|
by
Konstantin Monastyrsky
I am not against fat as this may come across from
my particular take on the Atkins Diet. Truth is — dietary fat is an
essential nutrient, and it is an important part of my program. Also, I
am not against protein — it is every bit as essential as fat is. And I
am not against carbohydrates — they provide functional energy for the
brain, blood, and central nervous system, and protect muscles and bones
from wasting. So what I am against?
— Well, my specialty is analyzing diets based on their technical
merits, quantitative metrics, and qualitative results — an approach that I refer to as
forensic nutrition. This
kind of analysis isn't relying on the publishers' hyper-inflated claims,
or cherry-picked testimonials, or bought up celebrity endorsements, or “paid to order”
clinical studies, but on the boring and mundane review of
physiological minutia,
such as calories intake vs. energy output, fluids
circulating inside the entrails, undigested foods inside the
stomach and small intestine,
the volume of stools queued up in the large intestine en route to the gutter, and
so on.
To pass my qualification criteria with a top grade, the diet
“under the microscope” must
perform at least 80% of the time and for 80% of all people while used exactly as
its author prescribed it. And, ideally, it will keep you slim, fit and healthy for the rest of
your natural life. I refer to these benchmarks as the “80-80-95 rule.”
The non-performing 20% aspect reflects the hard truth
of weight reduction dieting: inadequate preparation, poor counseling,
non-compliance, pre-existing medical conditions, bad luck, and other
life's realities that make this whole enterprise so challenging for all
involved parties.
The last benchmark in the formula stands for 95% health attainment relative to your age.
If you ruin your health while pursuing a flat belly, what's the point,
right? The
“health attainment” is, actually, a term used by the World Health
Organization, and it means exactly what it means.
So, as you can see, my qualification criteria are
neither too lose, nor too tight. After all, I apply the exact same rule to
my own weight loss program, and this obliges me to remain impartial,
realistic, and open-minded.
But be forewarned — the “impartial” doesn't
mean pussyfooting while summarizing my findings. After all, I am not a
collegial medical doctor, but an assertive medical
writer and surefooted weight loss counselor. In other words, my job isn't to protect the honor of my reticent
guild, but to assist my readers and clients to protect their health.
And here is what I found while analyzing the immediate
and extended safety and performance of the Atkins Diet, the Ornish Diet, and the Paleo
Diet — the three stalwarts of, respectively, the high fat, high
carbohydrates, and high protein schools of thought and approaches to weight
loss.
The Atkins Diet: The Revolution That Toppled Its Own
Leader
Left without its
larger-than-life inventor and promoter, the Atkins Diet has been floundering
lately. But since practically everyone is asking me the same question
over and over again: “Konstantin, are
you just like Atkins?,” it makes sense to explain why I am not.
For starters, accomplishing a complete and permanent weight loss based on the literal application of
Dr. Atkins' recommendations is a physiological, thermodynamic, and
biochemical impossibility.
This impossibility is immediately apparent even
from the title of the original book that had made him rich and famous:
“Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution: The
High Calorie Way To Stay Thin Forever.”
Inside, Dr. Atkins
recommended the following weight loss strategy:
“You eat as
much as you want, as often as you want. You eat luxuriously—heavy cream,
butter, mayonnaise, cheeses, meats, fish (and crisp green salads
too).” p. 10.
What was he smoking while writing that? Even a fourth
grader knows that the energy content of each gram of fat equals nine
calories, while each gram of carbohydrates and protein amounts to only
four, so if you consume unlimited fat as Dr. Atkins suggests, you are
going to be just as fat and sick as he eventually became.
True, relatively young and healthy people may drop considerable weight even with this unusual approach. However, most of
that drop doesn't come from the loss of fat, but from the loss of phantom weight
— a non-fat portion of the body's variable weight represented by water,
stools, and undigested foods inside the GI tract.
I describe this phenomenon in the episode entitled
How To Overcome a Weight Loss Plateau And
Ensuing Diet Failure, and, in depth, in the chapter from my book
Fiber Menace entitled
appropriately Atkins Goes
to South Beach.
