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Today at the Daily Beast, readers are being subjected to a pseudo-intellectual essay on why we’re all misguided in thinking that eating disorders are actually a problem, and that the fashion industry plays some part in their onset and popularity among women. Lisa Hilton, an Oxford-educated (good god) author of two books, has written a column called “What’s Wrong With Skinny?” that makes me – and presumably thousands of other readers – wonder, “What’s wrong with Lisa Hilton?”

If you’ve been living on black coffee and cigarettes, and are therefore too exhausted to read over the entire three-page masterpiece, allow me to summarize. Lisa Hilton just wants us to enjoy Fashion Week this year. Models who subsist on diet soda to squeeze into size-zero frocks aren’t disordered or naive, she says. In fact, they’re actually disciplined and empowered. Little pocket-sized entrepreneurs. Of course, she admits, eating disorders are terrible. But obesity is much worse, and afflicts far more women than anorexia and bulimia. Oh, also, women have always tried to be thin. Fashion won’t sell unless women are thin. And why isn’t anybody upset about male jockeys trying to make race weight?

Sure, I get that Hilton and the Beast are trying to be provocative. But can’t they manage to be intelligent and reasonable at the same time? Here are a few examples of misguided, disordered thinking at its very worst:

1. “Anorexia and bulimia are horrific psychological conditions, destroying lives and families, and carrying devastating long-term health risks even when not fatal. Sufferers deserve nothing but respect and support for their condition. But is that condition nearly so prevalent as the barrage of attention it regularly attracts actually deserves? And are women really so pathologically stupid that they are unable to distinguish the fantasy of the runway from the realities of their own bodies?”

She’s got the first part right. Eating disorders are pernicious, incredibly damaging and even life-threatening. Sentence three is where things really veer off-course here. If Hilton had done her research, she might have realized just how many eating disorders go undiagnosed. Not because a sufferer doesn’t seek medical attention, but because their illness simply doesn’t match the strict criterion to qualify as either anorexia or bulimia. Women and men are skipping insulin shots, spending six hours a day at the gym, waking up at 1 a.m. to binge on chocolate cake, puking up dinner “every once and awhile,” or obsessing over their food intake in the form of journals, charts and lists. Disordered eating and exercise, yes. Eating disorder? No.

That’s why these “conditions” receive a “barrage of attention.” Because they are incredibly prevalent, and either go under-diagnosed or misdiagnosed or are never even detected.

And no, women aren’t stupid. But thank you for asking. Actually, I think Hilton sums it up quite nicely when she describes “the fantasy of the runway.” Exactly. Fantasy. Runway models, and the fashion industry more generally, have taken on an aspirational, fantasy-oriented identity. Teenagers, and adults, aspire to that ideal. We aren’t deluded into thinking this is reality, but we can’t help but let it soak in a little. After all, these are the images we see every single day. So excuse us for our pathological stupidity, but sometimes, when we’re surrounded by it, we just can’t stop the fantasy from trickling in.

2. [Quoting a former model named 'Sasha']: “Sure, we had to be skinny. I lived on Diet Coke and apples for two years. For the couture, we had to get up at 4 a.m. to be sewn into the clothes and there was huge pressure to be thin. But I made a million dollars by the time I was 20, I bought a town house in Manhattan and put myself through Columbia. Does that make me a victim?”….For every Sasha, there are a hundred hungry wannabes who fall by the wayside.

This, to me, sounds like some seriously unhealthy and dangerous behavior, done in the name of some sort of career advancement. Sasha sounds either desperate, or “pathologically stupid” to tacitly consent to unfair standards that demanded she turn her body over to an industry, all in the name of a seven-figure pay-check. That’s not “par for the course,” as Hilton suggests. It’s actually really, really damn sad. And at least Sasha made some money, so she can pay for fertility treatments when her ovaries are dried up like raisins, and fork over for osteoporosis meds when her bones turn to ashes at 35. You know, because she lived on diet coke and fruit for two years just to sashay down a runway.

What about “those hundreds of hungry wannabes,” that Hilton dismisses in a single sentence? This is an industry that’s demanding women sacrifice their physical health, and then maybe allowing them to earn a living.  Sounds very reasonable. What sounds less reasonable is Hilton’s subsequent justification for all of this:

“Are we just a bit angry that young women with no qualifications other than what nature gave them get to be so powerful?”

