Atkins Diet

Dr. Robert C. Atkins, who bucked dietary dogma with best-selling books that helped millions of Americans shed pounds by shunning carbohydrates while indulging in beef, bacon, eggs and butter, died yesterday of injuries suffered in a fall on an icy New York City sidewalk. He was 72. On April 8, a day after a snowstorm, Dr. Atkins hit his head in a fall a few yards from his Atkins Center for Complementary Medicine in midtown Manhattan. He was taken to New York Weill Cornell Medical Center, where doctors removed a blood clot from his brain.

Still bucking the medical mainstream, "diet revolution" guru Dr. Robert C. Atkins has an iconoclastic message for a public hungry for nontraditional health care: Get on a good regimen of "vita-nutrients" and, eventually, get off prescription drugs.In his new book, "Dr. Atkins' Vita-Nutrient Solution: Nature's Answer to Drugs" (Simon & Schuster, $24), Atkins says unnecessary medications "pose the greatest health risk of all." High-dose combinations of vitamins, minerals, amino and fatty acids and other nutritional supplements can prevent illness, he says, and often heal disease better than conventional drugs.

You recently wrote about a link between black cohosh and liver problems. I have a friend who has had hepatitis C for 23 years. She had been taking black cohosh for menopausal hot flashes, but her liver enzymes were high. When I read your column I e-mailed her, and she quit taking the herb. Today she phoned to tell me her liver enzymes are now down significantly. She credits quitting the black cohosh for this dramatic improvement. We both thank you. We are delighted to learn that your friend had such a positive outcome.

Pharmacology FluMist study finds few big problems A government study has found no fatalities or unexpected side effects among 2.5 million people who took FluMist in the two influenza seasons since the nasal-spray vaccine was licensed, according to this week's Journal of the American Medical Association. Since June 2003, doctors have reported 460 problems including flu-like illnesses, allergic reactions, ear, nose and throat symptoms and fatigue. The vaccine, made by MedImmune Vaccine Inc. of Gaithersburg, is intended for healthy people ages 5 to 49. Serious problems were few, and were no more common than problems among those taking traditional, injected flu vaccine.

Obesity rates are rising, but science has barely weighed in on the best way for people to shed fat. That state of affairs is starting to change, and doctors are getting a surprise or two. Last month, the popular carb-slashing Atkins diet received a dollop of endorsement from two studies after years of being pooh-poohed by health specialists. The studies, published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, showed that the meat- and fat-rich regimen caused faster weight loss in the short term than a conventional low-fat diet.

I've been working with a personal trainer for six months, but I now am bored by him -- and his workouts. He thinks of us as friends. How can I end the relationship without making him feel bad? This can be a sticky situation, particularly if your personal trainer is at your gym. But keep in mind that this is a professional relationship and not a friendship. "You need to do what's best for you because it's your body," says Ali True, a personal trainer at Merritt's Downtown Athletic Club.

All the attention paid to the Atkins diet didn't much faze Bradley T. MacDonald, even though the competing weight-loss program hurt sales at his Owings Mills business last year. He was certain it wouldn't last - in fact, he suspected the attention would do Atkins in. "I saw problems when Atkins started Atkin-izing TGI Fridays" in 2003, he said. "At that point, you knew that there was problems." Yesterday, his hunch proved true. Atkins Nutraceuticals Inc. - founded on the controversial low-carb, full-fat diet pioneered by the late Dr. Robert C. Atkins - filed for bankruptcy protection in New York, unable to survive its strategy of going after a mass market and purporting to be a lifestyle.

NEW YORK - So was he fat or svelte or maybe a tad chubby? Was it really a slip on the ice or could it have been something else - even, dare it be said, something he ate? Now there are confidential documents passed to the media, still more dueling authorities, not to mention the ticklish matter of the mayor and the doctor's widow and the promised steak dinner. Oh, the mess goes on and on like a seven-course meal. Dr. Robert Atkins, the diet doctor who popularized the notion that dieters could eat fat and lose weight, has been dead for nearly a year, after the 72-year-old fell on some ice and hit his head.

After advising dieters for years to satisfy their hunger with liberal amounts of steak, eggs and other saturated fats, the promoters of the Atkins diet now say that people on their plan should limit the amount of red meat and saturated fat they eat. Responding to years of criticism from scientists that the Atkins version of a low-carbohydrate, high-fat regimen might lead to heart disease and other health problems, the director of research and education for...

IT'S THAT TIME of year again, that uplifting season when we're all reminded of how incredibly fat we are and what pigs we were over the holidays. So once again this January, you can't pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV without seeing an ad or commercial for this hot new diet or that weight-loss program or this gym. And the ads still trot out those ever-popular "before" and "after" shots where stout women in oversized T-shirts and baggy sweatpants are...