The Extreme Measures Tour of colleges kicked off its national body image campaign and Eating Disorders Awareness Week on Monday night at AU, as more and more young women have plastic surgery and eating disorders, said tour co-coordinator Beth Nichols.
The event featured a woman who dealt with complications due to breast implant surgery, a plastic surgery expert, a woman who recovered from an eating disorder and a mental health professional, who all shared their experiences and knowledge to increase awareness of plastic surgery risks and eating disorders.
Living and Dying with An Eating Disorder
Rachel Beckman's eating disorder started in high school and continued until she got help in college. As an undergraduate at Syracuse University, she became more conscious of her weight, eating less and exercising excessively.
"I started pulling away from my friends because I didn't have time for friends," Beckman told those gathered in the Butler Board Room. "My eating disorder was my best friend."
Soon Beckman noticed problems, such as a gray complexion, amenorrhea (lack of menstruation), no hair or nail growth, and persistent aching in her hips and knees due to malnutrition and hormonal imbalance.
Joining a sorority ultimately led to the progression of her anorexia, bulimia and depression, she said.
"I told my sorority sisters and they kind of celebrated it with me," Beckman said.
When the president of her sorority staged an intervention, she saw it as an affirmation that her method of weight loss was effective, rather than a reason to worry.
The fear of gaining weight or being fat is often so overwhelming that any acknowledgment of being thin is seen as positive, according to Helpguide.org.
When Beckman reached out to others, she got mixed reactions. She even consulted her family doctor, who wasn't much help, she said.
"I picked out my own anti-depressant," Beckman said. "That's not how it's supposed to work."
On Sept. 20, 2002, Beckman was at her lowest.
"I decided my way out of this was going to be suicide," she said. "I took every pill I could find and I drank it with vodka and beer and I laid under a tree to die."
However, a homeless man found her and brought her back home to her roommate, who called paramedics. She had a short visit to Syracuse University's psychiatric unit, then a longer stay at Kartini Clinic in her hometown of Portland, Ore.
"For me it was like heaven ... all these people who understand me," Beckman said.
Beckman is proud of what she has accomplished since then, but she won't ever be able to reclaim her youthful body completely, she said. Although she has the appearance of an average young woman, she has osteopenia, or "the bones of an 80-year old woman."
Beckman said she hopes to increase knowledge and understanding of eating disorders by speaking to college students.
"I have friends [at AU] and I know [eating disorders are] on your campus," Beckman said. "I hope that if any of you have eating disorders, it doesn't take a September 20th. It shouldn't go that far."
Beckman now lives on her own in D.C.
The Price of Breast Implants
At age 20, Kacey Long got saline breast implants, the alternative to silicone approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
"It was a quick decision and I thought I had all the answers," Long said.
She said she hadn't expected the recovery pain or medical problems that followed.
"It was excruciatingly awful pain. It felt like a truck had run over my chest," Long said. "It took about a week before I could leave the house."
After the trouble of initial recovery, Long's condition worsened.
"Within two months I started to have weird shooting pains in my arms," Long said.
Three years after having breast implant surgery, she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, which a doctor told her was caused by her implants. Long was bed-ridden for a few months, unable to move without hurting.
"I graduated from college and I could barely walk, it hurt so bad," Long said.
Long said she looked online and found hundreds of stories similar to her own. Within two months, she had her implants surgically removed.
"I want you to know that I am representative of hundreds of people you don't know," Long said. "People I don't even know."
Long emphasized that scientific studies on long-term effects of breast implants are lacking.
"We have absolutely no data on what happens after seven years," Long said.
According to the National Organization for Women, this data exists, but Inamed Corporation, the silicone breast implant manufacturer, has not released it all to the public. In a 2003 report, Inamed did release some data. In a survey asking patients who chose to get implants removed after five years and why they decided to do so, 43 percent said patient choice, 33 percent said leakage or deflation, 10 percent said capsular contracture, 1 percent said infection, and 15 percent chose to have them taken out for other reasons.
Also, the margin of error in a mammogram increases from 33 percent without breast implants to 55 percent with implants, Long said. This statistic came from the National Institutes of Health-funded Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium in the Jan. 28 issue of the Journal of American Medical Association. Long also stressed the possibility of rupture during a mammogram.
"Even if you have no problems, [implants] still have to be replaced every 10 years," Long said. "Do you really want to be 70 years old getting your breasts redone?"
Long also encouraged girls to wait until they are done growing before getting breast implants. Before implant surgery, she had a size B cup; when she had them removed, her cup size had changed to nearly a D cup.
Long said she hopes women will wait until a safe breast implant is created. The newest type of breast implants are called "gummy bear implants" or cohesive gel implants. Because there is no data on this type of implant, some medical facilities are implanting them for free or in addition to a stipend.
"You are the research," Long said. "They're testing it on you."
