If you want to lose weight, look better or straighten your teeth, which methods will damage your body?
Tips from this section that apply in the United States. This section is about health and medicines. It is general information, not a substitute for a doctor’s diagnosis or prescription.
People with anorexia nervosa are about 5.9 times as likely to die as others their age. Out of every 1000 people followed for a year, 5.1 die. One in every five of those deaths is a suicide. And dieting is the way in: in a three-year study of students at 44 high schools, girls who dieted severely were 18 times as likely to develop an eating disorder as girls who did not diet. If you want to control your weight, exercise more; don't eat so little that you go hungry.
Anything that uses a needle or a knife, or a medical device that breaks the skin or goes into the body, counts as medical treatment. It may only be done at a facility whose license says “medical cosmetology,” and the person doing it must be a registered licensed physician. Doing it in a beauty salon, studio or hotel room is practicing medicine illegally. The person who does it faces under 3 years in serious cases, 3 to 10 years if someone is injured, and 10 years or more if someone dies.
Among people who went blind after a filler injection, more than half had it in the nose, followed by between the eyebrows, the forehead and the nasolabial folds, and over 80% involved hyaluronic acid. Only about 20% of the people who lost sight recovered it fully, just over 10% partly, and nearly 20% also had brain injury. No rescue method works reliably at present, so the only option is to avoid these areas beforehand.
The ingredient most often found secretly added to this kind of product is sibutramine, which was originally a diet drug and was taken off the market in China in 2010. In overweight people with heart disease or diabetes who took it for more than three years, nonfatal heart attacks were about 30% higher and strokes about 36% higher. They lost only 1.7 kg more. By the time a spot check finds it, you have already swallowed it.
Men who tested positive for doping at a gym were 3 times as likely to die as others their age, and made more than twice as many hospital visits a year. Acne, enlarged breasts in men and erectile dysfunction each hit at least 1 in every 10 users. These drugs are prescription-only in China, and any channel that will sell them to you is itself breaking the law.
Prescription drugs must be sold with a prescription, and when sold online there must also be a real prescription and real-name registration. A shop that asks no questions, wants no prescription and ships as soon as you order is either not selling the drug it says or is breaking the rules. If something goes wrong, no one answers for your dose and your contraindications. A registration fee of a few dozen CNY gets a doctor to take care of that step for you.
This item does not discuss whether to use them, only how. Transgender women taking estrogen have clearly more blood clots in their blood vessels than others their age: about 4 more per 1000 people at two years, and about 17 more at eight years. This kind of risk has to be watched through regular checks, and if you buy the drugs online and adjust the dose yourself, no one checks for you.
About 15% of people who go for plastic surgery have body dysmorphic disorder (躯体变形障碍), which means blowing up a flaw that others can barely see until it affects your life. Among people who go to a dermatologist for cosmetic treatment it is about 13%, and in both groups more than 70% are women. Such a person finishes one area and then fixes on the next, and surgery can't solve it. First register for one visit to see whether this is your situation, and then decide whether to have surgery.
Clear aligners are Class II medical devices in China, and their instructions require that they be worn under the guidance of a doctor with orthodontic qualifications, with regular follow-up visits. The U.S. drug regulator says it has not authorized aligners sold directly to individuals without a dentist's prescription. Without an in-person exam, the bite may go crooked, teeth may move to the wrong place, and there may be pain or even tooth loss.
