Hydroxycut is ok , maybe

Originally posted to myspace blog - Tuesday, May 05, 2009
further edited at post

FDA to dieters: Don't use supplement Hydroxycut
Current mood: disappointed

People keep on selling products that promise to fulfill the dream of being "skinny" and people keep getting hurt. What makes this so personally tragic to me is the fact that people are so hesitant to participate in efforts to promote beauty in all shapes and sizes, but they put their money down on dangerous products and surgeries in the hopes of changing something about themselves that has, over the years, become a part of who they are. After the FDA announced this problem, it seems that this product is still hot! Notice all the stuff about "natural"! I bet it is, some of the most toxic chemicals on this planet occur in nature! :)  Those models on the site are kinda scary. :)  I guess I get uncomfortable at the site of the "perfect people" I'm supposed to be attracted to and uncontrollably compelled to look exactly like.

It probably isn't too far fetched for people of faith to imagine that size is one of the multitudes of things our creator devised a way to make us unique and different from one another ( yes, on purpose ). It isn't hard for a person of science to imagine that size is another form of the endless adaptation that takes place generation after generation under the rules of natural selection.

The way we humans react to size on an emotional level is simply immature and has all the typical markers of hate, bigotry, and racism. Expecting the obese to transform to our liking is like painting everyone the same color to eliminate racism, forcing everyone to dress alike to end sexism, and encouraging euthanasia at a certain age to cure ageism. Particularly disturbing to me is that (potentially) half of the group under this psychological attack are already programmed to wholeheartedly believe everything they are told and follow the herd possibly to meet their end in the process of "extending their life".
The balance is at work.

This unhealthy obsession about weight and size is always meant "for our own good", even when there is a lot of research going on that is still trying to determine those probabilities because we are not given a crystal ball or a DIY manual for the human body. Doctors who emphasize the importance of getting our weight under control are just doing their job, until they recommend doing something so radical and extreme that a patient might not live as long as they would have if left "unopened".

From articles I've read, many people in the medical community already harbor ill feelings towards people of size, a prejudice that has to be resisted and hopefully never acted upon. Too many of us familiar with size acceptance have a list of people we know who were neglected to death in a hospital because of their size as well. I'm not saying they're all bad, just like a bumper sticker I saw about priests, "not all doctors are bad". :) Medical professionals are not going to jump on my case because I'm an obesity obsessed fetishist. I have spent a few weeks solid in a hospital as an advocate for a supersized individual and I can tell you that they do not like to help out very much, at least the few individuals I was exposed to at one hospital in 1998.

The only people scarier than the doctors are the diet inventors! These people want to take your money for a product that doesn't work and can even hurt you. I say all the time that the only proof I have that no product or diet at this point actually works is that fact that "I see fat people". I'm no doctor, lawyer, or statistician, but I believe it when I see it, and I haven't seen the cure just yet.

Dr. Ruth used to have to tell guys all the time that there isn't a pill that makes the penis larger, so get a look at late night TV, google the name of that product, and see how many complaints and lawsuits there are on your own.

This opinion is no doubt much more thorough than future stories that point out the dangers of our well meaning but fail diet gods. My personal feelings on diet and surgery are probably very apparent by now, but it goes so much deeper than I could have possibly explained in this or that comment. I know of quite a few people who might have been alive today that are not because they tried to extend their lives beyond today. The balance is in affect. You can fight the balance, but there is a cost. You can win the battle, but the war can be a draw. You can be sold or conned easily when tempted with something you want badly enough.

I don't have any real writing credentials because I spent a lot of time sharing these opinions in emails to people who could not understand what I was saying or could not figure out why I would risk the quick tang and start spilling the photo agenda and the underlying motive for creating my work. I am compelled to try though because my work is part of the balance, and right now the balance is tilting the wrong way. In a modern age of science, technology, and medical miracles, we are held back from finding the truth about ourselves because we are overly consumed with matters of the cosmetic.