But for all others who are not as well, or not as
young, or morbidly obese, or already diabetic, or with
digestive disorders, additional weight loss (on top of the phantom
weight)
may also be happening for the following wrong reasons:
● Because a person may no longer be as responsive to
endogenous (produced by the pancreas) insulin, a condition known as
"insulin resistance," which is one step away from having type 1
diabetes.
● Because a person may be affected by thyroid
disorders that disrupt the metabolism of fats, proteins, and
carbohydrates, and cause profound weight loss.
● Because a person may already have digestive
disorders that prevent foods from assimilating, or may develop them in
response to a sudden change of diet composition from predominantly carbs
to predominantly protein and fats, a rather common occurrence.
● Because a complete withdrawal or significant
reduction of carbohydrates, as Dr. Atkins recommended, causes a
continuous wasting of muscle tissues (and commensurate weight loss at a
rate of 50 to 100 grams daily, and much more in people with impaired
digestion of protein) related to gluconeogenesis — a process of turning
protein into glucose required for proper functioning of the blood,
brain, and central nervous system.
● Because the Atkins Diet has a profound tendency to
cause significant dehydration in its early stages, and since water
represents up to 60% of the adult's body weight, severe dehydration
alone may demonstrate a 5 to 10 lb weight reduction even in moderately
overweight adults.
And in many cases it may be all of the above because
obesity, particularly of the morbid variety, is a pretty serious clinical
condition, and one of the symptoms of raging type 2 diabetes. So, since
when has making an already sick person even sicker and causing a profound
“body wasting” in the process, become a 'weight loss diet?' For all I know,
this is pure
and simple medical malpractice.
In addition to all of the above, the “classical” Atkins Diet is
completely inappropriate for
people with pre-diabetes or diabetes because it may exacerbate
metabolic acidosis, and is well known for its
debilitating complications, such as unstable blood sugar,
delayed stomach emptying, chronic gastritis, severe dehydration,
crippling fatigue, diet-breaking constipation, brittle nails, hair loss, amenorrhea, infertility,
and some others.
As you probably well know by now, Dr. Atkins himself passed away while
morbidly obese — at 258 lb, — and the Medical Examiner's Autopsy Report
had also noted that he had a history of heart attacks (myocardial
infarction, or MI), congestive heart failure (CHF), and hypertension (HTN)
[link].
True, the actual cause of his death was an accidental
fall. Still, cracking one's skull on ice isn't an excuse from being
morbidly obese
and wearing a pacemaker, particularly if you are a board certified
cardiologist and a world-famous weight loss guru.
Because of that accident, many people, including,
amazingly, some medical doctors, have “bought” the story that the fluids
from the intravenous infusions provided in the hospital had made Dr.
Atkins bloated, and had increased his weight by 50 to 60 lb.
Not possible, actually. When comatose patients — as was the case with
late Dr. Atkins —
are admitted into the ICU, along with mandatory IV, they are also
immediately set up with a urethral catheter to collect their urine round
the clock. From then on, nurses and physicians continuously monitor their urine
bags to make sure that the volume of IV fluids going in, and the urine
output coming out are close to each other, especially for patients with
a history of congestive heart failure and heart attacks, as, again, was the case
with Dr. Atkins. Also, the patients in his condition are heavily dosed
with diuretics to relieve their bodies from excess fluids in order to
reduce the workload of their hearts and lungs.
Sure, with extra sloppy treatment he could have retained
10 to 20 lb of intravenous fluids in the nine days of his emergency
treatment. Even with zero urination (an impossibility, of course), the
total amount would be around 36 lb (~2 liters x 9 days). But still
nowhere near the often mentioned 50 to 60 lb. Besides, even if his
purported weight at the time of admission was only 200 lb, he was still
65 lb over his weight of 135 lb at the age of 18, a decent
benchmark of his approximate normal adult weight.
