I am going with the unbalance of electrolytes theory as well.

thanks for posting the information, wow. Much I didn't know. I have a cousin who went through an anorexia period and her hair got thin and very brittle. She looked like she was dying. Happy to say she overcame it and works as a nurse now. I'm sure some of the damage (to organs) from those types of "diets" or eating disorders must be irreversible.

I remember reading an article in the NYT magazine, quite a while ago, about a woman who developed odd eating habits, eliminating certain food groups entirely from her diet. she started to suffer from vitamin deficiencies, which is very dangerous. In this day and age, in communities where there's such a variety and amount of food available (not to mention store shelves crammed with bottles of vitamins and supplements), I think we can forget that our bodies need to have certain amounts of certain nutrients. You don't think about getting scurvy or rickets (!)

here at 3FC posters do seem more hyper aware and educated about diet and nutrition. I do know what it's like to my thinking go out of whack when a feeling of weight loss desperation sets in, though I can't remember doing anything too dangerous in that vein. I'm sure it happens all the time.

This is such a sad story - it's really terrible that this ever had to happen. Thin brides? I think a LIVE fat bride would be better.

I don't think it was just because of the low calorie diet plenty of people do this and for the most part are fine. I mean look at the master cleanse fast (theres basically no calories thats why i bring it up) that so many people are trying out, nutritionally speaking it really can't be good for you but people (for the most part) aren't dying from it either. The diet might have been a factor in her health diminishing but I doubt it was solely the reason she died.

Plenty of people jump out of trees, and off of garage and house roofs and are fine, too (my brother and I did as children many times), but that doesn't mean that the people who do so and are aren't fine were injured or killed from something other than the jump. "Most people survive it unharmed," is true in "regular" russian roulette. Only about 1 in 6 will die during a game (assuming a 6 chambered revolver). Actually the odds are significantly better, because if someone is killed on their "turn" it generally stops the game. Just because the odds of survival are 83% or better, doesn't mean russian roulette is safe.

Just because 99% or 99.9% or 99.99% of crash dieters do so without permanent and obvious injuries doesn't mean crash dieting is safe, it just means that the "gun" holds 100, 1000, or 10,000 empty chambers. The "bullet" is still there.

As an example, just looking at one potential cause of death for healthy people who crash diet - hyponatremia (low blood sodium or water poisoning):

It's not at all impossible for a healthy person (even a professional athlete in top condition) to become dangerously sodium deficient. My mother was hospitalized for it (from drinking only about a gallon of fluids a day, combined with a low-sodium diet). For her, there was an additional factor, a blood pressure medication that lowered her threshold for the problem, but the kidney specialist called in said that while it was once an incredibly rare disorder, it's becoming more and more common among entirely healthy people without other risk factors. Until recently, the only "healthy" people that were likely to be at risk were marathon runners and other intense athletes, people trying to "pass" urine drug screens by chugging gallons of water, and people with severe ocd compulsions to drink water constantly. However, with more and more people dieting and the number of dieting myths that recommend very large amounts of water, he said he's seen more cases than ever before - among people with no underlying conditions, and expects the trend to continue (mostly blaming "crash dieting").

If "most people aren't hurt by it," were adequate justification to prove something safe, drug companies would never lose a wrongful death suit.