Customer Reviews

Dr. Atkins' Age-Defying Diet

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Dr Atkins has synthesized all off the latest research on nutrition and aging and has put together a up-to-date plan to help extend your life and improve the quality too. This is the best book on the subject since the bestselling classic, Life Extension, by Dirk Pearson and Sandy Shaw, from the late '70's. The difference with Atkins book though, is that he cites a lot of credible research that will become accepted at some point by the medical community. He is ahead of his time as usual. The gist of the book is to tell readers what steps they need to take to promote heart and brain health, mostly through diet and readily available nutritional supplements. He contends that many of the most common diseases can be delayed or avoided by following his regimen. This is an important book, a gift from Dr. Atkins to people interested in their own healthful longevity.

Once again Dr. Atkins has forged ahead and set the standard for lifestyle enhancement. Those of you who suffer from unstable blood sugar, and ailments that stem from it must read this book. As a life long suffer of hypoglycemia this program has literally saved my life, plus letting me drop pounds easily and keep them off for years. This new book only adds to his plan, by describing how, through supplementation, to improve your life. His approach is intelligent and well researched, and you come away from reading his books like you read a fun to read medical text rather than some breezy, pie-in-the-sky (no pun intended) diet plan.

Last fall I successfully lost 20 lbs on the Atkins diet - and changed my eating and nutrition habits entirely. Six months into low carb life I have lots of energy and feel good in general. As an added bonus, my husband tried the diet with me to help me with the menus - he dropped 43 lbs and lowered his cholesterol and blood pressure. My goodness. This book came just at the right time when the long term nutrition questions about how to go forward and feel healthy needed answering. Just finished reading this book, and much of the advice has appeal. I find it extremely useful as a guideline for the nutritional supplements that should be part of the daily regimen. I suppose I'll have to make an effort to include kale and spinach in our eating more regularly. We have recommended the diet book to many friends - and everyone who followed the rules lost weight and felt good. Am now sending this book to those good friends and family.

I must say that anyone, who has tried this diet and failed, did so because thay didn't follow it correctly. I have been using the plan from Atkins other book New Diet Rev. and have lost 50 pounds in three and a half months. This new book teaches about healthy herbal supplements that further increase energy and well being. If you are a person who has tried one of the propaganda diets from someone who adheres to what everyone else says, then try this one. At least it comes from a man who is brave enough to go against the establishment, which I must say has failed to help anyone be happy eating lettuce or to lose weight, and show his plan which is backed up by researchable medical facts to the world .

For someone who was brought up believing that the way to dietary health and happiness was to avoid red meat, eggs, butter and saturated fats, and to load up on complex carbohydrates and use margarine, Dr. Atkins' ideas are indeed a revolution. In an incisive and extremely confident style, Dr. Atkins sets out what he believes are the components of a healthy diet for those of us past, say, fifty. First, "eat foods low in carbohydrates and high in antioxidants" (p. 277). These would be especially vegetables like kale, carrots, spinach, broccoli, etc. Second, eat natural fats and oils from butter, meat, fish, eggs, nuts and olive oil, and avoid all "trans fats" or highly processed fats in general. In fact, avoid highly processed foods of all kinds. Third, supplement your diet with what he calls "vitanutrients," i.e., vitamins like A, B, C, E etc. and minerals like zinc, calcium, etc., hormones like DHEA and melatonin, etc., and food supplements like ginseng, ginkgo biloba, etc.

Atkins himself is a medical doctor who practices alternative and complementary medicine. He is an enterprise himself with his many best-selling books and his Atkins Center for Complementary Medicine. When I first heard about him and his all protein and vegetable diet some years ago, I figured he was the charlatan author of yet another fad diet, and I ignored his books. This one is the first I've actually read, and I must say immediately that he is certainly not a charlatan. He is obviously a man who knows as much about diet as anyone could hope to know. Whether he is entirely correct in his ideas is not something I am incapable of assessing; but I am willing to bet he is mostly right. He has had an enormous experience treating patients, and it is encouraging to note that as a medical doctor he tends to write relatively few prescriptions. He even warns of the harm that can come from the use of commonly prescribed medicines and their side effects.

The most important claim he makes about ageing is that it is primarily caused by free radicals and that a diet high in antioxidants can reduce the number of free radicals in our bodies.

His central idea about diet is that it is not fats that are the enemy of health for people in the industrialized world (as we have so long been taught) but carbohydrates, especially highly processed ones. This is indeed a revolutionary idea, or at least it was when it was first expressed some years ago. Fat people are not fat because they eat too much fat. They are fat because they eat too many carbohydrates. When you think about it, especially from the point of view of evolutionary biology it suddenly makes enormous sense. What was it in the prehistory that we humans never had enough of to overindulge on? Not meat, and for many cultures, not fat, but carbohydrates. There were no fields of amber grain waiting to be harvested and made into flour and bread. There were no rice patties or acres of potatoes. Humans could fell a mammoth or an elephant seal once in a while and load up on meat and fat until they were sick of it, but there is no way they could have eaten enough wild wheat or barley to get sick of it. The sheer caloric expense of harvesting low-yield natural grains by hand prohibited any overdosing. It wasn't until the rise of agriculture about ten thousand years ago that we ever had enough of a carbohydrate to call it a staple of diet. Consequently, we are to some extent carbohydrate intolerant. This is an idea absent from popular books on nutrition twenty years ago, but a staple of the wisdom today.