I actually believe the misinformation surrounding Dr. Atkins'
prior health history and weight at the time of death had been skillfully
planted to protect his reputation, credibility, legacy, and the
incredible financial value of the Atkins brand. Lo and behold, a year after
Dr. Atkins' death Goldman Sachs Capital Partners and Parthenon Capital
— two prominent private equity firms — acquired a somewhat tarnished
Atkins
Nutritionals for a reported $600 to $800 million [link].
Even though the Atkins Nutritional under new
owners quickly disowned its namesake‘s “unorthodox” views on “eat as
much as you want,” the damage had already been done to pretty much anyone who had
tried in earnest, but eventually failed the Atkins Diet.
And consider this: when Dr. Atkins published his
“revolutionary” first
book in 1972, 14% of Americans were overweight. By 2003 and 40 million
copies later, when he passed away, the number of overweight Americans
had increased to 65%, a staggering 464% jump in just one generation. Indeed,
some revolution...
— The “80-80-95 rule” passing grade for the Atkins Diet?
—
Fail.
The Ornish Diet: If Pigs Can Fly, Then You Can Eat More
And Weigh Less
When “THE #1 New York Times BESTSELLER” goes out of
print, is it a problem with the New York Times, or it is a problem with
the bestseller? Let's figure this out...
The Ornish Diet happens to be an even more extreme
approach to weight loss than
the Atkins Diet. Let's start from the bizarre title of Dr. Ornish's
seminal book:
“Eat
More, Weigh Less: Dr. Dean Ornish's Life Choice Program for
Losing Weight Safely While Eating Abundantly.”
Obviously, his book wasn‘t named that way because it
was true, but because when you promise guilt-free weight loss, you
simply sell more books.
However, what makes Dr. Ornish truly dangerous is his
stature. Unlike Dr. Atkins, who was considered a charlatan even by many
of his peers, Dr. Ornish is a professor of medicine at an established
and prominent university, so the public takes his opinion and writings
seriously, and many follow his doctrine to the tee. Just consider this
glowing cover endorsement:
“Revolutionary. ... Dr. Ornish's work could change
the lives of millions. By the standards of conventional medicine, the
impossible has happened. — Newsweek”
So what was so revolutionary in “Eat More, Weight
Less?” I'll let the book do the talking:
“If you really want to be able to eat as much as you
want until you are full and still lose weight, than you need to reduce
fat down to around 10% of calories.
In practical terms, this means
excluding all meats, including fish and chicken, and all oils.”
p.34
Well, if you know anything about obesity, “to be
able to eat as much as you want” of carbohydrates for weight loss is
as effective as having a pint of ice cream before dinner instead of
after, and here is why:
● First, on predominantly high-carbohydrate diets, such as
the Ornish diet or any other restrictive vegetarian diet, most of the
weight loss comes at the expense of muscle and bone wasting. When this
type of diet is adhered to for too long, it becomes apparent from
brittle hair and nails, osteopenia, edema, fibromialgia, amenorrhea,
loss of libido, depression, memory loss, and so on.
● Second, if you exclude all fats and oils, none of
the fat-soluble vitamins (A, E, D, K) are going to assimilate — a death
wish, literally. The deficiency of vitamin K, for example, is a primary
cause of lethal internal bleeding related to peptic ulcers, aneurisms,
and strokes. The deficiency of vitamin D disrupts blood sugar control,
and is behind diabetes and obesity. The deficiency of vitamin E is
behind low immunity and cancers. The deficiency of vitamin A is behind
blindness, and a myriad of other problems. The deficiency of essential
fatty acids that are available primarily from animal sources, such as
fish oil, is behind heart attacks and strokes.
● Third, if you exclude all meats and fish, you may
as well say goodbye to your nice skin, hair, nails, muscles, bones, and
teeth — the typical side effects of chronic protein deficiency,
and a principal mechanism of the “weight loss” on this type of diet at
the expense of muscle and bone tissue wasting.