Memo: A starvation diet of calorie-free soda and apples is not nature.

3. We rarely get hysterical about the weight qualifications required of male sportsmen. Jockeys, boxers, and wrestlers put themselves through torture to make weight.

Nobody is saying that male jockeys who starve themselves to make weight don’t suffer health consequences, or don’t deserve medical attention. But how many men do you know who consider horse jockeys an “aspirational identity”? How many television shows called America’s Next Top Jockey always include a “token fattie” who gets dropped after the fifth episode? And how many of you really thought Toby Maguire looked sexy in Seabiscuit?

Men contend with their own struggles with regards to disordered eating, cultural pressure and physical stigma. But that has nothing to do with whether female models ought to be starving themselves to fit sample sizes, and perpetuating an unrealistic body ideal. The issue of men and eating disorders is another issue – maybe one for a male version of Lisa Hilton to butcher?

And, finally, Hilton throws out a moral argument for tradition:

Women have always gone to absurd and often dangerous extremes in pursuit of the beauty myth. Fourteen-inch waists and mercury-eaten complexions for the Elizabethans, pthisis- inducing sponged muslin for Romantic groupies.

Years of academia and a husband in moral philosophy have taught me this important lesson: appealing to tradition doesn’t make a practice morally acceptable. Hilton seems to suggest that women are hard-wired to strive for “absurd and often dangerous extremes,” in pursuit of physical ideals. Which, correct me if I’m wrong, would make us all “pathologically stupid.”

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Remember, there’s always adoption.

That’s what the woman of the house might want to be telling herself, if she’s been taking note of the newspaper’s health section this week. It’s bad enough that one of the only reasons I ever considered pregnancy – the excuse to smoke excessive quantities of controlled substances, “for my cramps” – has gotten negative press for apparently stunting fetal development and leading to cognitively delayed kids (to which I say: whatever, the pot-babies are just really mellow, alright?). To make matters worse for women of reproductive age, though, another host of new studies are making me suspect that my own ovaries are already shriveled into tiny, infertile raisins.

One study, reported with a large photo of a ticking clock by the always-sophisticated Daily Mail, concluded that a woman’s egg supply actually dwindled much faster than science once thought. In fact, the average 30-year-old will have just 12 percent of her eggs left and rarin’ to be fertilized. “By her 40th birthday the situation is even more bleak,” the Mail warns ominously. By then, only 3 percent of her eggs remain alive and well.

But perhaps the most depressing part of this study is the reaction of the doctor behind it. “There are women waiting for the next promotion, or waiting to meet Mr Right,” scoffed researcher Dr. Tom Kelsey, of St Andrews University. “Women often do not realize how seriously ovarian reserve declines after the age of 35. Every year that goes by you are losing a big proportion of your ovarian reserve.”

Trust me, Dr. Kelsey. WE KNOW. That’s why so many desperate 20-somethings keep signing up for The Bachelor.

Then there’s the delicious news out of UC Berkeley, where researchers concluded that standard household cleaning products can slay a woman’s fertility by 50 percent. Flame-retardant chemicals, called PBDEs, are found in such things as furniture and drapes. “The good news is these chemicals have or are being phased out,” said lead study author Kim Harley. The bad news is that you’ve probably been exposed to a fair share of, you know, furniture, in your lifetime. In fact, 97 percent of Americans have detectable levels of PBDEs in their bloodstream. With a statistic like that, I’m wondering how any woman, living in a furnished indoor space, has even been impregnated in the last decade.

If you do manage to get knocked up, good luck with the crippling depression. A preliminary study suggests that women who stick with anti-depressants have a risk of delayed lactation that’s twice as large as that of women who don’t medicate. Ironically, pregnant women are at the highest risk for depression in their third trimester or right after giving birth – exactly when lactation should start kicking in.

“These women need to know that delay doesn’t mean it isn’t going to happen,” points out study author Kathleen Kendall-Tackett. Maybe, but you only have a few months of teat-bonding with your newborn. If you don’t breastfeed, your child has a greater risk of illness, asthma and obesity, along with reduced cognitive development.  Can you imagine how you’d feel if your own mental health problems led to a sickly, asthmatic adult offspring?

