A Look at the Dangers of Low Carb Diets in Teenagers

Most teens look to the media for role models and they often see stars that are anorexic or bulimic.  With their tiny, fragile bodies they are telling kids that to succeed in this world you have to be extremely thin.  It is no wonder that we constantly find our teenagers struggling with bulimia, anorexia, and insane dieting.  One kind of diet that teenagers are taking to the extreme is the low carb diet.  These teens are often not aware of the many dangers of low carb diets.  Because their bodies aren't fully developed, it can cause a lot of problems that may last the rest of their lives.  The dangers of low carb diets have aspects that are physical, mental, and performance based.

• The Immediate Dangers of Low Carb Diets

In most low carb diets, you are required to give up caffeinated drinks, because most of them contain a lot of unnecessary carbs.  Although this is safe for many adults to do and causes a great reduction in their carb intake, there are dangers of low carb diets requiring teens to get rid of these caffeinated drinks.  The main problem with eliminating the caffeinated drinks is that teens won't be cutting down slowly.  Instead you'll find that teens will stop cold turkey.  The reason this is one of the dangers of low carb diets is because it causes a number of side effects like bad breath, leg cramps, dizziness, fatigue, distractibility, etc.  These are things that can completely throw the teen off in terms of academic and athletic performance.  In some instances, the side effects are so intense that they end up missing school.

The worst of the dangers of low carb diets in teens is the chemical change it causes in the brain.  Teens typically have higher metabolisms than do adults, requiring them to consume more carbs to maintain a healthy energy level.  As they cut these carbs out of their diets, their daily functioning decreases and so their performance overall decreases.  Over time their body will adapt to this change.  By that point even if they go back to their previous diet of including a lot of carbs, they will never regain the focus and performance that they once were capable of.

The reason that food pyramids have carbs as the main food source is because the body can only get a certain type of nutrition from carbs.  It provides the greatest amount of energy to fuel the body and this effects all aspects of the body.  So the dangers of low carb diets have great affects on the functioning of teens.  Some of theses dangers of low carb diet even extend into the functioning of adults.
 
If you are a teen and you are interested in losing weight, you need to avoid low carb diets.  The dangers of low carb diets are too great.  Instead look at other diets available and try to increase the exercise that you do on a daily basis.