Last spring a man with three children started the celebrated high-protein diet that has been put together by Dr Pierre Dukan.
This was the first diet that the man had ever done and he was hoping to lose some weight as he felt his 89 kilograms was too heavy.
He began following the diet one weekend and stuck rigorously to it’s structure. All he ate was mackerel at lunchtime and chicken in the evening. For breakfast he had low fat yoghurt mixed with bran.
The man had never been sick before but by Monday evening he was hospitalised and was in critical condition. He slipped into a coma and doctors were struggling to keep him alive.
The Dukan diet has been developed in France and has become very popular with people, including several notable celebrities. The diet had caused the victim, Ashley Harrison, to suffer from brain swelling which caused his coma. Fortunately he survived but the doctors said that it was a very close call.
Mr Harrison is the head of a digital advertising company and he said he started feeling very ill on Sunday evening. The diet is targeted towards people who want to lose weight in a short amount of time and it encourages them to only eat protein. By the Monday after taking up the diet, Mr Harrison was violently ill and incoherent.
His wife, Sophie Harrison commented, “At first I assumed he was suffering a stroke, he was not conscious and so we decided to call the ambulance. The paramedics came and they asked him questions but he was unable to answer. His brain was so dysfunctional he was unable to breathe on his own and was attached to a ventilator. The doctors didn’t know what was wrong with him and he slipped into a coma.”
It was a week later that he started showing signs of consciousness again and he was capable of squeezing a nurses finger. Mrs Harrison continued, “We were very worried that he might have suffered from permanent damage but the cognitive tests that the doctors ran showed that his brain function had returned to normal.”
About his ordeal Mr Harrison commented, “I don’t really remember anything about it, I remember walking the dog on the weekend and the next thing I knew I was waking up in hospital. I assumed that I was in a nightmare or suffering from some sort of hallucination. When I realised what had happened I was very scared that it would happen again.”
Blood tests showed that Mr Harrison was suffering from ammonia poisoning and Dr Nick Moran, a neurologist at Kings Hospital commented, “Ammonia is very dangerous for the brain and can cause it to swell. We didn’t initially know why there was a buildup of ammonia but after suspicious urine results we ran a genetic test and found out that he was suffering from a genetic disorder. This disorder was not a problem until he started consuming too much protein which triggered the symptoms.”
There was a similar case to Mr Harrison’s in 2010 where a man of a similar age started suffering from ammonia poisoning after taking up the Atkins diet, which has a similar high protein content. There are other cases of younger people who have been consuming protein shakes to build muscle slipping into a coma because they were unknowingly suffering from the condition.
The high-protein diet has come under a great amount of criticism from nutritionists and doctors and many have commented that it is a bad idea to eat a diet that is not balanced. A diet should involve all the major food groups as this is the only completely safe way to lose weight.
Doctors have recommended that if you do go about a high-protein diet that you take it slowly at first and consult a doctor if you have any complications. There are often side-effects to dieting to people that many are unaware of, so use with caution.
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