It’s all enough to make you want to light up a joint. Oh. Wait.

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I’ve been covering the sham that is erectile dysfunction supplements for months now. My interest in alternative health practices means that I’m often inundated with websites and pseudo-science on the benefits of various herbs, tonics and tinctures that can cure a lagging sex drive. The fact is, some of these pharmaceuticals – which are often sold online – are downright dangerous.

That’s because ‘natural’ supplements can contain unlabeled ingredients, and online Viagra is often straight up fake. A new report published in the International Journal of Clinical Practice shows just how scary your erection can become, if you opt to self-medicate. The report, a collaboration by health officials in the UK, US and Sweden, reviewed over 50 studies of online medical sales and subsequent health problems, most of them related to erectile dysfunction drugs. And, if you were wondering, there are a lot of those meds being sold: around 2.3 billion a month.

If you think you managed to score legit Viagra online, think again. More than half the pills tested were fake, and they make up a large portion of the booming industry of counterfeit drugs, which now rakes in around $75-billion a year. In the European Union, it’s estimated that 2.5 million men are swallowing counterfeit Viagra.

So why do researchers suspect that erectile dysfunction drugs are some of the most common online purchases? Embarrassment associated with the underlying condition. Know what’s more embarrassing than not getting it up? Not getting it up and ingesting printer ink:

[The study] found that that a Hungarian sample contained amphetamine, a UK sample contained caffeine and bulk lactose and that printer ink had been used to colour some samples blue. Other samples contained metronidazole, which can have significant adverse effects when combined with alcohol.”

And, on a more serious note, there’s the whole “not getting it up…and then dying” problem:

“We discovered that 150 patients had been admitted to hospitals in Singapore after taking counterfeit tadalfil and herbal preparations that claimed to cure ED. Seven were comatose, as the drugs contained a powerful drug used to treat diabetes, and four subsequently died.”

What’s a great example of that last eating disorder trigger? Women’s pseudo-fitness magazines. You know, those mags that feature interchangeable, hard-bodied celebrity cover models, who flaunt their bikini bodies and do us a huge favor by sharing their workout tips (sometimes on collectible tearaway cards!). These magazines are like heroin for the eating disordered. They often offer misleading diet information, along with airbrushed photos of impossible physical ideals, and perpetuate ugly myths about how health ought to look. It’s obvious that these monthly doses are hurting us – but we can’t help shell out for our next fix.

You can probably tell that I think very little of these publications. That said, I don’t blame them for causing anyone’s eating disorders, including my own. I do, however, think they’re blameworthy for worsening a cultural sickness that’s already quite severe. So imagine my surprise when one magazine managed to sink to a new low this month: featuring a recovered eating disorder patient on their cover. Airbrushed and in a bikini.

Katharine McPhee, of American Idol, graces the February cover of Shape Magazine, looking exactly like every other cover model on every other issue of Shape Magazine: tight abs, protruding collar bone, disconcertingly luminescent skin. But there’s one big difference – McPhee has spoken openly before about her struggle with bulimia:

By the time she auditioned for the show [American Idol], she was purging seven times a day. Fearing she wouldn’t make it through the competition because of damage the vomiting could cause her vocal cords, she entered a three-month treatment program a few months before the season began.

Needless to say, that’s an intense struggle, and McPhee deserves credit for the strength to seek treatment and pursue life-long health. But after purging as often as seven times a day, for five years, you’d think McPhee would know better than to perpetuate the very same unrealistic physical ideal she admits to struggling with:

“Growing up in Los Angeles and spending all those years in dance class, I’d been conscious of body image at a young age.”

Exactly, Katharine. Being so conscious of your own body, and its apparent shortcomings, is very difficult. So, how do you think the millions of teens and young women eying you in a swimsuit are going to feel about their own self-worth? I’m not faulting McPhee for wanting to celebrate her health and recovery. But I am faulting her for doing it in a way that’s likely going to do more harm than good for other women. As anyone who has recovered from an eating disorder knows, the last thing – the very last thing – one should focus on is their bikini body, and, by extension, their weight or their size. Focus on strength, nourishment, how it feels to wake up energetic and vibrant. Not, as the McPhee cover teaser states, on “The Six Moves That Changed My Body!”

