Newbie here...My Dh's brother died a few weeks before Christmas of a massive heart attack at 46 years old. His father died the same way, not quite as young, but definetly premature. His mother has had two strokes and he has two uncles who have died of heart attack and stroke.

We decided to do atkins as away to help stave of problems and of course he will be seeing a dr. to find out other ways he can help with what appears to be a genetic problem.

Can anyone tell me more specifically how LC can help with heart and other health problems or steer me to a good link that talks about health benefits in depth?

Tink

Hi Tink and welcome to the forum!

You might find this subforum on Cholesterol/Heart Disease helpful: http://forum.lowcarber.org/forumdis...p?s=&forumid=48
You can also have a read through the Research/Media Watch subforum; there's a lot of information there on how low carbing can help heart disease.
My DH is in much the same situation as yours with a very strong family history of strokes and heart attacks and a relatively young age as well as a strong family history of diabetes. He hasn't had a problem with either, yet, but we don't want him to either. His cardiac profile bloodwork, including a very expensive test to show how big his LDL particles are both came back in the near-optimal range after being on low carb for several months.
My best advice is to read and research and don't believe every person who comes along telling you that following a low carb lifestyle is a ticket straight to the morgue. It just ain't so.

There is a really fine book on the health aspect of low carb eating called Life Without Bread. It is not really a book about dieting, in fact the diet instructions take up only a couple of pages. Here is a link to the amazon page with some reviews:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...=books&n=507846

I got mine at Amazon but it is probably available in any large library system.

Most people come to low carb to lose weight, and that's why I'm here as well. But after the weight is lost the low carb lifestyle seems to be less harmful than other ways to eat. Tastes better too.

slowday