she looks like an anorexic ghost… a little…

Apparently a new drug to battle obesity would have effects on children’s brains…

Other researchers have found that cannabinoid receptor blockers interfere with neural connectivity in rat brains — a phenomenon that in humans is associated with depression. The Food and Drug Administration has refused to approve Acomplia because it appears to cause anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts.

…

This is especially troubling because the mice were young. “The juvenile stage of mice is parallel to what we know as the infant stage in humans, when the brain is plastic and prone to modification,” said Liu.

Beyond interfering with neurological development during the critical stage of infancy, could cannabinoid receptor blockers also keep adult brains from developing?

Alright now. Seriously. Diet drugs that could cause you to commit suicide? Cause anxiety? Stunt the growth of the brain? Is it really THAT HARD to stop eating fast food and eat a salad instead? To the point where we have to keep throwing money into this sort of ridiculous research?

I’m sure I could think of at least 100 other things that the money that goes toward this sort of ridiculous research would be better off put into. It’s like all the energy being put into being angry at at that Miley Cyrus girl.

I’ll admit - I didn’t even know who she was until about a week ago when my mom told me about her and her vanity fair “scandal”. The girl, who is am American teen icon, takes a hardly even sexualized photograph and the entire world turns upside down on her.

The two almost go hand in hand - we keep shoving money into diet research while showing off our under aged daughters perfect little bodies to create more media attention and to push more people to the need to use diet pills. …Okay, im stretching it a bit - but you see what I’m getting at right.

This world is f#$@ed! We put these girls up on pedestals idealizing their bodies. Then for some reason get angry when we sexualize these bodies… This is the world we live in - people get sexualized. Then we have girls trying to be like her going batshit insane because they’re using a million and a half different diet pills causing anxiety and depression. WTF.

So in the name of my generation. I vow never to diet or idolize Miley Cyrus. It’s a long road ahead, but I feel like I can make it.

Fat on the inside.

Some parents actually raise their children to believe that it’s whats on the inside that really counts, not the outside. That doesn’t stick with too many people and then we see people killing themselves to have an ideal outside body. Well now some doctors are saying that the fat that surrounds internal vital organs such as the liver or heart could be just as dangerous as the fat that everyone is always obsessing about.

“Being thin doesn’t automatically mean you’re not fat,” said Dr. Jimmy Bell, a professor of molecular imaging at Imperial College, London. Since 1994, Bell and his team have scanned nearly 800 people with MRI machines to create “fat maps” showing where people store fat.

According to the data, people who maintain their weight through diet rather than exercise are likely to have major deposits of internal fat, even if they are otherwise slim. “The whole concept of being fat needs to be redefined,” said Bell, whose research is funded by Britain’s Medical Research Council.

The doctors are worried that without a better definition of “fat” that people who appear to be thin may automatically assume that they’re also healthy. This also means that the diseases that over weight people are at risk of contracting, such as diabetes, are just as much a risk to people who may have this internal fat. In an experiment 45% people with “normal” BMIs, 20 - 25, had an excessive level of internal fat. The percentage grew to 60% with men alone.

Relating the news to what Bell calls “TOFIs” — people who are “thin outside, fat inside” — is rarely uneventful. “The thinner people are, the bigger the surprise,” he said, adding the researchers even found TOFIs among people who are professional models.According to Bell, people who are fat on the inside are essentially on the threshold of being obese. They eat too many fatty, sugary foods — and exercise too little to work it off — but they are not eating enough to actually be fat. Scientists believe we naturally accumulate fat around the belly first, but at some point, the body may start storing it elsewhere.

That’s scary - what does the regular American Diet consist of? Fatty and sugary foods. Now you have something like 30% of the population being obese, and even higher number being “over weight” and now 60% of the men who were thought to be “healthy” are actually internally obese.
The impacts of this internal fat aren’t fully known but it is thought that they will disrupt regular body communications. The fat could send mistaken chemical signals to organs such as the liver and pancreas leading to insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes or heart disease.