Full disclosure: I haven’t checked out the full text of McPhee’s “must-read” story yet. But no matter what those 1,400 words have to say about body image, my argument stays the same. Posing – in a bathing suit – on the cover of a magazine that offers tips on how to “Drop a Pound by Friday“? That makes you a hypocrite. And the antithesis of an advocate for eating disorder awareness. In her Shape interview, McPhee is quoted:

“The more I focused on my weight, the worse my bulimia got … Now I’m more easygoing. I stopped fighting myself and became more forgiving of my body.”

If women really want to become more forgiving of their bodies, comparing themselves to a bikini-clad American Idol singer is the last thing they should do. Seek out alternate forms of validation – ones that don’t represent health with headlines like “$5 tool that zaps jiggle” or “BLAST 300+ calories at lunch.”

Shame.

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Just the research I’ve been waiting for to prove what a bad-ass I am.

A study by Texas Tech University sociologists has concluded that there’s a connection between “multiple pieces of body art” and “deviant behavior.” Somehow, TTU thought it would be a wise idea to create an entire “Body Art Team” to investigate the sordid details. Upon surveying 1,753 students at four Midwestern and Southern universities, the team had bad news for parents of college kids with four or more tattoos, seven or more body piercings, or (heavens!) piercings located in their nipples or genitals. Those with inked arms and bejeweled penises were more likely to admit to marijuana use, a history of arrests, cheating at school, binge drinking, and multiple sex partners.

And that was just at Midwestern and Southern schools! Can you imagine what the tattooed kids at NYU are getting up to? Probably piercing their own genitals while smoking a joint – outside of a police station – and videotaping the entire thing.

Good news – I guess – for parents of the dweebs who’ve only got bellybutton rings or cute little flower tattoos on their feet (ugh): the study showed “sharp differences in the levels of deviant behavior among those with just one tattoo vs. those with four or more, and among those with just one to three piercings vs. those with seven or more.”

This is a bit of a wake-up call for me. Apparently, I’ve got some binge drinking to catch up on.

All in, the fivesome have lost (and gained, and regained, and lost again) hundreds of pounds. They’ve also struggled with confidence, body image and mental illness, and dealt with embarrassment, shame and – sometimes, thankfully – self-acceptance. Most women, sadly, contend with the same problems, no matter the number on the scale. That’s why there’s universal appeal to Kuffel’s narrative, which is honest, smart, and sassy.

I was lucky enough to ask Kuffel, who describes herself as a “food addict” and refers to periods of clean eating as “abstinence,” about her book, women’s body image, and how she thinks we ought to define health.

Where are you now in terms of weight and your health?

I’m not sure of my weight – I need to get a new kryptonite battery for my scale. I haven’t fretted about it because when I don’t want to get caught up in the numbers game. My size 22 jeans are comfortable. That puts me at about 260 pounds.

December was a marathon stumble and now that the holidays are over, I’m detoxing. I feel flu-ish and that physical memory is good for keeping me abstinent when I feel wobbly. I want to keep those symptoms – the muscle aches, the fantastic thirst, the running to the bathroom, the lethargy, the indifference to the world – foremost in my mind.

I think (and correct me if I’m wrong), that a lot of people are still under the impression that excess weight = laziness, or a lack of control or care over one’s appearance or health. You frame the discussion much more in the context of illness or addiction. Can you comment on that? For you – and your friends – do you think this is an addiction much like alcoholism?

Managing to be a hundred and fifty or two hundred pounds overweight takes great dedication! Carrying it around while working, doing the shopping, cleaning the house is Herculean. Take one of those accusers and make them live one normal day carrying a hundred pounds on their back and then tell me fat people are lazy. That assumption annoys the shit out of me. Being seriously overweight is hard physical labor.

I don’t frame the conversation about overweight as a disease in the same way that the Center for Disease Control does. The C.D.C. sees an epidemic that has few cures, whereas I see a phenomenon: we are, all of us, alive today because our ancestors’ bodies stored weight in bountiful times in order to survive famine. Now we live in a world of fast, cheap, dangerous food and we have a hundred thousand years or more of D.N.A. telling us to shore up before MacDonald’s closes forever. Gaining weight is, in that sense, natural.