I like the way Atkins explains how we came to this delusive state of dietary affairs in the first place, and how that delusion is maintained. The culprits are the mainstream medical establishment and the U.S. government working hand in hand to further the interests of vast agribusiness corporations who want to maintain a high public consumption of trans fats and highly refined carbohydrates. When you think about this, it also makes sense.

I also like how specific Atkins is. He names the foods and the vitanutrients and gives the amounts. He tells you how to work with your doctor (who, alas, may not be up on all the latest information) to put together a program for your specific needs. If nothing else, by reading this book you'll know how to ask some tough questions about diet and health that your doctor will have to respond to.

Agreeable too is the sardonic tone he takes with the medical establishment. For example on page 194 we find, "...Vitamin E enhances immunity. This has been a well-known fact among complementary practitioners for years, but perhaps now the information will trickle down to mainstream medicine, where this sort of knowledge is badly needed."

However, although the text is as readable as one would expect a popular book to be, especially with all the unavoidable abbreviations and acronym-filled detail, there is more than a little repetition. Additionally, Atkins and his assisting writer, Sheila Buff, have an annoying (to me) habit of beginning a chapter by telling the reader what they're going to say, saying it, and then telling the reader what they've said. On the other hand, that might be good; and anyway, who am I to second guess someone who has reached as many people with his books as has Dr. Atkins?

Dr. Atkins provides practical and helpful advice. I am a "Baby Boomer", who, at age 53, appreciates a straight-forward plan that is effective and easy to follow. I highly recommend "The Age-Defying Diet Revolution" to anyone wanting better health and a longer active life.

I've been eating "health foods" and taking nutritional supplements for 40 years due to the advice of my grandmother who had a long and vigorous life and was years ahead of her time. Many well-known scientists, among them Linus Pauling, have written of the devastating health affects caused by diets high in refined flours and sugars.

I had never had to watch my weight until about 5 years ago. I started using a low-fat diet and was exercising (I've always been active) like a fiend. I had a horrible time keeping my trim figure, and even though I eventually did lose weight, my body fat was higher than it had ever been.

A friend suggested I try the "Sugar Busters" diet, which I did with great results. Then I found this book and was ecstatic to discover a thoughtful and convincing guide that addressed both my interest in nutritional supplements with my desire to eat a healthy diet, and keep off the fat! I recommend this book highly, and will continue to use it as my dietary "bible".

As a side-note: take a look at the difference in sugar content between the regular and low-fat versions of many pre-packaged foods. You may be as amazed, and angered as I was to discover that the food processors are making up for the bland taste of low-fat products by cramming them full of sugar.

Having read Dr. Atkins "New Diet Revolution" and "Omega Diet" I now feel as if Dr. Atkins is taking back, in a sense, some of his extreme views on things. Sure this is a book about a diet to defy age, but he's certainly showing himself considerably more open to eating fruits (the healthy ones of course) and the idea that not all fats are created equal (Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids concept, touched in extensive detail in the book "Omega Diet"), which happened to be the two things that bothered me the most about the "New Diet Revolution." The book also gives a very detailed account about the role played by all antioxidants (natural and supplements) and vitanutrients needed to defy aging. I have made it my reference book when it comes to eating and living healthily.

It is astonishing to read the slam pieces here about Dr. Atkins so-called obesity and overweight condition at the time of his death. Here are the facts:
* He previously had a heart condition called cardiomyopathy -- a serious disease of the heart muscle which is unrelated to diet.
* He died of a head injury because of an accident falling on slippery ice and not of being overweight.
* His actual weight was 200 pounds when he was admitted to the hospital at the time of his accident. The erroneous reports of him weighing 258 lbs was based on his weight at the time of his death. The extra weight was not fat, but an accumulation of body fluids linked to organ failure during his coma.
* His previous reported heart attack was due to a viral infection and not diet related. He spoke openly of his condition on various national news programs.
* The report that was released about him being overweight was leaked to the press by a group named "Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine", which is an ardent opponent of the Atkins diet. In short, they distorted his weight by reporting the weight at the time of death - 258 lbs, and not at the time of his admittance - 200 lbs...an obvious attempt to discredit and distort the facts surrounding Dr. Atkins death.
* A formal complaint has been filed by the Medical Examiner of New York regarding the suspicious leak of this information to the public by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine."
* The disinformation surrounding Dr.Atkins untimely death is politically driven by the AMA and other detractors of the diet.

Dr. Atkins book, New Diet Revolution has turned the AMA and other nutritional views upside down and has created a furor over the standard edicts of the medical profession. What is not said among the detractors of the Diet is that it is safe and it works. The information contained in this book will not only help you lose weight, it could save your life. The food industry, especially the bread and pasta industry have lost hundreds of millions of dollars because of the low carb revolution. Is it any wonder that this diet is under so much fire? Keep an open mind and read the book.

As a side note, ignor the mumbo-jumbo rantings and ravings of the "Elixir Diet" system (see below). The hatred and mis-information spread by the reviewer is evidence enough that the Elixir system is phony as a three cent penny. Nuff said. The guy hasn't even read the Atkins books!

I felt Dr. Atkins book was good, but didn't find too much new information in it. If you have his first book, you'll be set.