|
Increasing numbers of teenage girls look to diet
pills to lose weight, a new study has found.
Conducted at the University of Minnesota and published recently
in the journal Preventive Medicine, the study found that the
use of diet pills almost doubled in a group of 2,500 female
adolescents tracked for five years -- overall rates of pill
use rising from 7.5 percent to 14 percent. By the time girls
reached ages 19 to 20, nearly 20 percent reported using diet
pills to lose weight.
Teens were tracked in two groups, about half from seventh
grade onward, the rest from when they were high school juniors
or seniors. Each group increased their use of diet
pills over time; the younger group had outpaced the older
group by the time they reached their senior year in high school.
"There are more pressures to be thin and greater availability
of the pills over the counter and on the Internet," says
study author Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, a professor at the university.
Researchers didn't ask which pills the girls took, she adds,
but they probably included appetite suppressants, laxatives
and stimulants. Not only did the pills fail, the girls who
used pills (and other unhealthful behaviors such as skipping
meals or throwing up) also were three times more likely to
be overweight at the study's end.
"What we think ...is that they go on these unhealthy,
restrictive diets," Neumark-Sztainer says. "And
then [they] binge and get themselves on a bad cycle."
Source: http://www.dfw.com/
|
