A couple of links with info regarding Dr Atkins Death.

http://www.residentandstaff.com/article.cfm?ID=67

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/04/17/obit.atkins/

While I think the debate will always be there on whether or not this diet is safe I believe it would be wise to have labs done on a regular basis.

stgagnon,

Sorry to hear about your Mom. If it were me I would strongly urge her to seek another opinion.

Jim

Part of this WOE is to have lab work done on a regular basis. I read the links. There was not an autopsy performed, so where is this info coming from about him dying from heart disease? Also, he was on a low carb regimen for 40 years.I cannot believe that after living for 40 years on this WOE that the media views his diet as being the cause of his death. My dad ate as he felt like eating all of his life and died at the age of 67 from heart disease. Why isn't the media jumping up and down citing my dad's faulty eating that took his life.

OK, I did a web search and found this link.

http://healthyguy.com/atkins/

IMHO the article is entirely scurrilous. My father, who did NOT have high scholesterol, died of a subdural hemorrhage. Anyone can develop a blood clot after a fall, not just someone with high cholesterol. This proves nothing.

There is some evidence that having high serum cholesterol can contribute to chronic subdural hematoma, but acute subdural hematoma (which is what killed Dr. Atkins) is always caused by head trauma. In the elderly, the head trauma doesn't even have to be something spectacular like an auto accident or falling from a great height; it can be something as simple as falling out of a chair or slipping in the shower (or on an icy sidewalk).
In chronic subdural hematoma, the cause is also sometimes a head trauma but it is often so minor that the patient can't remember bumping their head and the symptoms appear a few weeks after the injury as opposed to immediately after the injury with acute subdural hematoma.

"However, we do know one thing. Millions of people still believe that Dr. Atkins' bizarre low fiber, high animal fat diet is going to save their life." - Healthy Guy, MD

This was the last line in the article posted by RoseTatoo. He obviously has done his research and knows what he is talking about.

His one source reference is CNN and says there was no autopsy. So how does he "know" these facts?

If there was any real truth to this claim, the British tabloids would have had a field day with this information for MONTHS!

Taken from Healthy Guy's website: http://healthyguy.com/atkins/

He's an MA, not an MD and the statement above tells me that he has bought hook, line and sinker the current low fat dogma that high cholesterol causes heart attacks. The fact is, more than half of heart attack victims have normal cholesterol levels, so it's not a very good predictor of who will or won't have a heart attack. Furthermore, many people with very high total cholesterol levels never have heart attacks; if the causation of high cholesterol = heart attack were that accurate, they would all have heart attacks (or certainly a lot more than do now). More recently, it's now thought that Triglycerides, c-reactive protein and ratios of HDL to total and HDL to LDL are better predictors of future cardiac events but that hasn't even been shown conclusively. High carb, even with low fat, is a good way to wind up with high triglycerides as well as high circulating insulin levels (something else that seems to be a very good predictor of future cardiac events).
I did a search for Subdural hematoma and none of the links that I found (and there were many) listed high cholesterol as a risk factor for devleoping either chronic or acute subdural hematoma. The biggest risk factors were: age, use of anticoagulant drugs, alcohol or drug abuse.
Reading through Healthy Guy's website, he promotes a low animal fat, semi vegan diet so of course, he's going to be against the Atkins version of low carb.
His whole article is insinuation without the facts to back it up.