Written By: Shraddha Rupavate | Updated: February 28, 2015, 11:52 PM
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Dry skin: Women who follow crash diets generally have dry skin. Starving causes the skin to become dry and scaly. Sometimes swelling (edema) may be seen. It also makes the skin to appear tight because of dryness.
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Hair problems: Both the skin and the hair gets affected with extreme dieting. When you starve yourself and go on a crash diet, your skin and hair may get deprived of proteins essential for hair growth. Your hair may start losing luster and may eventually become thin and brittle.
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What you may initiate as a part of your dieting plan can turn into an obsession fairly quickly. With societal or peer pressure, many people unnecessarily feel the need to lose weight by any means they can think of, mainly crash diets. Because of unawareness of the effects of starving, people turn to crash diets or switch on to ‘extreme skinny mode’ to get into the ideal body shape publicized by the media. Crash diets may require prolonged periods of starvation which in turn can cause serious health issues. In fact, scientists have found that anorexic people (the ones who refuse to eat because of fear of putting on weight) increase their chances of dying by about 18 percent compared to healthy individuals. Here are major health complications associated with extreme dieting or starving.
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When the body does not receive nutrition, it slows down the metabolism drastically to save as much energy as possible. Here are 13 ways to boost metabolism.
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Muscle wasting: Because you are depriving yourself of the basic nutrient (protein) needed for muscle growth, extreme dieting can result in muscle loss. Although it’s one of the last stages of prolonged starvation, muscle loss may result if you subject your body to starvation mode on a regular basis.
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Osteoporosis: Studies have shown that depriving your body of the much needed nutrition at an early stage may result in osteoporosis later in life.
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Heart problems: When you are in the \'extreme skinny mode\', you are actually subjecting yourself to fasting or starvation conditions. Not eating for a long period of time reduces your blood pressure and slows down the heart rate which contributes to heart problems.
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Overall weakness and fatigue: Without food or nutrition, your body cannot produce energy to keep you fresh. So you’re bound to feel tired, exhausted, nauseated and fatigued. Read more about chronic fatigue syndrome.
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Dehydration: Dehydration is also quite common in people who follow crash diets. Indian women who fast regularly experience loss of body fluids from the body resulting in dehydration.
