Page 63 - The Memory Program How to Prevent Memory Loss and Enhance Memory Power

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For years, I have watched such odd maneuvers with the distant curiosity of a physician who
includes dietary advice as a prime component in his repertoire. But a few years ago, one of these
newfangled culinary approaches struck a raw nerve in me.

Aggressive Dieting May Carry Risks: Lou's Story

A fifty-two-year-old psychiatrist-friend of mine, Lou, has always had a weight problem. So when I
visited him and his family in suburban Westchester County, New York, in early 1998, I was quite
surprised by what I saw. He had lost at least thirty pounds, and while not yet slim, he was getting
pretty close. Lou proudly informed me that he was on a protein-rich and fatty food diet with no
carbohydrates. No cereal, wheat, corn, rice, pasta, sugar, or potatoes. It seemed like an unnatural
challenge to the normal course of healthy bodily metabolism, but I was pleased by his successful
effort to shed a few pounds. In fact, more than a few.

A month later, I got a frantic telephone call from his wife, who informed me that her husband had
just suffered a full-blown heart attack. I dropped what I was doing to help her during this emergency.
Her husband underwent a balloon angioplasty and was able to gradually get back to work within a
few weeks. ‘‘Low-carb” is now a taboo word in conversations in their house, because she feels that
the diet precipitated her husband's heart attack. My friend also happens to have a strong family
history of heart disease, making it hard to determine exactly what caused his heart attack. Given this
uncertainty, I cannot say that the diet was the culprit. However, from a physiologic standpoint, we
know that most cells in the body, and nearly all the cells in the brain, use carbohydrates like glucose
or other simple sugars like fructose and galactose as their main energy source. For fats and proteins
to be used as an energy source, they first have to be converted to glucose by specialized enzymes that
parade up and down a series of dancing biochemical pathways. A diet that excludes carbohydrates
puts extra pressure on the enzymes that lubricate this chemical maze, and they are now forced to
work overtime on fats and proteins instead of on the carbohydrates that they prefer to face. This
upsetting of the normal balance leads to weight loss, which can be dramatic, as occurred in my
friend's case.