moiram@tektronix.UUCP (Moira Mallison ) (09/05/85)
In _The Death of Dieting_ (American Health, January/February '85), Paul Ernsberger, PhD (a post-doc fellow at Cornell) states: In my lab at Northwestern University, we have found in animal tests that the feast-fast cycle [analogous to "yo-yo" dieting] itself can cause a distinct form of high blood pressure. This "dieter's hypertension" develops over the course of sizable lose-gain swings and eventually becomes set. In humans, this may lead to congestive heart failure, rather than the heart attacks and kidney disease common to other forms of hypertension. Doctors know overweight people are twice as likely to have hypertension as lean folks, but they have always thought the problem was the extra weight. My colleagues and I have evidence that the cause is not in in the poundage but in the dieting pattern. Makes me wonder how many other health risks attributed to overweight are really caused by on-again, off-again weight patterns. Moira Mallison tektronix!moiram