There it was, in today's Google News Alert for "low carbohydrate," the frightening news that low carbohydrate diets may shrink your brain, and even cause Alzheimer's! NOOOOOO!

I take the threat of dementia very, very seriously. My beloved mother has been institutionalized for years now with advanced Alzheimer's. I know to my vast sorrow just how cruel the disease is. If I thought for a minute that my low carb diet put me at increased risk, I'd quit in a heartbeat. I do not think so.

I find this study uncompelling. Why?

Let's start with "Mice aren't people and people aren't mice." Mouse studies are useful, but not conclusive. We'll go on to the fact that these were mice specifically bred to be prone to Alzheimer's.

Then let's look at the most important point: This study specifically singled out "high protein/low carbohydrate diets" as causing brain shrinkage. What have I and Dr. Atkins and the Eades and Dr. Eric Westman and Dr. Mary Vernon and Jimmy Moore and everyone else been telling you all along? Your low carb diet should be a high fat, moderate protein diet, not a high protein diet. The mice fed a high fat/low carb diet showed "no increase in plaque burden" -- in other words, they weren't getting Alzheimer's.

I've been saying for years that trying to combine low carb with low fat is a Very Bad Idea. Frontiersmen who could only find very lean protein -- rabbits and the like -- reported growing quite ill on such a diet. Traditional diets valued fat, and especially animal fat. (I would like to know what sort of fat was used the mouse chow for this experiment. Of course, mice are not naturally carnivorous, so their bodies may well react differently to vegetable fats -- which I suspect were used -- than ours do.)

Add to all of this that studies indicate that insulin resistance in the brain -- a sort of brain diabetes -- may also be linked to dementia.

I'll keep eating my low carb diet, thanks.