Letters to the Editor
healthyskeptic
Published Letters: 671 Editor's Choice: 14
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thank you too
[Read the article: Anorexia: It's not just for teens]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And thank you to healthy_skeptic for saying something I often think - there is a tendency among feminists (who I count myself among) to focus too much on anorexia "caused" by looking at thin models and living in a society where thin in always the goal for which to strive, while downplaying the very real health effects of obesity and general unfitness.
... if food is overabundant, we tend to eat more than we need, just for the neurochemical fix that eating results in. Anorexia will never be a significant national health problem.
-- Rachael F.
Yeah, that really bugs me too. It's unfortunate to see something which was supposed to be beautiful twisted into something so sick.
I was raised to believe feminism should always be empowering, enlightening for humanity, promote understanding, and make the world a genuinely better place.
When I see the Broadsheet writers dragging it down to the level of pandering to help falsely rationalize bad habits, though I'm an atheist I feel a bit like the way some devout christians must feel when they see priests become pedophiles or preaching hatred from a vengeful god on TV and completely betraying the Sermon on the Mount and other teachings of christianity.
I wish the broadsheet writers could elevate their game and do something more genuinely useful than just recycle tabloid stuff.
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intolerance is ok
[Read the article: Do you really want to be a goddess?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Has Price really bothered to take a close look at the practice, and consider the cultural trade offs for their culture, as weird as the practice may seem to westerners. Is she really offering a useful opinion on the subject?
Or is it just mean-spirited gossip and trashing another culture for the fun of it?
Since when did elevating women become about putting down other cultures?
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-- Dan Boland, posting from Mars
[Read the article: Anorexia: It's not just for teens]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm assuming you're a troll.
Regarding college students, like the young adults barely past childhood that they are, they're supposed to be skinny.
It's perfectly normal for a healthy person in their late teens to early 20's to have a high metabolism bones that aren't fully grown or just barely finished, and have yet to put on more body mass. They should have a high metabolism between that of a child and a full adult metabolism of the mid-late 20's. Young people leading healthy and active lives will be much thinner than fully adult people.
Many young people in their late teens and early 20's are now looking more like a healthy person at age 30 rather at age 20, i.e. not skinny enough. We see this is higher BMI around the 15-20% range and it's also evident in larger bust sizes and increased hip/waist fat.
Which ironically will make a young woman look like a bombshell with curvy hips and DD bra size, as young as 16 or so. Or a guy look more muscular and adult by the same age. Which is seen as desirable. But that same person is also likely to be seriously overweight and flabby, with all those extra pounds sagging, by age 30.
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-- dkissam
[Read the article: Anorexia: It's not just for teens]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How many people die of anorexia every year?
How many people die of obesity every year?
Look at the top 10 killers on the NIH statistics web pages. Hear disease, stroke, diabetes, etc. All obesity related. Obesity alone is shorting the national lifespan by decades. Obesity is a larger health problem even than smoking, drug abuse, and STD combined. Reduce obesity and promote exercise and healthy diet, and the rates of all the top debilitating and killing diseases will plummet while quality of life and longevity increase dramatically.
The fact is that in absolute terms, anorexia doesn't even rate. Totally obscure diseases effect and kill far more people a year.
Even in relative terms, morbid obesity is also more lethal and orders of magnitude more common. About 1/3 of anorexia patients die of the disease, and those who die also tend to have rare psychological disorders which prevent them from taking nutritional supplement which is as easy as drinking a protein/vitamin shake. Most seeking treatment can take nutritional supplements and otherwise overcome the disease.
Nearly all of the morbidly obese die from complications of obesity, shorting their lives by decades, despite the vast majority of obese people being otherwise psychologically healthy aside from bad habits and perhaps laziness.
Obesity leads to other diseases such as colon cancer, stroke, and other particularly debilitating and painful demises, which may cause years or even decades of suffering. Obesity is terribly debilitating even in young people, who are then unable to exercise or develop healthy lifestyles, thereby dooming themselves to long suffering and downward health spiral. Many obese people become shut-ins, unable to venture outside due to shortness of breath, weakness, and other medical problems as well as self esteem issues.
Obesity is obviously the worse health problem by orders of magnitude. It's literally killing America. Just look at the NIH statistics.
Any obese person should immediately join a "curves" gym, a clinic, or some other safe, helpful, and non-judgmental environment where they'll be able to help themselves with the help of others. Obesity is the #1 disease ruining the lives and killing Americans by the millions.
Again, it's worse than smoking, drug addiction, and STDs combined.