There is periodically some discussion on the merits of the Atkins' diet.
Here is a website which provides articles from the North American Association
for the Study of Obesity (NAASO) 2000 Annual Meeting.  To read the full
article (which also contains a lot of information on diabetes), you will have
to join Medscape (a very useful medical information site) for nothing:

<http://www.medscape.com/Medscape/CNO/2001/NAASO/NAASO-01.html>

This extract addresses the Atkins diet:

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<The "Secret" of the Atkins Diet

There is no doubt that one of the more popular diets in the United States
today is the Atkins Diet. Dr Robert C Atkins, a cardiologist, has been
publishing books for decades espousing his version of how to achieve
successful weight loss. He promotes a diet that is relatively high in protein
and low in carbohydrates, which allows people to eat more calories on his
plan than with others and still lose weight. He claims that his diet provides
still unexplained metabolic advantages that promote weight loss.

Data presented by Dr Bernard V Miller and colleagues[2] raised concerns about
the renal adverse effects of the high-protein intake associated with the
Atkins plan. It is known that high dietary protein levels can lead to acute
renal hyperfiltration. Miller and colleagues theorized that long-term
high-protein ingestion could lead to chronic hyperfiltration and the
progression of renal failure. They enrolled 18 healthy, overweight adults
(mean age, 38.8 years; mean body mass index [BMI], 36.6 kg/m2) with no
history of renal dysfunction into their study. After several days of baseline
dietary measurements, all subjects were given copies of the book Dr. Atkins'
New Diet Revolution and were instructed to follow the diet as described.

After the first 2 weeks of the restrictive induction phase of the diet, the
glomerular filtration rate, as measured by technetium-99m
diethylene-triamine-pentaacetic acid (Tc-99m DTPA) renal scans, increased by
10.7% compared with baseline, even though the amount of protein in the diet
was not different from baseline. During the same 2-week induction phase,
daily calorie consumption decreased from 2481 to 1419 and was accompanied by
an 8-lb weight loss. Examination of the patients after an additional 2 weeks
on the diet (Atkins' weight-loss phase) revealed that patients consumed an
average of 1500 calories per day and experienced an additional 3 lb of weight
loss. The glomerular filtration rate remained 9% above baseline, although
this value was no longer statistically significant.

In both the induction and weight loss phases, dieters decreased carbohydrate
intake by about 90%, but consumed the same amount of protein as at baseline.
In this real-world setting, people lost weight because they decreased calorie
intake, and almost all of this decrease was in carbohydrates. This study
implies that a calorie is still a calorie. There may not be any "metabolic
advantages" to the Atkins Diet; just like any other diet, you lose weight
when you eat less. Considering the hyperfiltration observed in this study,
theremay actually be a potential "metabolic disadvantage."

More on Atkins

There is a registry for people who have lost at least 30 lb of weight and
have kept it off for longer than 1 year (weight loss is corroborated by
physician records). No restrictions are placed on the methods that
individuals use to achieve or maintain theweight loss. Called the National
Weight Control Registry (NWCR), this registry lists more than 3000 people.
Dr H. R.Wyatt and colleagues [3] examined the records of 2681 people in the
NWCR to see how often an Atkins-type diet was used.  They were only able to
find 25 subjects (0.9%) who reported consuming 24% or less of their calories
per day from carbohydrates. The mean duration of successful weight
maintenance in this low-carbohydrate group was 19 months compared with a mean
duration of 36 months in the group who consumed more than 24% of their
calories per day in theform of carbohydrates.

The researchers speculated that because the Atkins diet has been in use for
more than 30 years, followers of the diet should be well represented among
those who maintained long-term weight loss. Because so few followers of the
Atkins diet were found in the group with long-term weight maintenance, they
concluded that the Atkins diet may not create the favorable "metabolic
advantage" that is claimed.>

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Dr Mel C Siff
Denver, USA
http://www.egroups.com/group/supertraining