Atkins Diet: Role of Supplements
This video is in response to a question I received:
“I’ve been very faithful and am over the induction flu, but now I don’t have ANY energy. I slept great last night and I feel like I could lay down right now and take a nap. I’m not skipping meals, I’m taking a multivitamin, and am drinking loads of water. What can I do to get my energy back up?”
My response to this person was you are still early into the diet, so your body is still probably adjusting to the new diet. However, if you want to try something immediately, you might a couple supplements that worked for me.
The one thing I took that helped me and my energy levels was L-Carnitine. That and CoQ-10 were really the only additional (over a standard multi-vitamin and Omega-3 fish oil tablets) that I regularly consumed. Take a good dose >Mg per day and especially before exercise, and you should see energy return. Here are a couple recommended readings:
“Carnitine facilitates the burning of fat for energy by making it possible for the long chain fatty acids it transports to enter the cell . After all, if the fatty acids cannot reach the mitochondria where they are transformed to cellular energy, it stands to reason they are going to be deposited in places where the body will suffer from their presence, as happens in fatty liver disease, fatty build-up in the heart, and your plain old everyday variety obesity, where fatty build-up occurs in the muscles.”
This stuff is on the medium-price supplements stuff ($10-20 a bottle), but trust me it works. The joy of low carb is that you are off that train [of glucose rise and lows] completely, and literally have bounty of ready supply of energy to be used. Keeping the analogy, you just need to get more coal cars on that train to bring it to the parts where it needs it. With CoQ-10, you can make sure your body’s power plants (mitochondria) are geared to efficiently burn that coal (fatty acids) for energy.
http://www.vitaminlady.com/Articles/LCarn.art.asp
http://www.raysahelian.com/acetylcarnitine.html
http://www.raysahelian.com/coq10.html
http://www.bodybuildingforyou.com/health-supplements/acetyl-l-carnitine.htm
http://www.bodybuildingforyou.com/health-supplements/coenzyme-q10-benefits.htm
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/coenzyme-q10/NS_patient-coenzymeq10
OK, you talked me into it. I went and bought a variety of supplements, some you recommended and some I wanted anyway. Cost me like $160 for decent dosages and so on. My goal is to take them all for a month and see if I notice any change.
Comment by PJ (RightNow) | October 16, 2006
Interesting post there, thank you. If anyone fancies finding out a bit more about Low Carbohydrate options, may I recommend http://www.lowcarbtips.org ?
Comment by ChrisM | October 22, 2006