● Fourth, unrestricted carbohydrates are almost
always in excess of your daily needs (of about 150-200 grams). They are
freely converted by the liver into fat (triglycerides), so you gain even
more fat in the process.
But getting fat, bald, hunchbacked, toothless, and
wrinkled would be the least of your problems next to the ensuing apathy
and irritability, amenorrhea, infertility, loss of libido, impaired
cognition, pneumonia, or heart, liver, and kidney failure.
If you care to know all the gory outcomes of “excluding
all meats, including fish and chicken,” just read the article
entitled
Protein
Energy Undernutrition: Symptoms and Signs from the Merck
Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, an arch-conservative therapeutic
reference trusted by mainstream medical doctors worldwide, and
especially prominent in the United States.
And don‘t get me started on the role of
high-carbohydrate diets in the pathogenesis of high blood pressure,
heart attacks and strokes because of elevated blood sugar, high
triglycerides, particularly from the accumulation of phytosterols,
plant-derived compounds that are similar in structure and function to
cholesterol.
Or, the role of isoflavones (estrogen-like compounds)
in soy in genitourinary and breast cancers, infertility, hot flashes,
dementia, hypertension, and heart attacks — the same problems that had
plagued Hormone Replacement Therapy, notorious now for its deadly
side-effects.
Or, the complete inappropriateness of high-carbohydrate
diets for people with pre-diabetes and diabetes.
Or, the role of lectins (plant glycoproteins) from
dairy, wheat, rye, beans, soy, peanuts, tomatoes, and others plants in
the pathogenesis of practically all inflammatory conditions, such as
asthma, atherosclerosis, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn‘s
disease, ulcerative colitis, gout, osteoarthritis, celiac sprue, autism,
multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer‘s, and so many others.
True, there are some adults, especially young and
healthy ones, who may thrive for a while on high-carbohydrate diets.
However, if you are already overweight, or diabetic, or both, you are
clearly not one of them.
— The “80-80-95 rule” passing grade for the Ornish Diet? — Well, judging by the mere fact that the “Eat more, Weigh Less”
has been out of print for some time, the grade is Fail. And this brings us to the third extreme, a high-protein
diet...
The Paleo Diet: A Caveman Goes To The Supermarket
The Paleo Diet is one of the most popular versions of
the high-protein diets genre. I'll let the book speak for itself:
“The
Paleo Diet is based in the bedrock of Stone Age diets: EAT LOTS
OF LEAN MEATS, FRESH FRUITS, AND VEGETABLES.” (p. 21,
capitalization by the author)
Sounds reasonable, except, come to think of it, there
were no “fresh fruits and vegetables” year round during the Stone
Age. And if there were some wild fruits available for gathering, at the
very best the gathering season lasted just a few months. None of the vegetables
that we consume today have been available until well into the
agricultural era. And even if they were, people had absolutely no means
of cooking/processing/storing any of them.
From that point on, the whole book becomes laughable.
It recommends, for example, three protein-based meals — for breakfast,
lunch, and dinner, — and high protein snacks in-between, such as chicken
breast, lean steak, hard-boiled egg, or beef jerky.
The concept of a caveman having three daily
range-cooked meals and pre-cooked snacks (particularly hard-boiled eggs
and beef jerky) is just as preposterous as the idea of having year-round
access to fresh fruits and vegetables during the Stone Age.
Just like with the Atkins Diet, the initial weight loss
of high-protein diets is also represented by the loss of phantom weight. Unfortunately, most
people past the age of 45-50, can't consume three protein meals daily
without eventually developing severe digestive disorders related to
proteolytic deficiency and/or inadequate gastric acidity.
The high-protein diet is also inappropriate for
patients affected by diabetes, because it is commonly associated with
delayed stomach emptying (gastroparesis). In this case the undigested
proteins begin to rot while in the digestive tract. The byproducts of
protein indigestion and rotting are extremely allergenic and toxic, and
are behind debilitating fatigue, lupus-like symptoms, gastritis, enteritis,
abdominal bloating, irritable bowel syndrome, flatulence, ulcerative
colitis, and Crohn's disease.