However, our food stuffs are not natural and there is growing evidence that they are both addictive and body-altering. Artificial sweeteners, palm oil, sugar, refined carbohydrates of all sorts play out in the serotonin and dopamine parts of our brains, in our livers, and in our pancreases.

I would never call someone a food addict unless the person in question has already done so, and I try very hard not to judge people on how they treat their obesity. The day one comes to the conclusion that one has a food addiction and that the addiction must be treated is a terrible day. Nobody goes into a twelve-step program or a bariatric surgeon’s office because it’s a pretty morning and the roses are in bloom. You go in on your knees, and they’re bloody knees from all the other things you’ve tried and failed at, from the shame and the terror of what you are becoming.

I’m an addict, no question about it. There is no cure. There are days of relief from the desire to overeat and there are days I want to be out of my own consciousness by way of doughnuts. My boyfriends are Ben and Jerry. They understand me better than anyone in the world – except another addict.

[Of the "Angry Fat Girls" in the book] Katie has subscribed to this understanding but Wendy, Lindsay and Mimi don’t. And I’m not going to put them in a category they don’t claim. They’re my friends and it’s not fair because calling someone an addict means they have no natural mechanism for control. It’s an awful suspicion to put on women I love and admire.

At times reading, I felt like the relationships between the “angry fat girls” was more detrimental than helpful, in terms of health, weight, attitude, and so on. Would you agree with that? And do you think companionship should be a part of seeking health?

Whoever was losing weight among us was the object of our envy, certainly. Sometimes it was alienating. Wendy could sputter on for hours about her new clothes, and when I’m abstinent I tend to focus very hard on the work of eating clean and the work that fulfills me enough to beat the sugar demons back. I’d go missing for spells when I was abstinent and I’m afraid I had a reputation for moodiness because of it.

But then, we were all moody at one time or another. What was – and still is – the hardest thing to accept among the Girlz is that we love each other. If I’m having an orgy with Jerry and Ben every night, Mimi is still going to call and tell me she loves me. Wendy can throw herself a colossal pity-party and we’re going to get fed up but we’re going to do it with love. Speaking for myself, I keep wondering why they love me, why they care, why they go to the trouble to remind me I’m not alone.

When we all began doing daily inventories of not only what we ate but whom we spoke to, who we helped, what we were proud of and what we struggled with, we all began to see that there was more to us than our success or failure on the scale. We sometimes had to urge one another on through cruddy attitudes or applaud minor victories, but it was a powerful tool for becoming more conscious of each day and how we filled it.

I struggled with an eating disorder for several years, and I often feel like I can “manage” the illness but never “recover” …Do you feel the same way about your own situation?

Yep. Alas. It will be with me forever.

What role – if any – do you give the cultural notion of beauty/sexiness as “thin” with regards to your and the “angry fat girls’” situation with food and weight?

The “you can never be too thin” ethos inspires guilt, self-condemnation and spending across the board, from the Girlz to the woman who wants to lose five pounds. It’s hideous and stupid. I’d like to round up all the famous skinny, beautiful women and ask them some questions about Hemingway and Colonial America and the Battle of Midway and fractions and how to make pecan rolls from scratch and what the difference between “lay” and “lie” is and what the plot of Madame Butterfly is. I’d like to level – or raise – the playing field.

On the other hand, do Nicole Kidman and Kate Moss inspire me to overeat? No. But the frustration of some guy preferring a run-of-the-mill thin woman because I was too fat to love has led me to the freezer case more than once.

And while we’re at it, can we all stop talking about the cellulite of movie stars? Can we cut them a break as well?

The book is written, and hopefully your honest and very poignant message is out. What do you hope can come from your sharing such personal struggles?

First and foremost is that regaining weight (and, in fact, gaining weight) is what nature intends us to do. One hundred and fifty-eight years ago – a great or great-great-grandfather ago – ten percent of the Irish population died of famine and another ten percent immigrated because of it. I’m built to survive a potato blight. Further, once the body has accumulated all that fat, it wants only to return to that original set point.