Experts have long known that fat, active people can be healthier than their skinny, inactive counterparts. “Normal-weight persons who are sedentary and unfit are at much higher risk for mortality than obese persons who are active and fit,” said Dr. Steven Blair, an obesity expert at the University of South Carolina.

For example, despite their ripples of fat, super-sized Sumo wrestlers probably have a better metabolic profile than some of their slim, sedentary spectators, Bell said. That’s because the wrestlers’ fat is primarily stored under the skin, not streaking throughout their vital organs and muscles.

The article does say that the BMI is an accurate indicator of body and personal health, but I think the previous two paragraphs really show how misleading the BMI can be. A person with a BMI of 32 may be able to run a track 3 times as faster than a person with a BMI of 23. This sort of research really promotes that unhealthy dieting and eating crappy food just because you have “a high metabolism” isn’t what people should be doing.

Young women especially should know that just because they look good on the outside doesn’t mean they’re saving their insides. Everything on the inside of the body - and I don’t mean your wonderful personality, I mean your vital organs - are so much more important and in need of your attention then of outside body.

(cross posted at appletree)

The mass media’s standard of beauty is based around weight. Remember that cover when Tyra Banks was at 160 lbs - and people were making a HUGE fuss over it? The picture I posted is her talking about a tabloid screaming “She’s so fat!” … where she then did a hilarious little “ya’ll are used to seeing me like this” *stands up straight, sucks in belly, does model pose* “but most of the time, I’m like this” *lets stomach out, slouches shoulders* …very cute… and ps kiss her fat ass.

CNN did a good summary story about the whole deal.

“Fat” isn’t acceptable. Stores aren’t inclusive to women’s bodies. The fashion industry screams “stick figure”… If you’re not a skinny girl - you’re not a pretty girl.

Well, if you’ve got 1/2 a brain you know that’s all bullshit.

Watch this video, The Fat Rant, it’s really great and touches on a lot of things that we should all start accepting. Fat people aren’t slobs. …Some fat people are actually pretty healthy. Girls, if you’re fat don’t shop at Sirens and Le Chat. you’re just setting yourself up for a depressing moment in the dressing room. Ideally these places would change to be inclusive - but that’s probably not going to happen.

So instead we get girls with eating disorders, which I have talked about before.

I’m not even going to attempt to write more about this. My thoughts on the video are that it’s really great. She is a strong and gorgeous woman and I really wish that all other women on the planet would love their bodies the way this girl does instead of normalizing hatred towards ourselves.

When you’re hungry, take a nap. Shower, drink tea, numb your taste buds with teething gel, give yourself a manicure. Do anything but eat. These are some of the tips that “pro-ana,” or pro-anorexia Web sites offer to those who choose to restrict their eating.[link]

I have no clue why I’ve never heard of this before. I went over to peruse commenter Dav’s site and found a post on “pro-ana”. Weird. So I started googling for pro-ana sites. I couldn’t believe what I was finding. I found the best information about it at this site, here is its definition:

A simple, concrete definition of what “pro-ana” is and what it means to the young women who identify themselves with it is difficult, if not completely impossible to pin down.   Among the most common explanations is that it simply means that they refuse treatment for their eating disorder.   What is problematic about this definition is that most anorectics resist recovery, pro-ana or not.   Young women with eating disorders almost always lie to their friends, families, and therapists about their behaviors and are willing to go to great lengths to avoid eating without arousing suspicion, just as sufferers from these diseases always have since the first documented cases of anorexia and bulimia.   This attitude alone is not enough to differentiate anorexia from pro-ana.

Resisting recovery, however, may be one of the few sentiments shared by the pro-anorexic community as a whole.   Beyond this a great disparity exists in their conceptions of what exactly it means to be pro-ana.   Some insist that their eating disorders are “lifestyles,” or conscious choices; others may admit that their ED is a disease but either refuse treatment or insist that they can stop before it goes too far.   Many pro-anorexics are happy to “teach” others who are interested in developing eating disorders how to do so; others refuse.   Some acknowledge that their weight loss goals are dangerous, but many cannot see this or simply do not care.

