Shame on Dr. Eric Westman

Dr. Westman is the director of the Lifestyle Medical Clinic at Duke University Medical Center. He is the President of the American Society of Bariatric Physicians.  He is co-author of The New Atkins for a New You.  He has published clinical research mostly treating diabetics on an Atkins Induction-style low carb diet.  He knows obesity.  He knows many obese people.  He has treated some to great success.  No doubt he has observed countless others that are not as successful.  He has been on Jimmy Moore's low carb cruises, and most recently he has lent his name and reputation to highly questionable health claims and advice made by his former patient and friend in their books Cholesterol Clarity and Keto Clarity.  

One thing that I hope we can ALL agree on is that crazy crash diets are not a long term solution to the problem.  In Keto Clarity Westman criticizes marketing schemes and diet book gimmicks (from pgs 115 and 177)

I will blog extensively on the inconsistency of Dr. Westman's dietary advice through the years despite his dogged allegiance to low carb.  But that is for another day.  I'm pressed for time at the moment.  But this is too outrageous to leave for later. 

How many here think the HCG diet is a good idea?  Five hundred calories a day and hormone injections.  How about the Fat Fast?   Kiimkins anyone?  Just to fit into your wedding dress?  No?  How many recall the "bride diet" buzz going around a couple years back?   It even made Time ...

Tube Feeding: What’s Wrong with the Latest Wedding Crash Diet?

For weight-loss purposes, you don’t need to be hospitalized, but you do have to live with a nasogastric tube inserted through your nose and threaded into your stomach. A protein pack “feeds” your body through the tube, by dispensing drops of a liquid mix of nutrients — but no carbs — totaling about 800 calories a day. Experts recommend that healthy adult women consume about 2,000 to 2,400 calories daily.

People use it drop significant amounts of weight or just to trim off a couple of extra pounds before a big event. “At first I decided not to do it for people who just want to lose a few pounds,” Dr. Oliver Di Pietro, who offers 10-day versions of the diet for $1,500 at his Bay Harbor Islands, Fla., office, told the New York Times. “But then I thought, why should I say 5 or 10 pounds are not enough? People want to be perfect.”

Let there be no mistake, this diet was a proprietary diet plan called the KE diet.  K for ketogenic, E for enteral.  

Hat tip once again to CharlesG, who tweeted me information about this.  

link

I have no words for this.  In Keto Clarity one of the success stories describes how Westman put her on a 1600 calorie a day 90% fat, 8% protein, 2% carb diet.  There is no indication she had any special reason to be on these levels, but doing the math that works out to 32 grams of protein a day.  According to the Atkins book he co-authored, that is less than half the lower limit of recommendations for a woman of her height.  

Irresponsible.  Disgusting.  More words I dare not voice.   I'll leave it to Dr. Katz, whom despite some questionable sponsorships himself (Institute of Integrative Nutrition :(  ) to say it for me in The K-E Diet: Weight Loss Lunacy:

As for the doctors involved in peddling this travesty, I condemn their actions. The job of physicians is not to come up with any way to satisfy a patient's whim, no matter how fundamentally at odds with health.

Our professional mission is to promote and protect health, and to serve the patient in that context. In that context, the patient is the boss -- and we are, or should be, at their service. But we are abdicating our profound responsibilities and most sacred pledges when we renounce a commitment to health, and adopt an "oh, what the hell" approach to make some extra money by exploiting a patient's faith in us, and their desperation.  On behalf of my profession, I am ashamed.