| Home | Free Articles for Your Site | Submit an Article | Advertise | Link to Us | Search | Contact Us |
This site is an archive of old articles

    SEARCH ARTICLES
    Custom Search


vertical line

Article Surfing Archive



Mikey Doesn't Like It! - Articles Surfing

Let's give the late Dr. Robert Atkins some credit. Over more than a quarter of a century he made us realize that we can get along with fewer carbohydrates than most of us have become used to. It's too bad that his weight loss plan has not lived up to its promise. There are some successes, to be sure, but since the beginning of the Atkins Revolution obesity has tripled in adults as well as children.

Physicians who care for children are aware that a high fat, low carbohydrate diet is nearly impossible to maintain. This is the ketogenic diet that they have been using for nearly 80 years in order to limit seizures in their patients. It is exceedingly difficult for parents to keep kids on this diet because of its unpalatability.

Low carbohydrate diets have reached their apogee. In rocket scientist jargon, that's the point where a missile's trajectory reaches its highest level and starts heading downward. Makers of low-carb foods are taking a hit, as did their high carb cohorts a few years earlier. Their timing was pretty bad. According to NPD, a research group, the number of Americans on a low carb diet dropped by half, to 4.6 percent, in September 2004.

There are no long-term studies that validate a low carbohydrate diet plan. After more than 25 years, the longest trial described in peer-reviewed medical journals lasted only 12 months. The dropout rate was high among all types of dieters, approximately 40 percent of the weight loss consisted of perfectly good muscle and other lean tissue, not fat, and weight loss was so modest as to be insignificant -- it averaged one pound per month. After all, when a person that weighs 250 pounds loses 12 pounds he or she is still seriously overweight. It's true that such a modest weight loss does lower the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease, but not dramatically. Without lifestyle changes that go far beyond carbohydrate control, 90 percent of dieters regain the weight that they have lost, and then some.

What's the future of low-carb? Diets never seem to die. You will see variations on that theme for the rest of this century. The entire industry somehow ignores the Mediterranean diet, whose original adherents in the Greek islands have been among the longest-lived and heart-disease-free people on the globe. Fifty percent of their calories come from carbohydrates and 40 percent from fat, almost all of that from olive oil. It relies heavily on fruits and vegetables, whole grains and very little red meat. Alas, no money-making potential there!

Even Mikey knows, this isn't rocket science

Submitted by:

Philip J. Goscienski, M.D.

Philip J. Goscienski, M.D. is a pediatric infectious diseases specialist with a 45-year career in clinical and academic medicine. Dr. Goscienski has written for the Saturday Evening Post and Currents, the national newsletter of the American Heart Association and is a featured writer for North San Diego County Magazine. He has drawn on his interests in biology, anthropology, paleopathology and physical fitness to develop Better Life Seminars, a series of presentations in which he explains how our most distant ancestors lived, and how we can apply this knowledge to extend our healthspan and avoid the major chronic diseases of our age. His book, Health Secrets of the Stone Age is based on his seminars, and on the most recent findings in medical and anthropological research. It is scheduled for a January 2005 release date. You can visit his web site at www.stoneagedoc.com.



        RELATED SITES






https://articlesurfing.org/health/mikey_doesnt_like_it.html

Copyright © 1995 - Photius Coutsoukis (All Rights Reserved).










ARTICLE CATEGORIES

Aging
Arts and Crafts
Auto and Trucks
Automotive
Business
Business and Finance
Cancer Survival
Career
Classifieds
Computers and Internet
Computers and Technology
Cooking
Culture
Education
Education #2
Entertainment
Etiquette
Family
Finances
Food and Drink
Food and Drink B
Gadgets and Gizmos
Gardening
Health
Hobbies
Home Improvement
Home Management
Humor
Internet
Jobs
Kids and Teens
Learning Languages
Leadership
Legal
Legal B
Marketing
Marketing B
Medical Business
Medicines and Remedies
Music and Movies
Online Business
Opinions
Parenting
Parenting B
Pets
Pets and Animals
Poetry
Politics
Politics and Government
Real Estate
Recreation
Recreation and Sports
Science
Self Help
Self Improvement
Short Stories
Site Promotion
Society
Sports
Travel and Leisure
Travel Part B
Web Development
Wellness, Fitness and Diet
World Affairs
Writing
Writing B