Atkins diet makes women infertile, interferes with genetic imprinting

medicalnewstoday.com ^ | 29 Jun 2004

[Walkin Man]

Atkins diet makes women infertile, interferes with genetic imprinting
29 Jun 2004

If you are a woman and you are on the Atkins diet, you may have a problem if you want to start a family, say scientists. A high protein diet could be make it more difficult for a women to conceive.

Scientists at the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine, Englewood, USA, have come to this tentative conclusion after carrying out a study on mice.

Dr. David Garner, lead researcher, said "Although our investigations were conducted in mice, our data may have implications for diet and reproduction in humans."

He said that a diet which consists of 25% (or more) protein disrupts the development of mice embryos.

Dr. Garnes believes the same problem may appear in humans.

There is a genetic process called ‘imprinting’. This controls the activity of genes inherited from the mother and father. A high protein diet seems to interfere with this process.

The scientists had two groups of mice. They fed one group on a diet of 25% protein and the other group on 14% (protein). Four weeks after being on this diet they mated.

Only a third of the mice (36%) on the high protein diet developed with a normal H19 gene, as opposed to 70% of the other group.

Only 65% of the embryos from the high protein group developed into baby mice while 81% of the lower protein group embryos developed into baby mice.

They also found that the fetuses in the high protein group developed more slowly than the other group. They also found more defects in the baby mice from the high protein group.

[prion]

Mice aren't carnivores! Geez!

[hellinahandcart]

Any kid young enough to order from the kids' menu should not be on a DIET per se. Of any kind.

But some of these little piglets could sure stand to skip the french fries and the hot dogs and the endless refills of soda. I suppose it's a question of tricking them into eating something else. Many kids will reject a salad or a vegetable, but they'll eat a wrap with vegetables in it, because wraps are cool for some reason.

[Walkin Man]

Good question. :)

[Don Joe]

Atkins diet makes nutritionists insane, interferes with big food company profit margins.

Interferes with profit margins? I hardly think so, you see how expensive the "low carb" alternatives are.... please. Diet fad is making lots of big companies very wealthy.

Not all companies.

There is big money that stands to take it on the chin, hard, if total carbohydrate consumption nosedives.

It would be naive to expect them to sit back and do nothing. It would be doubly naive to not expect them to mount a PR campaign, and do their damndest to maintain an appearence of "clean hands".

I'd dearly like to see a "follow the money" analysis of some of the many voices of antiaktinsonism I've seen come up out of nowhere over the past few weeks.

I find it reminsicent of the democratic "talking points" campaigns that were all the rage during the Clinton Regime. You couldn't tune in a pundit show without hearing some "independent" analyst reading off the same hymnal page as all the others.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Interferes with profit margins? I hardly think so, you see how expensive the "low carb" alternatives are.... please.

Yes, but they've had to spend a lot of money in the short run re-tooling their product lines to meet the demand. Bakeries (and Archer Daniels Midland) got caught by surprise. And most of these "low carb" products aren't really Atkins-compliant - they are just gimmicky attempts to cash in.

[CajunConservative]

A lot of those "fat chicks" have a real medical condition called PCOS which causes infertility and guess which diet they use to get pregnant. Yep, that's right they start on Atkins and most women who had no periods or were not ovulating get regulated usually within the first month. I know of quite a few women who got pregnant after a few months of Atkins. These are women who spent thousands and thousands of dollars on infertility drugs.

This study is full of crap. The truth is once a person gets out of the carb induced coma and starts eating more meat and fat their ability to think clearly goes up exponentially. The fact that women lose weight is only one reason some are low carbing. I also know of many diabetics who have been able to get off of their diabetes meds just by low carbing.

[hellinahandcart]

The only thing scientists have possibly 'proven' is that a High-Protein diet causes a degree of infertility in rats.

Not rats, mice.

Who are designed by nature to eat...GRAIN. Unless they live in a cheese factory, how are they going to hit 25% protein in their diets?

[hellinahandcart]

In about fifty years, we'll see studies telling us that the mortality rate of every adult who went on the Atkins diet in the 1970s is 100%.