To make things more complicated in the weight loss and maintenance game, some of us have broken brains. We eat to hide, assuage, have fun, sleep, and we’ll do whatever it takes to get the next bite.

So this struggle is adamantly NOT our fault. And if we don’t accept ourselves and the circumstances of our lives as fat people, we’re going to have life itself – kids needing, break-ups, the recession, aging parents, death, terrible bosses, catastrophic events – aiming at us straight at our guts when we have no armor. I urge women who struggle with weight to consider why they eat and seek the appropriate venue to address that.

The last thing I’ll say about what I want Angry Fat Girls to promote is that women have strength in numbers.  We can hold hands, cry, rejoice, get angry, get silly on the `net, anonymously if we want, with the knowledge that we’re no longer alone on this long rutted road. If our family and friends don’t “get” what we’re going through in Texas, someone in Indiana will. So I’d urge any reader to seek out a safe place to share their ambitions and failures, shame and victories, and the day-to-day drone of dieting, exercise, home and work routines that can be so dangerous. We have such strong emotions about our bodies that an emotional outlet for the way we decide to deal with our bodies is crucial and key.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

I’ve been covering military medical initiatives for around eight months now, and seen the Pentagon struggle with addressing the growing problem of PTSD diagnoses among returning vets. Of course, they’ve come up with some out-there ideas: a pharmacological intervention to prevent post-traumatic stress before it starts, for example. But the military’s also got a growing body of neuroscience on their side, and now the Navy wants to cram dozens of cognitive tests into a portable battlefield brain scanner.

The device would offer near instant diagnosis of brain damage, trauma or the earliest signs of PTSD-related symptoms. Read about that device – and other mental health-oriented gadgets that the Pentagon’s been after – at Danger Room. And there’s no time like to present to educate yourself in war-related mental illness: just today, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced that suicide rates among young, male veterans had increased by 26 percent between 2005 and 2007. A startling 20 percent of America’s 30,000 annual suicides are committed by veterans.

Especially in January, when everyone and her dog are on the lookout for the latest, greatest weight-loss method. Now, the New York Times is pleased to announce, we’ve got a winner for 2010: the Caveman Diet.

In Sunday’s Style section, the Times explores a diet fad that I’ve written up, with much skepticism, several times. To make a long, bizarre story short, the Caveman Diet is a food and fitness approach that mimics the – apparent – habits of our long lost ancestors. Raw meat, fasting, and exercise routines that would allow one to “flee from a mastodon” are all integral. And, according to Caveman devotees – photographed by the Times inside what appears to be a Museum of Natural History exhibit (bizarre Times photo number two last week) – the result are impressive: they’ve lost fat, muscled up and feel “in touch with their inner ancestor.”

Oh, my. How many ways do I hate this entire idea? So many ways. Mostly, though, it comes down to this:

“I didn’t want to do some faddish diet that my sister would do,” Mr. Durant said.

Ahem. First of all, Mr. Durant (whom the Times generously describes as “a cheerful Jim Morrison”), women aren’t the only ones attracted by faddish diets. Men are too. And know what? I’d say you’ve probably been hook-line-and-sinkered into a diet fad yourself. Because nothing says “diet fad” like no carbs, 24-hour fasts and an at-home meat locker. I’ve seen it before, and I’ll see it again. Week one, it’s bacon-and-eggs for breakfast and a glowing smile as the pounds melt off. Week four, it’s nibbling “just a little” of my lunchtime bagel. And week eight, you’re binging on donuts in the bathroom and scrambling to rub the powdered sugar off your nose for fear that someone finds out what a phony you are. Shame.

But what might really sum this disaster up are the following nuggets from the Times piece, as Cavemen devotees remark and reflect on the roots of their new (for now) “lifestyle”:

Andrew Sanocki, 38, a former Navy officer, explained that he preferred working out on an empty stomach near the end of a fast, and then following up with a large meal. This is a common caveman schedule, intended to reflect the exertion that ancient humans put into finding food. It is as if, Mr. Sanocki explained, “we’ve gone out and killed something, and now we have to eat it.”

