By Mary Garrison
Tribune-Courier Reporter
mgarrison@tribunecourier.com

In this series, the Trib will delve into the world of eating disorders and tell how people suffering from them can find help locally. Names of subjects have been changed to protect anonymity.

“Cult of thinness”contributes to diet practices
Despite an estimated 95 percent failure rate, the diet industry continues to grow in the United States with each passing year, making it a multi-billion dollar market.
“We’re a fat society that doesn’t want to work hard to lose weight,” Michael Shlipak of the San Fransico Veterans Affairs Medical Center was quoted as saying in The Christian Science Monitor (CSM). “So, we turn toward easy solutions, and one of those is taking a pill.”

Statistics show that Shlipak is right on the money. An estimated two-thirds of American adults are, in some way, overweight. Critics say it’s a difficult burden to bear in a society that glorifies the ultra-thin.

The family of Mary Linnen knows it well. On Feb. 22, 1997 the 29-year-old former tennis player and swim-team captain died of complications of pulmonary hypertension caused by the then popular weight-loss treatment Fen-Phen.

Linnen had wanted to lose 20 pounds before her upcoming wedding. However, shortly after beginning treatment, she began to experience shortness of breath and dizziness.

Her health problems only escalated, and Linnen was hospitalized seven times. She began to lose her vision just before her untimely death.

Her story became the first in a long line of deaths and health complications to come under public scrutiny when her family filed suit against the pharmaceutical companies, Wyeth-Ayerst and Interneuron, who market the drug.

Since then, the drugs have been removed from the market, and more than 1,000 cases against the companies and physicians entered into litigation.

Herbal and over-the-counter dietary supplements can be equally damaging, if not more so. Experts say it’s a frightening trend, particularly in the diet pill industry.

Over-the-counter dietary supplements are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration unless proven to be unsafe. FDA authority is often limited to controlling marketing angles and misleading labels only.

And because many weight loss aids are derived of natural food products, supplements are not required to undergo safety-studies, as many ingredients are already present in the general food supply.

Critics of the industry claim consumers are lulled into a false sense of security, assuming that if a supplement is sold on store-shelves, it must be safe.

The biggest sellers, as of 2003, were products based on ephedra, or ma huang, a Chinese herb from the Ephedra sinica.

Although the Food and Drug Administration has logged at least 1,173 “adverse event” reports among users of such products, “as many as 3 billion servings of ephedra are sold each year in the United States,” noted Janet Heinrich of the General Accounting Office, an investigational watchdog agency of the U.S. Congress.

The influx of testimony concerning the health risks of ephedra based supplements prompted an investigation by the FDA in 2004.

After much deliberation and review of cases that included heart attack, stroke, seizure, psychosis and death, the FDA banned sale of the drug and any supplements containing it within the United States.

Still, in a culture that becomes less active by the year, yet more obsessed with health and body image, the industry and eating disorders have taken root and now flourish.

The paradox, coined “the cult of thinness” by Sharlene Hesse-Biber, a sociologist at Boston College, becomes, essentially, a medicine for disaster.

“Thin is really part of what it means to be attractive within this culture,” Hesse-Biber said in CSM. “The message is that you have to shape up to the right kind of body. We punish and reward people for having the right or wrong body.

“Fat has become the new f-word.”

Most physicians and dieticians would agree that the best weight loss plan simply allows for proper eating habits and a regular exercise regimen. However, individual research may be the best form of proactive stance for those insistant on dietary aid.

Contact a family physician for more information on the constituents and potential side-effects of supplements, or schedule an appointment to speak with a dietician about individual needs.

There is no miracle cure, despite what marketers want consumers to believe. However, with careful planning, a solid, healthy diet and initiative, there is hope.