Without a doubt, fit and healthy individuals,
particularly athletes (such as Dr. Cordain) and body builders, may thrive on
high-protein diets. Alas, the physiology of athletes in their prime is just as far from
the physiology of someone having pre-diabetes and diabetes as you and I are
from the Stone Age.
— The “80-80-95 rule” passing grade for the Paleo Diet? — Good approach for young, healthy, and athletic people who wish to stay
fit and slim in the Information Age. Impractical and potentially harmful for anyone
already affected by diabetes, pre-diabetes, and related obesity.
What had they been stoned with?
But how come these doctors — well educated, plenty
smart, and, without a doubt, well-meaning, — can go so wrong? Well, the answer is much simpler than you think: when you
start conceiving a weight loss diet (or a book) while you are still
young and overweight, anything goes for a while.
By the time they run into problems
(the way I did with my own high carbohydrate diet back in 1996, or Dr.
Atkins later in his life, or Dr. Ornish by changing his present tune),
admitting one's own stupid errors, particularly with a trail of books and
papers spanning a decade or more, is professional suicide and,
potentially, legal jeopardy, particularly for medical doctors.
Here is a brief run-down on actual dates in support of
this opinion:
— Dr. Robert Atkins (1930-2003) published
his first book in 1972, at the age of 42, while he started dribbling in
nutrition in response to his own weight problems back in 1963, almost a
decade earlier, at the age of 33, and while weighing 224 lb (100 kg).
While investigating Dr. Atkins‘s legacy for my
unpublished book, I came across a little paperback, that, I believe, he
more or less appropriated, but has never acknowledged. This book was
published in the United States in the late fifties, early sixties
(1958-1963), and the parallels between the timing of Dr. Atkins
epiphany, and the content of “Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution” are
remarkable (click to enlarge, front and back covers):
Well, we already know what had happened to Dr. Atkins
health- and weight-wise from a prior discussion of his views. I hope
learning from his unfortunate fate will spare you a similar problem.
— Dr. Dean Ornish (b. 1953) has
published the original paper that has fueled his obsession with
vegan diets back in 1983, at the still tender age of 30. It was
entitled the “Effects of Stress Management Training and Dietary
Changes in Treating Ischemic Heart Disease” in 1983 in the
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) [link].
Incidentally, the “research” in that study was
embarrassingly substandard. It lasted only 24 days, and included a
total of 23 patients in the experimental group, and 23 controls.
Furthermore, the “Patients in the experimental group were housed
together in a rural environment to maximize compliance with the
intervention and as a component of the stress management training”,
and where fully catered to every whim, while the “controls continued
their routine activities at work and home."
In other words, this “study” compared the heart
function and endurance of people who were, in effect, enjoying a first
class leisurely vacation in the countryside vis-à-vis people who led
their normal stress-laden lives in the city of Houston.
Oh, what a surprise that the lucky ones “in the
experimental” group “somewhat improved left ventricular regional wall
motion during peak exercise, and a net change in the left ventricular
ejection fraction from rest to maximum exercise of +6.4%.” Isn't
this what French, Greeks, and Italians do for ages in order to enjoy
healthier and longer lives — taking five week long paid summer vacations mandated
by the government?
Still, these two laughable outcomes — “somewhat”
and “+6.4%” — from inheritantly biased study were
enough to propel Dr. Ornish into the ranks of prominent cardiologists,
and to become a celebrated diet guru and bestselling author. As they say
in the country where I came from, this may happen “Only in America.”
As you can see from the picture on the left taken in
2007, a 54 year old Dr. Ornish doesn't look particularly fit or
wholesome as in his cover page portrait from the 2001 edition (above). Make
your own conclusions. (Source:
Wikipedia).
— Dr. Loren Cordain (b. 1951) was
introduced to the Paleo Diet concept in 1987, at the prime age of 36.