Oh, but Andrew. You didn’t go out and kill anything. Which means you just starved yourself, and then panted through a glycogen-deprived workout, for no reason at all. Unfortunate for our ancestors, they didn’t have modern research to show that eating before a workout boosts energy levels and improves recovery.

Another caveman trick involves donating blood frequently. The idea is that various hardships might have occasionally left ancient humans a pint short. Asked when he last gave blood, Andrew Sanocki said it had been three months. He and his brother looked at each other. “We’re due,” Andrew said.

Giving blood is a great idea, but not as an imitation of “various hardships” that might lead to massive blood loss. I’ve actually never, ever heard of someone creating an entirely self-serving reason to sacrifice a pint of their own blood for those in dire medical need, so this is a first. Nice one, guys.

They regularly grumble about vegans, whom they regard as a misguided, rival tribe. But much of the conversation is spent parsing the law of the jungle.

Hey now! First of all, take a look at my blood tests and race times, and then tell me that I’m misguided about healthy habits. Second, there’s no tribe here. Most vegans I’ve met dislike most other vegans they meet. I dislike most other vegans I meet. Contrary to popular belief, we don’t all hold tree-ins, believe in consensus decision-making and weave beads into our dreadlocks. Also, law of the jungle? Ha.

And while we’re discussing misguided ideas, let’s get back to the point: I think it’s misguided to live in the 21st century, enjoy its luxuries and amenities – like at-home meat lockers – and then use those amenities to create bizarre parallels between yourself and a caveperson. Also misguided: The Times reports that Durant and co. took up the diet after “researching health concerns online.” Yes. That is a very good idea. And a great way to take up a fad diet that even your sister would fall for. Good luck getting laid after letting that quote slip.

I give our country’s cavemen three months before they’re back to pasta and tired of – er – jungle laws. That is, if they last that long:

Unfortunately, life was short: If you made it to age 30 or so, you had done well.

“Ultimately it was just a matter of, ‘Well … it has to be drawn somewhere…And as I recall, it was very hot in the meeting room, and people were in shirt sleeves and, you know, it was time to kind of move on, if you will. And, I can’t quite frankly remember who it was who stood up and drew the picture and said, ‘Well, let’s just do this.’”

So there in the hotel room someone literally stood up, drew a line through a graph depicting diminishing bone density and decreed: Every woman on one side of this line has a disease.

That was all it took for Merck – my favorite little faux-medical journal-writing pharma company – to jump on the bone-density wagon. They launched an aggressive campaign to install bone densitometer machines in more doctor’s offices, and started promoting a lower dose of Fosamax as a cure-all for osteopenia. In other words, a new disease was born, and Merck already had the treatment. A treatment that could be prescribed to millions of American women who weren’t quite ready to shatter a hip, but didn’t quite have the bones of a 20-something. Says Steve Cummings, director of clinical research at the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute:

“When millions of women are getting the word ‘osteopenia’ from the bone density test that they are getting in their 50s and 60s, they get worried,” Cummings says. “When a clinician sees the word ‘osteopenia’ on a report, they think that it’s a disease. They want to know: What should I do?”

Osteoporosis is a serious illness: more than half of women over the age of 50 are diagnosed, and many who break a bone never return to full mobility. Hearing that you’re “at risk” and “osteopenic” is scary. And I would know, because I’ve been there, done that. At 19, I had a full bone scan (thanks, Canadian health care, for footing that one) and saw a batch of squiggly green, red and yellow lines that apparently designated me “osteopenic” – bad news for a competitive runner, and someone who appreciates walking down the stairs without clutching the handrail.

In the throes of my horror and disbelief (I hadn’t broken more than a toe at the time), I saw two specialists: one suggested calcium supplements and weight gain, the other advised me to start an aggressive, once-a-week Fosamax plan. And, again motivated by trepidation and visions of wheelchairs and early death, I went for the drugs.

And let me tell you, if you’ve not heard much about their side-effects, be warned. Users can’t eat, lie down or engage in activity for 30 minutes to an hour after taking their weekly dose. I did none of the three, and still wound up with a burned esophagus in week one. Week two, I threw up twice. Week three, I flushed the pills down the toilet and bought a box of Caltrate.