[MadelineZapeezda]

Dr Atkins low carb diet has been around for 30 years. It's not a passing 'fad'. It's here to stay.

[smiley]

Baloney....obviously these Atkins Attackers don't realize that Atkins has been around since the 50's and I don't see a decline in the number of baby boomers.

[MadelineZapeezda]

That is plain stupid. Kids don't need to carb count.

Kids that are extremely overweight do, they're on the road to diabetes.

[PBRSTREETGANG]

Kids that are extremely overweight need a sensible balanced diet (which would include monitoring their carb intake) and exercise. However, I would not recommend a strict Atkins diet for small children.

[DreadCthulhu]

Well, high protien diets supressing fertility might actually be an advantage in a hunter-gather societies - in these primitive societies, most women spaced out children every 4-5 years; they could only carry one at a time, Now, the extended breast feeding in these societies supresses fertility, and sometimes these societys resorted to infanticide if they couldn't support the extra children. Fertility being supressed(as in reduced, but not eliminated by a high protein diet wouldn't be a problem.

Now, when you get to stationary agricultural societies, the women there could have a kid every year or two. Hunter-gathers were actually on average healthier than primitive agriculturist - the reason agriculture won out is that farmers could support more people on a given area of land/have a higher birth rate, not because the high carb diet they ate was all that healthy.

[BureaucratusMaximus]

That is plain stupid. Kids don't need to carb count.

You should see the size of some of these kids nowadays. There are overweight 10yr olds. IMHO with all the sugary crap that kids scarf down this kind of thing may help.

And BTW...my life experience disproves this article completely. My wife and I were trying to have kids since 1997. We finally gave up on the idea. My wife had a history of fertility problems to begin with. We were both overweight, I had about 100 lbs to lose. Last summer we both went on the Atkins diet and lost all the weight. Remarkably...she became pregnant, and on June 8 (and pardon me for not making a vanity thread...I've been kinda of busy with the baby and all ;) ) baby Luke came along.

SO...I credit the Atkins diet for enhancing fertility...not degrading it.

[CajunConservative]

Most children don't need breaded processed chicken chunks, french fries, etc. What is wrong with them offering healthier choices for children? If children learn to choose fun ways of eating real meat and veggies and fruit instead of less nutritious hamburger/hot dog buns or breaded chunks of chicken don't you think they won't have to deal with the weight issues later in life?

Check out your children's food labels on the foods they eat all day long. Most are nothing more than highly processed foods with all of their nutrition stripped out and a few added in. Most have high fructose corn syrup as a main ingredient. I think that a lot of the ADHD problems are dietary in nature.

Kids are being fed a constant stream of sugar and are having blood sugar spikes and they naturally want more sugar laden food to bring that blood sugar back up and it goes on and on and on day in and day out. Kids no longer get out and play and burn off that extra sugar and are getting type 2 diabetes in their early teens now.

[RosieCotton]

Awwww!

Congratulations on your new arrival!

[PBRSTREETGANG]

Congratulations on the birth of baby Luke. He looks like a handsome little guy. I think he would get along famously with my William who was born on May 19th. (We had some fertility issues, as well.)

See my post #32 re: kids and nutrition.

[CajunConservative]

Atkins is the catch all for all low carb diets. There are other variations and most people are not doing strict induction level Atkins. Kids would do well to eat on the maintenance part of Atkins. All that would be would be a sensible portion of protein, a serving of non starchy vegetable, a normal serving of real carbohydrate food and a sensible serving of a healthy fat. It is a balanced diet.

If the child is involved with sports or dance then they can afford to eat a few more sensible carbs, IOW fruit and starchy veggies instead of a regular diet of pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers, french fries, cold sugary cereal, etc.

[PBRSTREETGANG]

See my post #32. Just because I don't think that kids need an Atkins menu at the restaurant doesn't mean I'm an advocate of pumping sugar, starch and white bread down their throats. Sheesh.

[MadelineZapeezda]

However, I would not recommend a strict Atkins diet for small children.

Nor would I, but they need to limit their carb intake and get off the carb-laden junk food like twinkies, chips and pop. Modified version for children.