In short, pro-ana is comprised of girls who need help. Women who have eating disorders think that their disorder is natural, and perfectly fine, so of course they’re going to attempt a movement in which multiple people can come together and fight together saying that the disorder is completely alright to have. These women are not happy with their bodies - and they’re going to find any excuse to continue killing themselves in order to be what they consider to be the ideal weight.

On some sites I found records of girls eating 150 calories a day and calling this a “bad day”.  On others I found criticism of people who are exposing the extremely dangerous social movement. Almost all of the sites are fully equip  with Body mass indexes for people to go on and calculate their BMI. I think I’ve done the BMI rant one or two times - so I’ll just state two problems with that real quick…

a) It perpetuates the obsession with numbers

b) It gives a false representation of what a woman’s body “should” be. All women are biologically different. We can’t all fit into a chart and expect it to be accurate.

My big problem with these sites is that people keep calling them “support” sites. I don’t see them as support sites. I see them as sites that are normalizing dangerous behavior. Support sites wouldn’t be showing pictures of girls that they’re striving to be like. They wouldn’t be setting up BMI charts to drive in the obsession with numbers. A proper support site wouldn’t be cheering on girls who have been fasting for 10 days. They are not safe support groups for women and men, they are sites that encourage an anorexic lifestyle. There is absolutely no way in my mind that normalizing a disease that is perpetuated mostly by the media is in any way, shape, or form a positive thing.

What should pro-ana be? Help. These girls need help. They don’t need people telling them that what they’re doing is okay, because it’s not. It’s not okay to starve yourself. It’s not okay to drop out of university so that you can go to the gym more. It’s not okay to lose sleep at night over the thought “does an apple, or 6 spoonfuls of no fat yogurt have more calories?” And these pro-ana sites are simply saying that this is okay.

What I do like about the pro-ana sites is that they are making people come out of the closet. Women who have eating disorders really should be encouraged to tell people - but then after that, there should be help, not “yay! congratulation!” like when a homosexual comes out of the closet. Eating disorders are not a time for celebration. Women and men who have previously struggled with eating disorders but have survived should most definitely become part of these social circles, they can offer support groups, stories and encouragement that goes the opposite way that the pro-ana sites are going now.

I can’t believe that there are entire social groups of young girls and boys and older women and men publically out on the internet  saying “i have a disorder, and proud of” and there isn’t more attention being given. Wake the eff up people. Seriously. These people are literally killing themselves. We can sit and bitch left, right and center about how messed up these sites are, about how the media is full of assholes who throw these body ideals on girls but that’s not going to stop these people from killing themselves.

I want to point out one last thing, amongst my searching and reading I came across Mamavision. A blog about eating disorders that has a ton of really great information, opinions and an even better mission. Amongst her post I found this one, Do you think I’m fat?, that literally had me in tears. It’s a pretty powerful video to be able to make me cry within 30 seconds.

[link]Organisers of Australian Fashion Week are moving to introduce healthy weight guidelines for models, as doctors say the waif-thin young women promote eating disorders.

Fashion week boss Simon Lock said the industry had approached the issue responsibly.

“We don’t want to see young girls hurting themselves in any way,” he told ABC TV.

The guidelines, similar to those existing in Spain and Italy, should be in place in time for next month’s Australian Fashion Week, from April 30 to May 4.

No commentary today, heading downtown to do homework. $%@*. Also jealous that my brother is in windsor visiting family that I’ve never got to meet. but yay australia and promoting healthy body image.

And on the opposite end of the spectrum…

An overtly obese woman from California who went to the hospital complaining about a stomachache got the shock of her life when doctors said she was full term pregnant. Only 48 hours later, April Barnum delivered a healthy baby boy.