I am motivated by money, I want to write a book one day. I hope that I can benefit personally from spreading what I hope is kind of a dirty, grimy version of the positive truth. If I make a few dollars on a book from each one sold, I can hope that I am simply being rewarded for the positive potential I can bring to a potentially fatal or negatively impacting life choice. I won't be selling something to people that can hurt them or put them down within 30 days, or 11 weeks. There is truth to the statistics that show weight can cause or aggravate existing health problems, but the answer is not to pick on, bully, rip-off, neglect, and flat out execute them while making a few dollars on the old diet con.

Here is the article, don't get me started! :0

FDA to dieters: Don't use supplement Hydroxycut

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press Writer Ricardo Alonso-zaldivar, Associated Press Writer – Sat May 2, 10:05 am ET (2009)

WASHINGTON – Government health officials warned dieters and body builders Friday to immediately stop using Hydroxycut, a widely sold supplement linked to cases of serious liver damage and at least one death.

The Food and Drug Administration said the company that makes the dietary supplement has agreed to recall 14 Hydroxycut products. Available in grocery stores and pharmacies, Hydroxycut is advertised as made from natural ingredients. At least 9 million packages were sold last year, the FDA said.

Dr. Linda Katz of the FDA's food and nutrition division said the agency has received 23 reports of liver problems, including the death of a 19-year-old boy living in the Southwest. The teenager died in 2007, and the death was reported to the FDA this March.

Other patients experienced symptoms ranging from jaundice, or yellowing of the skin, to liver failure. One received a transplant and another was placed on a list to await a new liver. The patients were otherwise healthy and their symptoms began after they started using Hydroxycut, regulators said.

Iovate Health Sciences, which makes the diet pills, said in a statement that the 2007 death of the teenager was not caused by Hydroxycut. The statement gave no details.

"The number of adverse event reports described by the FDA in its advisory is small relative to the many millions of people who have used Hydroxycut products over the past seven years," said the company statement. "Iovate's own assessment of the potential risk associated with the use of these products differs from that expressed by the FDA."

On its Web site, the company said it agreed to the recall out of "an abundance of caution." Iovate is based in Canada, with U.S. offices near Buffalo, N.Y. Consumers can get a refund by returning the pills to the store that sold them, the company said.

Dietary supplements aren't as tightly regulated by the government as medications. Manufacturers don't need to prove to the FDA that their products are safe and effective before they can sell them to consumers.

But regulators monitor aftermarket reports for signs of trouble, and in recent years companies have been put under stricter requirements to alert the FDA when they learn of problems. In 2004, the government banned ephedra, an ingredient in many supplements, linked to heart attacks and strokes.

Katz said it has taken so long to get a handle on the Hydroxycut problem because the cases of liver damage were rare and the FDA has no authority to review supplements before they're marketed. "Part of the problem is that the FDA looks at dietary supplements from a post-market perspective, and an isolated incident is often difficult to follow," she said.

The FDA relies on voluntary reports to detect such problems, and many cases are never reported, officials acknowledge.

Health officials said they have been unable to determine which Hydroxycut ingredients are potentially toxic, partially because the formulation has changed several times.

Public health researcher Ano Lobb, who has studied Hydroxycut and other dietary supplements for Consumer Reports, said the problem may be an ingredient called hydroxycitric acid. Derived from a tropical fruit, it's been linked to liver problems in at least one medical journal study. Lobb said it's likely that other supplements containing the same ingredient remain on the market.

"You really have to be careful about dietary supplements, especially weight-loss pills," said Lobb. "People believe that the FDA has verified that these products are at least safe and effective, and that's really not the case. When you see fantastic claims — that's generally what they are."

I had to bring up something from the 11 week "death by lighter life" article! One of the final paragraphs that barely mentions the other death from this diet simply reads:

Another fatality linked to LighterLife was in December last year when mother-of-five Jacqueline Henson, 40, drunk four litres of water in two hours and was killed by swelling of the brain.

Whoa! That's some serious sh*t there. Shrinks your ass but fatally swells your brain!