And now for another ridiculous diet (long)

hi all... read this in my local newspaper and thought it must be an April Fools article... but no. For those who aren't familiar, the main character in this article is being tried in federal court for racketeering charges stemming from activities when he was mayor of Detroit.

Article copied from Detroit News, Online edition - August 9, 2012 - author: Francis X. Donnelly


Kilpatrick diet courts controversy
Ex-mayor slimmer, but some say method is an unhealthy fad

Leave it to Kwame Kilpatrick. Even his diets are controversial.

To lose weight, the former mayor is following a program that some dieticians dismiss as a fad, unhealthy and not supported by science.

The leading advocate is an acupuncturist from Russia whose quickly growing practice has opened clinics all over the U.S., including Kilpatrick's home, the Dallas area.

Grigory Sadkhin, now based in Brooklyn, has clients place tiny steel balls behind their ears and massage them in a circular motion every two hours.

This supposedly suppresses their appetite by stimulating nerves that run from the ear to the stomach.

"In the initial stage of dieting, the body feels it is starving," Sadkhin said in a prepared statement. "(It's) difficult for many patients to bear so I looked for a way to control it."

Kilpatrick's diet was discovered Wednesday during the start of jury selection in his public corruption trial.

He showed up in U.S. District Court in downtown Detroit with masking tape behind his ears.

His attorney explained the diet, saying Hizzoner had shed 16 pounds.

But local dieticians scoffed at the weight-loss technique, saying its effectiveness hasn't been supported by any studies.

"They may think it's helping them," said Marie Hoskins, a registered dietician from Troy. "In truth it doesn't do anything."

Hoskins and nutritionists are more concerned by other parts of Sadkhin's method.

Clients are limited to 1½ pounds of fruits and vegetables for two days. They're then restricted to 2½ glasses of yogurt or whole milk for two days.

They repeat the pattern until the diet is over.

The method leads to dramatic weight loss, an average of 20 to 23 pounds a month, said Sadkhin.

But the diet doesn't have enough calcium, protein or fatty acids, dietician Joan Endyke wrote in a Massachusetts newspaper after a clinic opened there.

"Sounds like the only thing he researched was Barnum and Bailey's methods. You know, the one about a sucker born every minute," she said.

Clients pay $150 for their first visit to a Sadkhin clinic and then $75 every 10 days as they return to have the position of the metal balls changed.

Sadkhin said he has discovered eight pressure points behind the ear that affect eating.

The method has been around for centuries, he said.

Early practitioners of Eastern medicine placed apple seeds or grains of rice behind patients' ears, he said.

Besides suppressing the appetite, it's believed that stimulation of the ear may increase one's endorphin levels, making a person feel better, said Sadkhin.

In turn, that could prevent the type of emotional eating that could be brought on by, say, a public corruption trial.

Among the growing number of followers are residents of Metro Detroit, where a clinic has opened in Lathrup Village.

Brandon Hynes of Canton said he tried it several years ago and found it effective.

"It works," he said. "You pretty much lose everything within a month."

After learning about Kilpatrick's diet from news reports, Hynes wrote to the former mayor's Facebook page, saying he was tickled that Kilpatrick was a fellow devotee.

The love wasn't returned.

After several hours, the page's administrator deleted the message.



From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120810/METRO/208100369#ixzz23AREcbaQ