Healthsifter by mary desmond pinkowish, since 2003

"No Anorexia" Model Dies. She Tried to Help Others But Couldn't Help Herself

Isabelle Caro, a former model who appeared in the notorious No Anorexia campaign a few years ago has died. There's a tribute at The Guardian, which includes this quote from Caro about why she participated in what some people viewed as a horrifying campaign: 

“I thought this could be a chance to use my suffering to get a message across, and finally put an image on what thinness represents and the danger it leads to – which is death.” Isabelle Caro (12 September 1982 – 17 November 2010)

These organizations offer help:

National Alliance on Mental Illness

WebMD

WomensHealth.gov

PsychCentral

New York Times Health Guide

You'll Be Dead Before You're Thin Enough narrated by Julianne Moore at Facetheissue.com

 

 

Reading Headlines Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

I like this posting by Stephen Dubner today in the Freakonomics blog at NYT.com. He noticed that the headlines on articles about the new vitamin D recommendations from the Institute of Medicine were markedly different in the NY Times and Wall Street Journal, even though the actual content of the articles was quite similar:

"Extra vitamin D and Calcium Aren’t Necessary, Report Says"

vs

“Triple That vitamin D Intake, Panel Prescribes”

Dubner says...

There is not as much contradiction in the two articles as the headlines might connote — but still: a lot of people read only the headlines of a story like this and then carry around that new conventional wisdom forever. (Also worth noting: neither article took into account the fact that different people in different climates have different vitamin D intake levels via the sun, which has a strong effect on how much supplemental D someone might need.)

Keep reading, folks.

Dieting May Stress You, And Stress May Sink Your Diet

I avoid writing too often about animal studies, because it's a long way from the hamster cage to your medical records. But today you can read an interesting report at ScienceNOW about an elegant experiment conducted in mice who were put on diets that mimicked a moderately restrictive diet in humans. The investigators found that compared to nondieting mice, the dieting mice had higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their bloodstream after exposure to a stressor like loud noise. Further, the cortisol levels stayed high, suggesting that the mice had trouble settling down after they were stressed. When the dieting mice were returned to their regular fare, they remained more sensitive to stress, at least as indicated by their cortisol levels. And when the researchers put them through periodic stress drills, they made a beeline for--you guessed it--a high-fat, high calorie mouse chow.

Sound familiar? Hmm, me too.

Read a shortened version of the original study in The Journal of Neuroscience.