Hard-to-Budge Pudge Begets Ad Flimflam on Cellulite

You’ve heard about cellulite--that jiggles-when-you walk stuff that clings to your hips, thighs and buttocks and gives you dimples where you don’t want them.

Advertisers who promote cellulite-banishing remedies and products would have you believe that cellulite is fat gone wrong--a “unique” breed of fat made of fat, water and toxic waste that is immune to traditional weight-loss methods (diet and exercise) and responds only to special treatments and products (which ad people are happy to sell you).

But before you invest your next paycheck on products or treatments to banish hard-to-budge pudge (whether it’s an herbal wrap that sets fat free or hip boots that squeeze it into submission), there is something you should know about cellulite:

Technically, it does not exist--not in medical dictionaries or journals, and certainly not on you.

- The American Medical Assn. states flatly that there is “no medical condition known or described as cellulite.”

- The Food and Drug Administration says cellulite is “fat on fat”: double-decker fat, perhaps, but fat nonetheless.

- “Fat is fat, wherever it appears on the body,” according to the New York County Medical Society. “Books (on cellulite) exploit women through a gimmick.”

In the last 10 years, the Postal Service has filed many false-representation claims against manufacturers of “cellulite cures” and has seized products as well.

There may be no such thing as cellulite, but who can deny those dimples and quivering, cottage-cheese thighs? If that’s not cellulite, what is it?

“There’s so little research that most of what we know about the nature of cellulite is based on hypothesis,” says Dr. Gerald Imber, assistant professor of plastic surgery at Cornell University Medical College and a plastic surgeon in private practice in New York City. “Basically, the dimples that you see on hips, thighs and buttocks are your basic, normal fat, but in an abnormally abundant supply.”

Imber says dimpling occurs in places on the body where there is an insufficient blood supply to sustain the growth of fat cells. As a result, fat cells collapse and form dimples. Sometimes, fibrous bands develop between these fatty pockets, then sink, giving the skin a bumpy look like cottage cheese.

ORIGINS OF CELLULITE

Cellulite may be a U.S. obsession, but it’s not an American invention. The concept of cellulite originated in European health spas in the early 1900s but didn’t become a household word in the United States until 1973, with the publication of the blockbuster “Cellulite: Those Lumps, Bumps and Bulges You Couldn’t Lose Before,” by Manhattan beauty salon owner Nicole Ronsard.

Her book offered a six-point program for ridding the body of toxic wastes and cellulite through diet, exercise, breathing, massage and relaxation, along with a plausible-sounding (but medically preposterous) explanation of what causes cells under the skin’s surface to become saturated with water and waste products that can’t be properly eliminated by the liver, kidneys and other organs.

The wastes harden and combine with fat and more waste to form pockets of a gel-like substance that bulges and creates cellulite, the book says.

According to Dr. Vincent F. Cordaro, a former FDA medical officer, this “irrational and unscientific” explanation goes against at least two medical facts: Wastes and toxins are not held in any one part of the body; and any retention of body wastes signals serious health problems, such as kidney or intestinal diseases.

“A person who retains wastes and toxins would be very ill, and could die if not treated,” he says.

The New York County Medical Society agrees: “To present cellulite as a disorder of the liver and, by confused association, of the kidneys, intestine and skin, is a distortion of science and shows total ignorance of pathophysiology.”

In fact, to date no one has distinguished fat from cellulite. Biopsies taken at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University on fat and “cellulite” cells showed no cellular differences, according to Dr. Neil Solomon, former secretary of Maryland’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, who conducted the research.

That is not to suggest that all fat cells are equal. Dr. Peter Vash, assistant clinical professor at UCLA and president-elect of the American Society of Bariatric Physicians, says new studies show that some fat cells are more metabolically active than others.

All fat cells have several metabolic receptors that can be influenced by various agents, including sex hormones, emotional stress and tension, medication, nicotine and, to some extent, metabolically active agents in food, such as caffeine and alcohol.

Vash says the interaction of all these agents may alter the surface of some fat cells so that dimpling results.

“What you’re seeing is not a different kind of fat but a situation in which certain fat cells have reacted differently to bodily interactions,” Vash says.

DIMPLE DISTRIBUTION

Mother Nature was a bit uneven in her distribution of dimples. Hormonal and hereditary factors make women more prone to lower-body dimpling than men, who tend to store fat in the abdomen.

The connective tissue beneath a woman’s skin forms large, round fat-cell chambers, while male fat-cell chambers are divided into small, polygonal units that do not readily bulge when filled.

Certain outer skin layers (the epidermis and corium) in women are thinner than in men--and more likely to reveal fat bulges underneath. These skin layers become increasingly thin and elastic with age, which makes “quivering thighs” particularly troublesome for older, overweight women.

Cellulite may not exist, but the alleged treatments and cures are very much with us, paid for by unknowing consumers who will do or pay anything to banish flab.

According to Dr. William Jarvis, a professor of health education at Loma Linda University in San Bernardino County and president of the National Council Against Health Fraud, the rise and fall of the cellulite hoax depends on you, the consumer.

“You can save yourself thousands of dollars and possible physical injury by seeing cellulite for what it is: an illusion created by hucksters more interested in taking away your money than your fat.”

CELLULITE CURES

Dry up the cellulite hoax by avoiding the following cures:

- Wraps. Popular at spas, you’re wrapped, like King Tut, in steaming cloths for half an hour to 90 minutes. Proponents say the heat “sets free” fat, water and wastes trapped in pockets just beneath the skin and immediately reduces fat by transporting excess water from fatty tissue to the bloodstream, where it is eliminated naturally by the body’s own cleansing system.

Other explanations include: “Fat is pulled out through the skin” and “the wrap breaks down cellulite, which will then be eliminated naturally by the body.”

Falling for this is not only worthless (all you really lose is water--and money), but potentially dangerous. According to the FDA, tightly wrapping the body can cause injury to people with diabetes, varicose veins or other health problems.

- Massage: Hands off this hands-on remedy. Proponents say massage pounds away at cellulite and breaks it down so it is more easily eliminated by the body. But while a massage can relax and stimulate muscles and promote intramuscular and intracellular elimination of metabolic wastes, massage will not burn or remove fat. Fat cells, like tissues, can’t be moved; they simply grow or shrink in place.

You can, however, get a pretty good workout by giving a massage.

- Scrubbers: You can’t wash cellulite away, no matter how hard you scrub. Brushes, horsehair mats and other devices sold for this purpose serve only to remove the top layers of dead skin cells, not fat, which is seven layers below.

- Gels and creams (to dissolve cellulite): Anything strong enough to dissolve fat would also destroy the skin and tissues on top of it, leaving serious burns behind.

- All-natural vitamins, supplements tablets, etc.: These supplements may contain substances with diuretic properties that cause a temporary loss of water, which makes the body temporarily appear slimmer.

- Passive exercise machines: The most wishful cure of all says that you can lie down on a table and “shake off” excess flab. Proponents say a few minutes of “passive exercise” provides the same workout as completing 1,000 sit-ups. The machines were seized by FDA officials for fraudulent advertising.

- Hormone-enzyme injections: Don’t get stuck by one of these worthless “cures,” which have absolutely no effect on weight loss.

DUMPING THE DIMPLES

Eating sensibly and engaging in regular aerobic exercise are the only ways to reduce overall body fat and dimples in hips, thighs and buttocks.