Until the early 1990s, when doctors discovered the dangers of silicone - "rashes, open sores leaking silicone, hair loss, memory loss, mental confusion, muscle weakness, lupus, fibromylagia, scleroderma, rheumatoid arthritis and others" - silicone implants were standard, according to NOW. In 1992, the FDA removed silicone from the public market but continued to perform surgery in clinical trials to obtain long-term safety statistics. After 13 years, Inamed, the manufacturer of silicone implants, released only the most recent three years' worth of data, which showed high rates of complications like implant leakage, according to NOW.
In 1999, the Institute of Medicine released a report prepared by 13 independent scientists that concluding that breast implants cause localized problems but no major diseases, according to "Frontline," part of the Public Broadcasting Service.
In 2004, the FDA voted to postpone approval of silicone implants pending more safety data, according to FOX News. In April 2005, the FDA will vote again. Long urges students to stand up against the approval of silicone implant surgery.
Although Long is now in better health and can participate in the Extreme Measures Tour, her ailments have not ended.
"This has been the most awful thing I've ever endured in my whole life, and it isn't even over," Long said. "Most of all I don't want ya'll to go through this."
Long, now a graduate student at Texas A&M University-Commerce, shared her testimonial on MTV's "I Want A Famous Face" about saline support groups and "Good Morning America," as well as several other televised programs.
The Campaign for Body Image Awareness
Dr. Diana Zuckerman, a plastic surgery expert and president of the National Research Center for Women & Families, compared breast implants with other surgeries.
"Breast implants do have the highest complication rate," she said, adding that breast implants can cause an autoimmune response, in which the body turns on itself to reject the implant.
Breast implants can cause breast tissue atrophy, toxic shock syndrome through infection, capsular contracture (where scar tissue hardens tightly around the implant), or hematoma, according to the FDA.
"The reason why this product is sold in this country is because the FDA didn't have authority to regulate any implant or medical devices until 1976," Zuckerman said.
Breast implants started in the early '60s and weren't regulated until 1976, when Congress extended the FDA's jurisdiction to cover implants and medical devices after use of the Dalkon Shield intra-uterine contraceptive device resulted in the death of 12 women, according to USA Today. Studies on breast implants were not done until 1991, because scientists felt it unnecessary to do research on an elective surgery, according to Zuckerman. Bias may also be an issue since implant manufacturing companies are often researchers of their own implants, according to Zuckerman.
Sometimes surgeons aren't as qualified as they should be, Zuckerman said.
"Any doctor can call himself a plastic surgeon - even dentists," Zuckerman said, adding that most plastic surgeons don't have proper training to perform surgeries like breast implants.
Professionals like Zuckerman and Dr. Jeanine Cogan, policy director of the Eating Disorders Coalition for Research, Policy & Action, are trying to change that.
"Part of what [the Eating Disorders Coalition] is doing to change the current state of affairs is to require eating disorder training to health professionals," Cogan said.
The Extreme Measures Tour reaches people on a personal level.
"There are two important messages here," Cogan said, "The first is that eating disorders kill. ... The other important message is that there is hope and you can recover."
About 10 million females and 1 million males in the United States suffer from anorexia or bulimia each year, and about 25 million have a binge eating disorder, according to the National Eating Disorders Association.
People with anorexia have the highest mortality rate of any mental disorder group, often resulting from suicide or malnutrition, according to Cogan. Early diagnosis and treatment increase the chance of recovery.
It is important to look at the risk factors, Cogan said.
"Genes load the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger," Cogan said.
Common environmental risk factors include the image of female perfection in the media, chronic dieting, family emphasis on image or weight, trigger events like a comment about weight from a doctor or coach, or being in a sorority, according to Cogan.
"[The Extreme Measures Tour] is in response to television shows like 'The Swan' and the media image that women have to look a certain way to be accepted and happy," said Robyn Foreman, campus campaign director for the Extreme Measures Tour and undergraduate health education intern at the WELL Center at AU.
While Rachel Beckman's sorority may have spurred her eating disorder, not all sororities promote eating disorders. In fact, eating disorders are nonexistent in some sororities, representatives say.
"I don't know of any of my sisters who have had problems with [eating disorders] now or since I was a freshman," said Jenny Myers, vice president of social standards for the AU chapter of Alpha Epsilon Phi. "That's a non-issue."
However, the disorders are not absent at AU. Foreman is planning to create several support groups for students with eating disorders. She has already begun talking to the Counseling Center.
"I will continue to raise awareness for body image issues and try to provide resources," Foreman said. "I also plan to start a support group ... like Overeaters Anonymous."
Foreman and tour coordinators Nichols and Cathleen Witter brought the Extreme Measures Tour to AU. The Eating Disorders Coalition and the National Council of Women's Organizations sponsor the nationwide Extreme Measures Tour. The Tour will speak at 11 colleges across the country during the spring 2005 semester. For more information on eating disorders or plastic surgery, contact the WELL Center.
Active Minds, a new student group on campus, works to raise awareness and erase stigmas of mental illnesses, including eating disorders. For more information on the group, see The Eagle's Feb. 24 issue.
