I've seen a number of studies demonstrate that Atkins/low-carb can lead to significant weight loss in the short term, i.e., over a 6 month period.

Does anyone know of any studies that have followed Atkins/low-carb dieters over several years? I have not been able to locate any.

That's because they aren't any...yet. Some are underway.

What you can get, in the mean time, are the anecdotal stories of many members here who have been on Atkins for years.

There's Dr. Atkins himself, who was on it for 30 years with his wife.

In response to someone who said, "You can't fool me, his diet killed him," I said, "Yeah, in his early seventies, and he was playing tennis until the end."

Dr. Lutz, who wrote Life Without Bread, began his low-carb experience in 1958, retired from active medical practice in 1992 at the age of 79. Published his last book on low-carb nutrition in 1995. A fairly long history...

And Dr. Atkins had over 30,000 patients at his clinic in New York City who were followed over 30 years. NO kidney or liver damage, successful weight loss AND much improved cardiac health. Remember, Dr. Atkins was a cardiologist who put his patients on low carb for their HEART HEALTH and was amazed at how fast and easily they lost weight.

Hmm. If the Atkins diet has been around for 30 years, it seems odd that there aren't any long term published studies by now.

Human diet studies are extremely hard to do - they are expensive, have high drop-out rates, and even the best-designed studies have holes in them. For example, today a co-worker told me she was "back on Atkins" - as she mixed heaps of Coffeemate and sugar into her coffee. (I told her she should apply to be an Atkins' spokeswoman.)

The Atkins diet was not studied for decades because low-fat had become dogma and the barriers to such studies were enormous. If you applied for funding to do such a study, you were turned down flat. It would have been easier for a Southern Baptist preacher to get a grant to study Christianity in a Taliban-run academy in Afghanistan.

gee, westerner, you wouldn't be coming in here as some sort of agent provocateur, now would you??

anyway, how about this long term study: 5 million years of human evolution, leading to your very own fine self sitting at a computer reading these words...

Do you have any long term studies of any diet?

Let's say Weight Watchers... Do you have any long term studies for it?

Richard Simmons, Slimfast, or even the American Heart Associations diet, just any long term studies for any of those?

Until then, it's the hunter gatherer diet we evolved on, meat and vegetables.

Wa'il

Well I think we were all part of an unofficial low fat experiment. We don't need any fancy statistics to show us the result of THAT.

Ok, I'll give you that. But it seems to me that the burden of proof is on Dr Atkins, given that he appears to recommend large amounts of saturated fat, which has been pretty conclusively linked to heart disease. The concerns raised about the Atkins diet by the established medical authorities are also troubling to me.

If you folks feel like the Atkins diet is right for you, go right ahead - it's your body. Personally, I'd rather wait for the outcome of the longer-range studies mentioned above. Good health to you all.

Could be the established medical world didn't like what they saw because it was cutting into their practises of dealing with unhealthy people.

[QUOTE=westerner]Ok, I'll give you that. But it seems to me that the burden of proof is on Dr Atkins, given that he appears to recommend large amounts of saturated fat, which has been pretty conclusively linked to heart disease.QUOTE]

that's not actually true, on several levels: 1) Atkins doesn't recommend large amounts of saturated fat, they just dont think there's any reason to avoid it, because 2) studies indicting saturated fat were all done in a high carb-high fat context, not a low carb, high fat context, and do not apply to the low carb diet, and 3) those studies, if you look at them closely, do not actually make a convincing case that saturated fat is bad for you at all. I dont have a set of links handy but do a google on Cholestoral Skeptics and you'll see what I mean...

here's a good "long term" study for ya!

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/st...EMPLATE=DEFAULT

y YURAS KARMANAU
Associated Press Writer





MINSK, Belarus (AP) -- A woman believed to be the oldest in the world celebrated her 116th birthday Wednesday in the former Soviet republic of Belarus.

"I'll drink to my own health with pleasure," said Hanna Barysevich, a former farm worker who lives in a house outside the Belarusian capital Minsk.

"I'm tired of living already, but God still hasn't collected me," she said with a smile.

Barysevich was born on May 5, 1888, in the village of Buda, 37 miles east of Minsk, according to her passport. Her parents were poor, landless peasants.

"From my early childhood I didn't know anything but physical labor," said Barysevich, who never learned to read or write. She worked in a kolkhoz, or collective farm, until age 95, then moved to the house she shares with her 78-year-old daughter Nina.




Barysevich lived through the Bolshevik Revolution, two world wars and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The worst period for her was the reign of dictator Josef Stalin: Her husband Ippolit was declared an "enemy of the people" for allegedly harming the collective farm, arrested and taken to Siberia. He was never heard from again.

She raised her three children on her own, including throughout World War II, when she used to take her family to the woods outside the village to hide from the Nazis.

"A lot of men courted me but I preferred to live on my own," she said.

Today, Barysevich moves with difficulty but unaided. She complains of occasional headaches and worsening vision "but nothing else bothers me."

She attributes her longevity to genes: Her paternal grandmother was 113 when she died. As to diet, Barysevich prefers simple village food: homemade sausages, pork fat, milk and bread.
(note: I'll bet that's whole grain bread and full fat milk!)

Daughter Nina said her mother has a good appetite, a tough character and very strong nerves.

"Throughout my long life, I understood that it isn't worth it to get upset and take everything too close to the heart," Barysevich said.

For her birthday, she hoped for a raise in her monthly pension, equal to about $50, and a chance to go to a Catholic church for confession.

Last month, the Guinness Book of Records recognized a 114-year-old Puerto Rican as the world's oldest living woman. Barysevich said she'd never thought of applying for the distinction.

Of course, there are other diet-related issues other than heart disease. The food of Thailand - based heavily around coconut milk - is perhaps the highest in saturated fat in the world. Check out their stomach cancer rates - by far the lowest in the world. Low-fat Japan has one of the highest rates.

http://seer.cancer.gov/publications...sk/rates49.html