It seemed rash at the time, but I was disillusioned – confused to be taking pills meant for a 50-something, worried when a doctor warned me that I couldn’t (ever) get pregnant, because the pills “stay in your bones for decades” and a little bit antsy that they had been linked to lifelong bone and joint pain, and osteonecrosis (“bone death”) of the jaw.

So I stopped, and spent four years wondering if I’d just signed my ticket to a lifetime of low-impact exercise. Ugh. But I either did something right, or got very lucky: last year, another bone density scan (thanks, U.S. health insurance, for charging me $800 for that one) revealed that I’d bulked up my bones by around 10 percent. I was now – almost – “normal.”

Good thing, because otherwise, I might have opted to try my luck with Fosamax again – mere weeks before the New York Times reported that the drug, and its counterparts, are being blamed for an increased risk of “a low-trauma fracture of the thigh bone or other major bone – and a delay in healing or complete failure of a fracture to heal.”

How ironic.

So, let’s get our cards in line here: Merck creates an osteoporosis drug, then capitalizes on the creation of an arbitrary “health condition” to sell billions in meds to women who may not really need them – but who will endure nausea, vomiting, sore joints and muscles, a raw esophagus and a rotting jaw. And the stuff doesn’t even really work? In my case, I was probably better off having flushed my prescription and opting to eat well and cross my (now less brittle) fingers.

Hey, Merck? I am unimpressed – and downright disgusted. Vioxx was pretty bad, ditto with sponsoring medical journals to tout your own research. But marketing drugs to women – of all ages – to “cure” a non-disease that’s been used as a fearmongering tool to convince us that we’ve got one leg in a wheelchair? And a drug with side-effects that are downright contradictory? That sucks.

May you develop chronic diarrhea that can’t be treated by Rotateq. And a full-body fungus that’s immune to Cancidas.

And may your jaws rot in an osteonecrotic hell.

Image via Wikipedia

You wish I was referring to cooking.

Alas, my Inbox greeted me this morning with a press release from a cosmetic surgeon’s website, informing me that my ‘Fat Was Phat‘ this year. Necessary for hormone production, insulation for my inner organs, and padding for long bike rides, maybe. But – the press release wants me to ask – what else has my fat done for me lately?

Not as much as it could, apparently. 2010 has been marked as the year that fat takes over the plastic surgeon’s office, with new procedures utilizing human body fat to aesthetically “improve” the body.

The year 2010 ushers in a new decade where science , beauty, and your own fat consummate a marriage that promises to deliver one of the most disruptive medical technologies of the century.

That’s an interesting visual, right there. Science, vanity and a liposuction siphon getting all up and at each other. And the end result, apparently, includes less bleeding and fewer scars. And I think we can all agree that blood and scarring do not a good consummation make. If you’re into the idea of using your own fat to create a new you (as a lifestyle choice, not a science experiment), here are a few of the real winners:

Stem cell facelift. Human fat tissue is a rich source of pluripotent adult stem cells, which could come in handy for lifesaving procedures and medical cures for ailments like Parkinson’s, fatal wounds, and the creation of new organs. And, most importantly, of course, the stem cells will be a godsend for cosmetic surgery. Your fat would be sucked from your thigh or stomach, stem cells cultivated, and then re-injected into your face. All that for the low, low price of $5,000.

Brazilian butt lifting. Before the wonderful possibility of fat injections became a medical reality, butt implants used silicone and were accompanied by a high risk of infection. Not to mention “a less sensuous look” when compared to the Brazilian lift method. What is it? Fat is again siphoned from your body, and then re-injected – hundreds of times – to fill out your rear. According to this surgeon, the method results in “a youthful, prominent, perky buttocks and a more sensual body profile.” Until you remember that you just had your own fat injected into your ass, right?

Fatty breast implants. If you’re looking for a little bump in bosom size, rather than the all-or-nothing Pamela Anderson approach, this doctor recommends fat injections for boobs, too. Six to eight small shots of – again – your own fat cells – are pumped into each breast, for a slightly bigger, fuller cup size. And if you’re interested in trying fatal septic shock, this might be an excellent procedure to toy with – as long as you don’t mind the subsequent “contraction and contracture of the mammary gland and skin, with traumatic aesthetic outcomes.”