The Most Drastic Way

When the former WAVE appeared at the Veterans Administration Center in Los Angeles, she weighed 315 Ibs., spread thick over a 5-ft. 6-in. frame. Dr. Ernst Drenick was delighted to see her. For years he had been studying the metabolic mysteries of obesity, and had rounded up ten of California's fattest male veterans--one a balloon-shaped 550 Ibs.--as volunteers. The WAVE would help them discover what difference sex might make in a grueling experiment to find out the value and effects of total starvation as a means of reducing.

No Pangs. The WAVE, like the men, was put on a regimen of nothing but water and vitamins. Like them, she was kept in the hospital and watched closely and constantly for the most minute changes in body chemistry. Like the men, she was allowed out of bed, but was permitted little physical activity. Sex did make a difference, at least in this one case. The ex-WAVE stuck to her more-than-Spartan regime, with no solid food at all, for no less than 117 days. She lost 116 Ibs. The runner-up was a legless man who had weighed in at 284 Ibs. and stuck it out for 75 days, dropping 41 lbs. Leland Poe, who had started at 550 Ibs., stayed with it for 60 days and lost 91 Ibs.

When these results were reported last fall, many obese patients got the idea that total fasting, tough as it sounds, might be the ideal way for them to lose a lot of weight. Far from it, Dr. Drenick's team now reports in the A.M.A. Journal. True enough, the drastic regimen takes off weight; the eight other men in the experiment lost 18 to 63 Ibs. after twelve to 52 days of fasting. And it is remarkably painless. The most astounding thing, say the doctors, is that after the first two to four days, none of the test subjects felt any hunger pangs --in sharp contrast to the gnawing hunger of people on low-calorie diets.

Not for Do-lt-Yourselfers. But the method has drawbacks and dangers. The WAVE developed gout* and anemia. It was the gout, and not hunger, that made her break her fast. Poe, the 550-pounder, also developed gout, and had a dangerous drop in blood pressure when he stood up. Four other patients showed the same drop in blood pressure. Only five men came through with no serious side effects, and none of these had lost more than 41 Ibs.

Total starvation is too dangerous to be lightly undertaken on a do-it-yourself basis, the A.M.A. Journal warns. It should never be tried, even under a doctor's care, by patients with liver disease, gout or heart-artery disease.

* One more proof that gout is not, as was once supposed, simply the result of high living. In starvation, the kidneys do not clear enough uric acid, which accumulates in the blood, may then crystallize to cause the anguish of gout.

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