TEDsters Against Atkins?

Dr. Dean Ornish is the medical editor of the Huffington Post and the founder and CEO of the Preventative Medicine Research Institute. He has appeared on TED talks (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) which is known for its superb communication of cutting edge topics. It is a favorite show of mine and the speakers are usually exceptional. Even when I encounter a poor speaker or poorly researched topic, I can usually walk away with some interesting thoughts to ponder. That is why some of what Dr. Ornish covered was so disturbing to me. How could it be that parts of the medical community are still at odds with the late Dr. Atkins’s work?

Dr. Ornish wrote,

A major study was just published in the Annals of Internal Medicine from Harvard. In approximately 85,000 women who were followed for 26 years and 45,000 men who were followed for 20 years, researchers found that all-cause mortality rates were increased in both men and women who were eating a low-carbohydrate Atkins diet based on animal protein.

However, all-cause mortality rates as well as cardiovascular mortality rates were decreased in those eating a plant-based diet low in animal protein and low in refined carbohydrates. Although this plant-based diet was called an "Eco-Atkins" diet, it's essentially the same diet that I have been recommending and studying for more than 30 years.

Without doing much research you can conclude right off the bat that the Dr. Ornish is a vegetarian. Readers of this blog know that I consider the vegetarian diet to be one of the worst diets on the planet. I know that this goes against everything most people have heard or read. This shouldn't be a surprise since I also laugh at the notion that cardio is the best exercise for you. WHOA! Look out!!! I'm a RADICAL, but I digress.

I was disturbed by Dr. Ornish's article and his speech on TED because of the apparent bias on his part. While I'm somewhat unfamiliar with long-term medical studies, I am familiar with countless medical organizations being pretty comfortable with the old food pyramid. When it looked like the static beliefs of diet in the medical field could be "causing harm" (which is against the Hippocratic oath) they altered their views. Yet we still find highly respected medical practitioners and researches passing their bias on to their data and feeding it to the masses. For all we know the folks on the Atkins diet lost a lot of weight, got sexy strong, and started partying themselves to death. That is much easier to do when you are feeling and looking your best. How is that for bias? The point is that there are so many different, salient things that could be the root cause of this experiment's outcome, I found it hard to believe that anyone would swallow Dr. Ornish's ideas whole.

So if I followed a million people for decades who were separated into control and experimental groups only to notice that one side had an increase in "all-cause mortality", why would I assume that it was due to only their diets? Because that is what I was looking for all along. It's easy to do if you expected to see that from the start.

Please understand that I am not an Atkins purist of some sort. I believe the Atkins diet may not be for everyone, but I give the man credit because he went against the medical bureaucracy of his day and won. I've utilized his principles and I can shift my weight up or down 25lbs in a few weeks and keep it there. That is a lot for a 150lbs man. Almost every decent, new diet we see on the market is just a variation of Atkins. He was the first and he deserves the credit.

I'm not a doctor. I don't pretend to be one. I'm a strength athlete and I've been an elite one at that. I'm in my forties and feeling pretty good other than fighting the usual mid-life stuff that comes along (hence this blog). I think we should definitely review the sources of anything we see, read, or hear to discover bias. Sometimes this bias is well-meaning, but it still can hurt us. That is because what you don't know CAN hurt you when it comes to your body.

In the end, I still thought Dr. Ornish was a great speaker. I also still thought the vegetarian diet is unhealthy and unnecessarily complicated. If you don't know what I mean then you just haven't learned about combining veggies to get a complete protein. To each, his own. Just be aware that without complete proteins in your diet, you aren't going to be picking up a quarter ton anytime soon. If being strong is important to you, you'll want to steer clear of vegetarian diets and take Dr. Ornish's recommendations with a grain of salt (pun intended).

Stay strong!