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]

Obese Patients Run Higher Risk Of Post-Operative Complications
Obese patients have a significantly higher risk of complications following surgery, including heart attack, wound infection, nerve injury and urinary tract infection, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Michigan Health System. [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]

Red Pepper: Hot Stuff For Fighting Fat?
Food scientists in Taiwan are reporting new evidence from laboratory experiments that capsaicin - the natural compound that gives red pepper that spicy hot kick - can reduce the growth of fat cells. The study is scheduled for the March 21 issue of the ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication. [click link for full article]

Belly Fat May Drive Inflammatory Processes Associated With Disease
As scientists learn more about the key role of inflammation in diabetes, heart disease and other disorders, new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that fat in the belly may be an important promoter of that inflammation.Excess fat is known to be associated with disease, but now the researchers have confirmed that fat cells inside the abdomen are secreting molecules that increase inflammation. [click link for full article]

Foods To Prevent Obesity?
This, surely, is the oxymoron of the year. Reuters reports that the "Dutch hope to invent foods that prevent obesity". That single sentence encompasses the arrogance, greed, and plain foolishness that exists in the minds of those who "invent" foods. "We are working on certain food ingredients, which provoke more satiety than others do on the long run, so that...

Research In Childhood Obesity In Children Highlights Physical Activity Levels
A British study, involving 5,500 children and published in the latest issue of PLoS Medicine, used accurate methods to measure the 'fat mass' of the children and the amount of physical activity they were taking. The researchers, based at the University of Bristol, concluded that low levels of activity, particularly moderate and vigorous activity, play an important role in the development of obesity. [click link for full article]

Singapore To Cancel Anti-Obesity Program
Singapore plans to end a 15-year-old anti-obesity program in schools after complaints from parents that overweight children, in particular, were being singled out and teased by classmates....

Obesity Drives US Surgical Procedure Volumes Higher
Millennium Research Group (MRG) has conducted a detailed analysis of surgical procedures in its US Surgical Procedure Volumes 2007 report. The report finds that over 11 million Americans are considered morbidly obese, and by 2011, over 13 million will be- driving the volume of surgical procedures in the US throughout the next five years. [click link for full article]

Potential Link Between Obesity And Environmental Chemicals
A team of researchers at the University of New Hampshire is investigating whether the increasing ubiquity of chemical flame retardants found in foam furniture, carpeting, microwaves and computers might be related to the climbing rate of obesity in the United States. [click link for full article]