How Does the Atkins Diet Work? The Answers and Dangers Revealed

How does the Atkins diet work? We analyze the effects of the Atkins "low carb" diet on your body, plus explain to you the potential dangers with jumping on to another dieting craze.

First let's examine the facts quickly. Unsurprisingly, it's estimated that over 40 million American are deciding to choose "low carb" style diets in their bids to lose weight - and that's just America! Companies and marketers have been making a killing in profits targeting people who have chose this dietary change, by releasing well over 500 products that include the "no/low carb" lable.

That must mean it works, right? Yes and no - Experts have debated the long term effects on health and come to the conclusion that low carbs diets such as Atkins can be risky business, especially if you're over 40.

The father of low carb style diets was the Atkins diet, which basically believed that carbohydrate sugars was responsible for people becoming fat. With the rubbish out there these days there is some truth to that statement, as it's normally the highly refined sugary carbs mixed with the saturated fats which have had a big hand in causing this wide spread fat epidemic.

The principle is that carbs raise blood sugar levels and then trigger insulin production, in which the insulin directed those refined sugars into your cells, preventing the burning of fat. So, the theory was that if we cut the carbs, the body would use these sugars as it's primary source of fuel, and the body would start burning fat for energy instead.

Sounds good in theory but here are the Dangers -

The bad news, the body not only starts losing fat, but also lean muscle (which is needed for a higher metabolism) and water stores in the attempt to gather nutrients formally gained from carbs. When the body burn larger amounts of fats without sufficient carbs it produce something called ketones.

Ketones produce side effects such as head aches, dizzyness, dehydration, bad breath and nausea. Long term you can add bone loss, muscle breakdown and kidney disease to the picture, plus as the brain has lost it's primary source of fuel from carb sugars, therefore brain damage and increased risk of a heart attack can result.

So, how does the Atkins diet work? Well, you can ask the founder Dr. Atkins himself. Dr. Atkins who lived the low carb life style for years experienced such things as artery blockages most likely attributed to these low fibre, high fat, high cholesterol diets. But I'm sure he made plenty of money from his fad diet craze.

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