PHOTOS: Getty Images (10); iStock; Trunk Archive (2); DDP.ARE DIETS
ACTUALLY
UNHEALTHY?
When Kathrin closes
out her email program,
she can hardly believe
her eyes: “Diet industry
shocked. How you can
reach your dream weight in just two
weeks with this drug!” The ad on
her monitor appears legitimate.
Kathrin clicks the link and ends
up at the website of an online
retailer for fi tness products.
The diet pills are hailed as a
wonder drug across America.
That sounds good to Kathrin.
Maybe too good. She becomes
suspicious—and goes to see her
doctor the same day. For eight years
he has treated her for her overweight
condition—but she hasn’t lost weight.
But when she tells the experienced
doctor about the weight-loss pill, he
dismisses the notion. “I would steer
clear of that.” Instead he once again
recommends a normal diet. She could
do it through her own efforts, if only
she wanted to. But what he doesn’t
convey is that he is ignoring some of
the most important fi ndings of recent
diet research...
Even if some physicians don’t want to
believe it or have learned differently, being
overweight is not a disease that a person
needs to be cured of. On the contrary:
A research team at the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention in
Atlanta conducted a meta-anaylsis
of 97 studies encompassing around
2.88 million test subjects and found
that overweight people and those
with a slight tendency toward obesity
actually live longer than people of a
normal weight. Another fi nding of the
research, which doctors barely took
notice of, is that the failure of a diet
doesn’t have anything to do with the
patient’s willpower or determination.“Diets fail because they contravene
a fundamental law of nature of the
human organism: the law of energy
supply in the brain,” reveals obesity
specialist Achim Peters. Simply put:
The brain doesn’t distinguish whether
a food shortage is voluntarily causedby a diet or involuntary experienced
such as due to a famine, for example.
If the body doesn’t get enough food,
it thinks there is an emergency—and
it sets its emergency plan in motion:
Metabolism and bodily functions aredialed down in order to save energy.
Medically, this also means: There can
be side effects—including depressive
conditions, bone weakness, muscle
loss, memory problems, fatigue, or
back pain. In reality, “Every diet that
reduces calories or carbohydrates—
even if it is praised by physicians as
being gentle and healthy—comes with
side effects. This gets all hushed up,”
explains Peters. And what about the
promising diet pills in that online ad?
Peters says these present even more
serious complications. The reason:
“There have certainly been attempts
to develop tablets for losing weight.
But every single time the introduction
of such preparations fails because of
the extremely signifi cant associated
health risks for those being treated,
which couldn’t be controlled.” In other
words: Because of their sometimes
serious interventions into the human
metabolism, weight-loss pills can be
very dangerous—and for this reason
they are not an easy fi x for slimming.“Regardless of the illness,
whether it’s a heart attack
or a stroke, thicker patients
have a markedly lower risk
of dying than slimmer ones
in acute cases.”
PROFESSOR ACHIM PETERS,
UNIVERSITY OF LÜBECKMar 2017 68 ideasanddiscoveries.com