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Protein diets increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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Unbalanced diets should be avoided to avoid insoluble problems in the future, writes Simona Marchetti in an article published on the website of the newspaper Corriere della Sera.
"Following the Atkins diet, which means favoring proteins over carbohydrates, does indeed promote rapid weight loss, but over the years the risk of heart attacks and strokes can increase by 5%," the publication reports.
"The percentage increases by 60% when it comes to young women who have been subjecting themselves to such an unbalanced diet for a long time. Once again, scientists from the German Institute of Human Nutrition and the Max Delbruck Centre for Molecular Medicine have spoken out against the Atkins diet. In the British Medical Journal, they published the results of a study involving 43,396 Swedish women aged 30 to 49. They answered questionnaires related to their lifestyle and consumption of 800 different products over an average period of 15.7 years. It turned out that 1,270 respondents had problems with the cardiovascular system. Representatives of the Atkins company stated that the increased risk of heart disease is not associated with the diet, but with "low carbohydrate intake, accompanied by increased protein consumption," the author of the article writes.
"Italian nutritionist professor Lucio Luchin warns against the spread of hyperprotein diets. "Personally, I rarely prescribe such diets," says the professor, "you can follow such diets for a maximum of 3-4 weeks and only under strict medical supervision, because longer adherence to such a diet can lead not only to cardiovascular problems, which are mentioned in the study, but also to kidney and liver pathologies due to the fact that these organs have to do additional work, processing the proteins received," the article says.
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