Without a doubt, the Paleo Diet was absolutely perfect for this athletic
and handsome Professor in the Department of Health and Exercise Science
at Colorado State University [link].
Even today, close to 60, Dr. Cordain's appearance is
remarkable, and I envy his build and good fortune. Alas, if you haven‘t been
blessed with similar genes or good luck, and attempt the Paleo Diet
to reverse diabetes, you may develop a peptic ulcer on top and severe
constipation on the bottom in less time than it may take you to complete
reading Dr. Cordian's book.
Obviously, none of the above books are without some
morsels of common sense,
particularly Dr. Atkins' in relation to diabetes and heart
disease, or Dr. Cordain's for athletes. Unfortunately, the majority of
already overweight people reading them can't
distinguish the “good” from the “bad,” and the “bad” from the “ugly” the
way experts can, and, naturally, settle for the “ugly” — unlimited fat
as in the Atkins Diet, unlimited carbohydrates as in the Ornish Diet,
and unlimited proteins as in the Paleo Diet. Lo and behold, we love to eat, and eat we do:
“Americans are continuing to get fatter and fatter,
with obesity rates reaching 30 percent or more in nine states last year,
as opposed to only three states in 2007, health officials reported on
Tuesday. The increases mean that 2.4 million more people became obese
from 2007 to 2009, bringing the total to 72.5 million, or 26.7 percent
of the population. The numbers are part of a continuing and ominous
trend.” (Obesity
Rates Keep Rising, Troubling Health Officials;
The New York Times, Aug 10, 2010.)
True, there are a lot of social, endemic, demographic,
medical, and policy causes behind this tragedy. What is really sad, the
obesity epidemics made even worse by the most famous and popular diets,
and the mainstream medical doctors behind them.
She wanted to lose weight, but, instead, lost her teeth.
What gives?
This overview wouldn't be complete without discussing
the impact of high carbohydrate diets on bone health, and,
consequentially, on your health, appearance, and quality of life.
The Ornish Diet lacks
essential amino acids by design. Some of these amino acids can only be
obtained from primary proteins (meat, fish, and seafood, not plants), and are required for the
synthesis of connective tissue (collagen, elastin, elaunin, oxytalan,
and bone marrow) that makes up not just
bones, teeth, and supporting periodontal tissue, but also muscles, tendons, ligaments, blood vessels,
skin, nails, hair,
and so on.
Even though a careful combining of plant proteins may
deliver all of the essential amino acids, they are still considered
secondary, because humans lack proteolytic enzymes to digest and
assimilate them.
When primary proteins are low or missing, the body
synthesizes glucose and other critical substances required to maintain
energy and structural metabolism from its own muscle and bone tissues. Quite
appropriately, this process is called protein
wasting, and is an outcome of chronic protein energy undernutrition (PEU) [link].
When the diet-related wasting of the bone tissue
commences, at first it results in
osteopenia, or an early stage of osteoporosis. As time and the
restrictive diet progress along, osteopenia turns into osteoporosis. The
connection between the bone wasting and osteoporosis is difficult to grasp
because it is incorrectly portrayed and thought of as a “mineral
deficiency disease” related mainly to missing calcium, magnesium,
and vitamin D.
Actually, according to the Merck Manual of Diagnosis
and Therapy, here is what "osteoporosis" actually means:
“...a progressive metabolic bone disease that
decreases bone density (bone mass per unit volume), with deterioration
of bone structure.” [link].
The proper emphasis in this quote is on the “deterioration
of bone structure,” also known as bone matrix. Obviously, the
decrease of “bone density” is the end result of this condition,
and not its cause.
Just like all other tissues, the “bone structure”
in question is made of collagen. You can load yourself up to the gills
with supplemental calcium, magnesium, and vitamin D, but if you bones
lack the “structure” to hold these minerals inside the bone
matrix, it “ain‘t gonna” help a bit.
