. He was clearly the object of great scorn and vituperation. His on-air personality was pugnacious and arrogant. But he did more than anyone in the US, and perhaps the world, to modify the ruling dietary paradigm. Perhaps someone less pugnacious and arrogant would have been crushed by the forces arrayed against him.

I must say that I am less than impressed by the gargantuan business that he built to capitalize on his new-found popularity. Those foil-wrapped Atkins bars and cans of Atkins shakes are everywhere. I don\'t think I got very good treatment at his medical factory and I don\'t think very good products come out of his convenience foods factories.

But if I were to draw up a balance sheet I am grateful for what he has accomplished. I feel the benefits of his contributions every day.

[tallmacky]

That sucks.,

My brother has been on the atkins diet for like 2-3 months and he has lost around 40 pounds already. The diet and system works very well, ofcourse it goes against the grain but anyone who observes the structure and system of it all its perfect.

All I can say here for Dr. Atkins is the common things most say such as my prayers go out to his family and so on but its all heart felt.

[druid]

i lost 30 pounds in one month (about 2 years ago) on atkins. the man is pretty smart and really understands science, unlike some of his collegues who don\'t understand basic reasoning much less science.

Oh and I think those atkins products are great. Especially the choclate peanut butter bar. It has 10 grams of fiber (and most people wrongly critize atkins as a low fiber diet), taste great (better than any MSRP bar or high protein bar I have ever had).

I hope the man is in heaven right now with several fine angel\'s feeding him steak and eggs. And I hope Dean Orinsh is cooking it (well Dean isn\'t dead yet -- he is the one of the major figures tauting the low fat BS)

[phersurf]

Hate to put a damper on everyone\'s high opinion of the Atkins diet. It does cause weight loss and is OK in the short term, but it puts you body into ketosis, which is the desired effect. The problem with ketosis is that ketone bodies are chemically related to things like acetone. Some of the weight loss experienced is healthy tissue that is not fat. Stay on it long enough and these ketone bodies will start to digest organs and muscle!

In a recent study it was shown that the 5% of the people that lose weight and keep it off and people that are naturally slim have the same 7 habbits. Beside regular exercise, and using stairs instead of the elevator, etc the major dietary habbit these people had was a diet high in complex carbs.

[druid]

so something that works for 5% of people and for people who are slim naturally (read: people who can eat anything and still be skinny) will work for all people with a weight problem? And don\'t give me any sh_t about people\'s genetics making them fat. Nature didn\'t intend for us to be fat and have serious probelms related to syndrome X. Obesity has been on the rise for the past 100 years. Our gene pool didn\'t change that fast. but our lifestyles an food supply HAVE.

And where are these studies on dietry ketosis? bet ya can\'t find any because they don\'t exist(except the data that Dr.Atkins has accumlated since the 70\'s). which leads me to the conclusion that your pulling it out your a$$ (or at least getting it from someone who pulled it out their a$$)

the few studies done on low carb diets show that they don\'t cause harm -- that they people lose weight better on them, and one recent study (the one done by duke university) showed that some markers for heart disease improved on atkins.

[tallmacky]

People love to try to debunk the Atkins diet with their hearsay.

Afterall isn\'t the Atkins diet a reflection of the diet our earliest ancestors had, the type of diet we were best suited for.

[babybird]

Have you seen your teeth before? We are made for eating a wide variety of foods. Primates are mostly vegetarian, and only a few including us are omnivorous.

[druid]

one can eat veggies on atkins. in fact the diet is : meat and veggies. veggies are low carb and high fiber. On induction (which is the lowest carb part of the diet) you are suppose to eat a pretty good size salad everyday. it is starches(which was given to us by agriculture) and sugars that you can\'t eat.

