Harmful Diets!



While obesity is bad for health but the wrong way to diet can also be harmful to your health. Common examples are anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorders. These are illnesses where extreme emotions, attitudes, and behaviors surround weight and food issues. These are serious emotional and physical problems with life-threatening consequences. Anorexia Nervosa is an illness by self-starvation and excessive weight loss.

Symptoms of the illness include:

Refusal to maintain body weight at or above the minimal normal weight for height, body type, age, and activity level
Intense fear of gaining weight or being fat or "obese".
Feeling fat or overweight despite being at a below normal body weight
Overwhelming obsession with body weight and shape

Bulimia Nervosa is a condition of marked over-eating followed by purging through vomiting or diarrhea using laxatives, all done in secrecy. These patients stuff themselves on large amounts of food - within a short period of time, and then get rid of the food and calories through vomiting, laxative abuse, or over-exercising.

Symptoms of this illness include:

Repeated episodes of bingeing and purging
Feeling out of control during a binge and eating beyond the point of being "full"
Purging after a binge (typically by self-induced vomiting, abuse of laxatives, diet pills and/or diuretics, excessive exercise, or fasting)
Frequent dieting
Overwhelming obsession with body weight and shape

Compulsive Overeating is characterized primarily by periods of uncontrolled, impulsive, or continuous eating beyond the point of feeling "full". While there is no purging, there may be fasting or repetitive dieting and often feelings ashame of one self following a binge. People who overeat compulsively usually struggle with anxiety, depression and loneliness, which can contribute to their unhealthy episodes of binge eating. These patients can be normal in their weight, slightly overweight or obese.

Peer pressure that values "thinness" and obtaining the "perfect body" can be a social force for some patients to enter this pattern of self-destruction. Learn to beat Obesity the right way. Through exercise and the right diet, I believe that obesity can be beaten.


The Answer To Childhood Obesity: 15 Minutes Of Football?
ALSPAC The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (also known as Children of the 90s) is a unique ongoing research project based in the University of Bristol. It enrolled 14,000 mothers during pregnancy in 1991-2 and has followed most of the children and parents in minute detail ever since. [click link for full article]

First UK Study To Determine How General Practice Professionals Can Tackle Adolescent Obesity
Academics at the University of Hertfordshire are conducting the first UK study to investigate how health professionals based in general practice can help adolescents who are obese to lose weight. [click link for full article]

The Nutritional Accuracy of Popular Magazines
The ACSH (American Council on Science and Health) have completed a large review of many popular magazines. Their goal was to evaluate the quality of nutritional information presented. Apparently 42% of US consumers make diet-related changes on the basis of information from health and fitness magazines. So - who do you trust?...

Obesity High Among Baltimore's Homeless, Johns Hopkins Researchers Say
A small but telling study from the Johns Hopkins Children's Center reveals an ominous trend: more than expected, obesity shadows Baltimore's homeless children and their caregivers, putting them at high risk for heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes, among other conditions."Not long ago, homeless people were undernourished. [click link for full article]

DVT Awareness Survey Findings For Respondents In High-Risk Groups: Obese Individuals
Up to two million Americans are affected each year by DVT, with up to 600,000 hospitalized. Its primary complication, pulmonary embolism (PE), claims up to 300,000 lives annually -- more than breast cancer and AIDS combined. The Coalition to Prevent Deep-Vein Thrombosis (DVT) recently sponsored an online survey of a nationally representative sample of consumers and physicians. [click link for full article]

New Data On Fructose-Sweetened Beverages And Hepatic Metabolism
According to figures published by the World Health Organitzation (WHO), in the year 2015 some 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will suffer from obesity, a pathology which is increasingly being seen in children. In addition, for some time now the high incidence of obesity in developed countries has coincided with an increase in the consumption of beverages sweetened with fructose, a powerful sweetener. [click link for full article]

In Obesity, Brain Becomes 'Unaware' Of Fat
Critical portions of the brain in those who are obese don't really know they are overweight, researchers have reported in the March issue of the journal Cell Metabolism, published by Cell Press. These findings in obese mice show that a sensor in the brain that normally detects a critical fat hormone - causing a cascade of events that keeps energy balance in check - fails to engage. Meanwhile, the rest of the metabolic pathway remains ready to respond. [click link for full article]

Obesity Surgery Can Lead To Memory Loss, Other Problems
Weight loss surgery, such as gastric bypass surgery, can lead to a vitamin deficiency that can cause memory loss and confusion, inability to coordinate movement, and other problems, according to a study published in the March 13, 2007, issue of Neurology®, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The syndrome, called Wernicke encephalopathy, affects the brain and nervous system when the body doesn't get enough vitamin B1, or thiamine. [click link for full article]