Atkins in the News -- Bottom Line: Don't Worry!
You may have seen it in the news this week - after years of trying, at last someone thinks there's evidence that the Atkins diet causes heart disease. The New York Post proclaimed "Atkins' Fat Lip: Famous Diet Hikes Risk of Heart Disease". Fox News was a bit more equivocal, with "Atkins Diet May Raise Risk of Heart Disease". What's the truth about this research? It's basically so weak that I generally would ignore it, but it did generate bit of a splash in the low-carb community, and it provides an opportunity to point up some ways to look at which science to pay attention to.
No one puts it better than Dr. Michael Eades of Protein Power, in two recent blog entries: Part One and Part Two. Please check them out. To summarize:
The Study: 26 people went on different diets sequentially for four weeks at a time, with a break of 4 weeks in between each one. 18 of them finished the study. The diets were the maintenance phases of the Atkins, Ornish (a very high carb, very low fat diet), and South Beach diets. Note that these were not intended for weight loss, because the researchers wanted to separate the effects of diet from those of weight loss. The results were that there was a nonsignificant increase in LDL cholesterol on Atkins (news reports didn't mention that the change was not statistically significant). Also, some markers for inflammation rose during Atkins, and a measure of vascular flexibility varied according to fat intake. PDF of abstract of the study
Problems: The study hasn't been published, so we don't know the details. It has not been peer-reviewed. It was presented in a short oral presentation at a recent large American Health Association conference - Dr. Eades provides lots of details of the conference.
We don't really have any idea of what people ate. The contents of both the South Beach and Atkins diets vary according to the individual's response to the diet over time - there is no one carbohdyrate level for everyone in any phase but the first on either of these diets, yet the study jumped right to maintainence. Dr. Eades does an analysis guessing at how much carbohydrate they may have been consuming.
The Post report parrots the myths about low-carb eating ("fat-laden meat", "curtailing vegetables", etc), attributing these to Atkins, and failing to mention that the content of fruits, vegetables, and grains on Atkins and South Beach is very similar. Does this mean that the people didn't eat much in the way of vegetables and fruit, even on the maintenance phase of Atkins? Possibly - we just don't know.
The Bottom Line: It's sometimes hard to tell whether a study is worth paying attention to. However, studies with very small numbers of subjects, studies that haven't been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, and diet studies where such scanty information is provided that you have no idea what people actually ate, deserve very little of your attention. That's an easy call to make. On the other hand, these studies were large, well-controlled ones:
Comments
This is what I know, from my own personal experience. I, personally, went from 230 pounds, to 167 pounds, between 15 Jan., 2004- 15 Aug., 2004,
following Atkins. My cholesterol levels dropped. My migraines slowed, and, I felt better, all around.
Since not following the low-carb plan as well, my weight has gone back up to 205, and, my migraines are back.
I just went to the Dr., today, and, he told me to follow a low-carb diet, to be healthy.