What I just described — that osteoporosis is commonly
portrayed as a mineral-deficiency disease rather than the outcome of
protein deficiency — is one of the most pervasive and tragic medical
errors. I pointed this error out as far back as in 2000 in my
Russian-language book entitled Functional
Nutrition.
Even though the Atkins- and Paleo-style diets include
plentiful animal protein, they may still contribute to muscle and bone
wasting in older adults, because they may not be able to digest dietary
proteins as well as younger people. Adding insult to injury, whatever
protein gets digested on these diets, may be used up for gluconeogenesis — a metabolic
process that (in the absence of adequate digestible carbohydrates) turns
proteins from foods into glucose well before the bones and muscles can
claim their rightful share.
Because the blood, the brain, and the central nervous
system have a pronounced preference for glucose (as their sole source of
energy), the gluconeogenesis commences before lipolysis — a metabolic
process that turns dietary and body fat into ketones, the organic
substances that the body uses to substitute missing glucose. This is a
biological condition that Dr. Atkins incorrectly called “ketosis.”
Adding insult to injury, the predominantly low-fat
diets, such as the Ornish Diet and Paleo Diet, may also lack adequate
fats to assimilate fat-soluble vitamin D, as well as calcium and
magnesium, whose assimilation is also dependent on having adequate fat
in the system. In this case, in addition to osteoporosis, you are being
hit with another menace — osteomalacia, or the softening of the bones
related to acute mineral and vitamin D deficiency.
These digestive and assimilation problems are further
exaggerated by the poor digestibility and high allergenicity of plant
proteins that come from grains, soy, legumes, and nuts. Malabsorption
syndrome, celiac sprue, gluten enteropathy, and carbohydrate Intolerance
are the most common digestive disorders associated with plant proteins
that dominate Ornish-style diets.
The deficiency of minerals from all of the above causes
exacerbates the softening of the bones. This condition is
called rickets in toddlers, scoliosis in teenagers and young adults, and
osteomalacia in older adults, As people age, osteomalacia becomes
visually apparent from a hunched spine, height reduction (compressed
vertebrae), bowing legs, bunions, osteoarthritis, chronic back pain, and
related symptoms.
For some bizarre reasons scoliosis in teens is
considered an “idiopathic” disorder, meaning “the cause is unknown
[link]”
, and it is still being treated with braces and/or surgeries instead of
a proper diet, mineral supplements, vitamin D, and sufficient dietary
fat to assure their complete assimilation. Since up to 4% of children
suffer from this devastating malady, it has become a profitable racket
for orthopedic surgeons and physical therapists, who specialize in
treating this condition.
Because carbohydrate-rich foods that make up the bulk
of Ornish-style diets (i.e. morning cereals, bread, pasta, fruits,
vegetable salads) require little chewing, the most profound bone loss
and muscle wasting starts with the facial bones and supporting muscles.
This contributes to periodontal disease, eventual tooth loss, and makes
your face look “chewed up,” wrinkled, and saggy, especially after the
loss of facial fat. These are serious weight loss-related complications
for all, but particularly for women past child-bearing age, who are
rightfully concerned about their appearance in the later years.
To be fair to Dr. Ornish, all restrictive diets will
cause a gradual reduction of minerals and microelements without adequate
supplementation. This unfortunate fact of human physiology — that the
essential micronutrients don't come from air — applies to my program as
well, and I don't recommend commencing it or any other diet without
proper supplementation.
This is, incidentally, one of the areas where I am in
complete accord with Dr. Ornish, Dr. Atkins, Dr. Cordain, and most
everyone else involved in this field. So, when they or I recommend taking
supplements to accompany your meager weight loss diet, it isn't so much to make
a few extra bucks off your back, but to insure that the said back doesn't bend
or break in the process. And those who don't insist on taking supplements for
fear of being accused of profiteering, “conflict of interest,” or simply don't want to be
bothered with this “dirty” subject, are guilty of negligence and
malpractice.
***
To learn what do I stand for, please watch
The 12 Rules of Safe And Effective Weight Loss
for patients affected by pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes
episode. |