[babybird]

We\'ve been eating seeds, grains, and potatoes since the days before advanced agriculture. Only problem is that we now eat too much of refined grains that contain little nutrients and fibers. We also eat toooo much suger (not to mention that deep fried potatoes and butter, sour cream or gravy that goes on top of other potato dishes). Start eating brown rice everyday, and I can garantee you that you will lose weight. You probably won\'t like the taste, but it would be a much healthier way of losing weight.

[Mtnjim]

\"Nature didn\'t intend for us to be fat ...\"
Hate to disagree with you, but......
We were dedigned to store fat when we gorged on abundent food so that we would have something to carry us over during lean times of starvation (especially women to provide for the babies). Today there are no times of starvation so we keep storing fat. That\'s the problem.
By the way, I\'m one of those \"naturally skinny types; same waist size since I was 20 (though my chest &amp; legs have grown from the gym).

[babybird]

What about Japanese and Greeks? They don\'t get overweight and live forever. Our genetic makeup is not that much differnt, and I don\'t think the amount of food available really matters.

[Mtnjim]

\"What about Japanese and Greeks? They don\'t get overweight and live forever.\"

Ever see a sumo wrestler? I\'ve known several Greeks who were \"large\" (of course I knew a 90 year old woman who would climb and scramble about in olive trees at harvest down in Argos).

[babybird]

Sumo wrestlers are on special diet to get fat. I didn\'t mean to say that they never get fat. But obesity is very rare in those countries, and it is because they grow up with balanced, healthy diet and keep the habit for their life time.

[Mtnjim]

Cultural, not biological. Hard to get fat on fish and seaweed. (yes, I know there is more to the diat including Kobe beef)

[babybird]

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Cultural, not biological.

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That\'s my point. You made it sound like all biological:

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We were dedigned to store fat when we gorged on abundent food so that we would have something to carry us over during lean times of starvation

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[Mtnjim]

\"That\'s my point. You made it sound like all biological:\"

The exceptions you pointed out are cultural not the general population. Think about life in a hunter/gatherer society, alternating feast/famine. Japan is a series of small islands where there is limited space to produce food, so they rely on anything ediable, a lot of which is low calorie high bulk. How many calories (tehcnicaly Kilocalories, but let\'s not quible)are there in a serving of seaweed? Looking at the other extreem, the US where there is an abundance of food, especially high fat and high calorie foods. Here approximately 60% of the population is overweight. The population is in a constant \"feast\" phase until they go on an artifical \"diet\" starvation phase. As the \"healthy\" societies become more \"Americanized\" the rates of obesity increases. This is even being seen in Japan.

JMHO

[babybird]

Don\'t you think that the populations in the US are the special case? Majority of people live in Asia and Africa, and most people there don\'t get overweight even if they are wealthy and can eat whatever they want. I gave examples of those two countries, because they are wealthy countries, with good eating habit, and the same kinds of foods available in the US are available to them.

Yes, seaweed has no calorie, and Japanese love it, but seaweed represents only a small portion of Japanese\' diet.

[Mtnjim]

I guess we\'ll just have to agree to disagree since you seem to be missing my point (ie. \"with the \"Americanization\" of the Japanise diet...)
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[babybird]

I know, we are probably keeping missing each other\'s point, but this is my last try.

I am just disageeing with your comment that people tend to get fat in some societies becuase people are supposed to store as much fat as possible to get ready for starvation period. If that\'s the case, we should all prefer fatty food. Our food preference is more cultural than biological. If you prefer bad food with a lot of fat and suger due to your cultural background, and if you don\'t control yourself, you will get fat, and that\'s just that. I don\'t deny the fact that some people are more genetically prone to obesity, though. But that won\'t explain the difference among different societies.

[Elana]

babybird and Mtnjim....I am issuing you both a time out from this thread. If either of you post again, I am sending Watcher to your homes to tell you all about his latest formulas.

[franki]

LOl, Do you control the board nowadays, Elana? [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[Elana]

With the threat of Watcher and/or Bart looming over your heads.....I have enormous control over what goes on here.lol [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[franki]

And I have enormous control over your user title. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

Franki [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Elana]

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