3rd September 2003, 11:16 AM
|
 |
Senior Member
|
|
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Posts: 1,428
|
|
I thought this might be of interest to several people based on previous discussions.
Quote:
Which Is the Healthiest Diet -- Low-Fat or Low-Carbohydrate?
Medscape Cardiology
08/25/2003
J. Willis Hurst, MD, MACP
The lines of battle have been drawn for some time. The low-fat diet, long accepted as the standard approach to weight loss, has been increasingly challenged by the low-carbohydrate diet. The ongoing battle tells us that we still don't know with certainty what to eat.
The late Dr. Atkins contributed to the fray: Without his marketing of the low-carbohydrate diet, there would be no new studies on the subject.
The results of 2 such studies were reported in the May 22 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.[1,2]
Samaha and colleagues[1] compared the effects of a low-carbohydrate diet vs a low-fat diet in obese patients. They reported that severely obese patients on a low-carbohydrate diet had lost more weight at 6-month follow-up than patients who ate a low-fat diet. In addition, they found that there was improvement in the level of triglycerides and insulin sensitivity. It should be noted that this study is severely limited because it lasted only 6months; the long-term value for such a diet was not established in this study.
In the same issue of the journal, Foster and colleagues[2] reported the results of a randomized trial of a low-carbohydrate diet for obese patients. They discovered that obese men lost more weight in 6 months eating a low-carbohydrate diet than those who ate a conventional diet, but at 1-year follow-up, there was little difference between the groups in the amount of weight lost. The low-carbohydrate diet did achieve a greater improvement in some of the risk factors for coronary disease, however.
The battle between the diets has not been settled. In the meantime, it seems prudent to limit caloric intake, exercise, reduce fat and carbohydrate intake, eat fish 2 or 3 times each week, eat nuts such as walnuts, and consume plenty of fruit and vegetables.
J. Willis Hurst, MD, MACP, Active Consultant to the Division of Cardiology, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia; Candler Professor and Chairman, Department of Medicine Emeritus
Medscape Cardiology 7(2), 2003. © 2003 Medscape
|
__________________
Shirley Reischman
|