First of all I don't trust testimonials, even a physician, especially one that is in no way involved in treating high cholesterol, interstitial nephritis, gout attacks, gallstones etc. all the complications of the Atkin's diet.

There have been no , I repeat, no randomized controll trial that have looked at the efficacy of high protien diets and long term consequences I like Atkin's due to his contribution to medicine by getting us to rethink the consensus on the ratios of carbohydrates etc. that are in our diet.

The May 22 issue of New England JOurnal of Medicine did do a randomized trial that showed no difference in weight loss at 12 mos for an Atkin's type diet and conventional weight loss diet. However, there were many limitions of the study because the end point was only weight loss and cholesterol profile (slightly better in Atkin's diet) and it only studied 63 people.

Here is a link to my critique on another atkins's sponsered study which was very shoddy. http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...s&pagenumber=2

The April 9 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association did a systematic review (so not a prospective, randomized placebo controlled trial) of 107 research articles between 1966 and feb 2003.

Their consensus " Our quantitiative synthesis ...on the efficacy and safety of low-carbohydrate diets suggests that there is insufficient evidence to make recommendations for or against the use of these diets ". the authors write. They also recommend additional research evaluatiing the long term effects on cancer (since we are eliminating alot of antioxidant foods ), osteopersosis (high protein diets have in case studies showed accelerated bone loss,)gout attacks etc.
And interestingly, none of the trials studies predominantly active peopleAll the studies studied mostly sedentary people who comprised a majority of the clinical participants.


Personally, I keep an inventory for my clinical studies on many psycosocial aspects of my patients from sexual preference to current diet. I have seen an direct association in newly diagnosed gout with those undergoing the Atkin's diet as well as gallstones, proteinuria etc.




Now it is interesting that the few randomized trials show that contrary to opinion, the cholesterol profile of the subjects actually improve (triglycerides lower, HDL goes up, LDL goes down) but...the key here is but.... they only studied the cholesterol profile improvement no more than six months. Many clincians, including myself, note an initial improvement in cholesterol profile than a decompensation right aroungd 8-12 mos. I am looking forward to seeing more data.
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BY the way, here is a refutation 4 pages long on the Taube article in the New YOrk times. This guy did neglect alot of data that did not support his hypothesis and misquoted things. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/443216

It's not to say the atkin's may not help active, athletes but there is no clinical proof. I p]ersonally like the Zone diet, which also advocates a higher proetin ratio, but I haven't seen the complications as much as I have seen with atkin's. Studies are underway and will validate or refute many of atkin's claims.