Ok, so I'm a nerd

But I'm a nerd with a degree in biochemistry...and I thought ya'll would like some real science the next time someone says "atkins is bad for you." If nothing else, you'll confuse the **** out of them.

The real gem is at the bottom of the link, where it says ketones don't cause problems in normal people.

http://www.np.edu.sg/~dept-bio/bioch.../aab_lipid.htm

On an interesting note, some of the enzymes needed to break down fats in the body are not in high enough supply when we burn sugar for a long time. This certainly explains why we feel like crap for a few days and feel like we NEED sugar. Cause we do! We take a while to get up to speed

Khem, the science behind the atkins thing is fabulous, everything I ever learnt in university backed it up (fellow geek, although I'm microbiology, who is currently a social worker, go figure ).

Oy! It's 7:00 in the morning after a very fun weekend! Very cool link, Khem! I'll have to go over it a few times to totally grasp it, but my youngest brother is a med student and was talking to me about Carnitine because I started taking L-Carnitine supplements and wanted to understand what they did. It was good to see the visual in there!

Hi Khem, Thanks for sharing this. My biggest problem in staying on the Atkins Diet is trying to defend it from all my sabatoge friends and family (not hubby, he's supportive and is on it too).

So if I can get some of this down into a response that I can repeat word for word to them each and every time they tell me how bad it is for us, they will soon tire of me repeating what they have heard a hundred times from me and possibly silence themselves on the matter, and perhaps learn something. So even if I don't confuse them, maybe I'll just annoy them a little back with an educated answer.

I just got a lecture from my Girl Scout co-leader on how she "doesn't see why anyone would go on that because it's so harmful to your liver, etc and it's so limited in what you eat NOBODY could stay on it for the rest of their lives so why bother in the first place." I just let her ramble. Then I said--well, I'm not having a problem with the way I'm eating or a problem going to the bathroom, so if I can lose weight then I'm pretty happy. If I don't continue then it'll be my fault and I'll go back to gaining weight and being fat and unhappy. That pretty much shut her up.