Dr. Robert Atkins died today of complications from a fall he suffered earlier this month.  There seem to be a lot of people who revel in disinformation and ignorance about Dr. Atkins and the Atkins Plan.  It’s sad that I have to do this, but in the interest of truth, I feel I should share the following with everyone.

First, the cause of death:

The serious snowstorm that hit New York City the day before the incident, along with unseasonably cold temperatures, left streets and sidewalks slippery. As was his daily habit, Dr. Atkins walked from his home to his office, a distance of about one mile. At approximately 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, April 8, 2003, he fell and hit his head, suffering severe head trauma. Keith Berkowitz, M.D., a colleague at The Atkins Center for Complementary Medicine, was arriving at work at the same time, and was able to rush Dr. Atkins to the hospital within minutes. The doctors at the hospital emergency room determined that Dr. Atkins had suffered a subdural hematoma and that surgery was required to remove the blood clot from his brain. He survived for several days but eventually succumbed to complications.

He suffered a cardiac arrest about a year ago, but it was unrelated to the Atkins plan.

The cause of this event was cardiomyopathy, not blocked arteries. Over the last couple of years, Dr. Atkins has had an infection of the heart muscle (called the myocardium) contracted during an overseas trip. Coupled with the extreme heat conditions of mid-April here in New York, the 71-year old Dr. Atkins suffered this event.

“We have been treating this condition, cardiomyopathy, for almost two years,” explains Patrick Fratellone MD, Dr. Atkins’ personal physician and cardiologist, “and during the course of diagnosis, we discovered that Dr. Atkins’ coronary arteries were normal as diagnosed by an angiogram performed at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital on the upper west side of New York City in April of 2001. Clearly, his own nutritional protocols have left him, at the age of 71, with an extraordinarily healthy cardiovascular system. Unfortunately, the infection-related cardiomyopathy is totally another matter.”

I offer this because I have been told, quite sincerely, by people who ought to know better, that Dr. Atkins died of a heart attack (a year ago), and that anyone who follows his plan would do so as well.  Since I knew he was alive at the time, I naturally dismissed these people as either cranks or simply misinformed.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have been on the plan since September and I have lost 65 pounds so far.  However, I have no interest in debating the merits of the plan with people.  I just want people to shut the hell up about it, as I’m fed up with their ever-so-solicitous suggestions about how I should run my life.