>A release of toxins into the system has recently been identified as a symptom of dieting<

I'm always immediately suspicious when I see the word "toxins". Can you provide some information about what type of toxins, who identified the link with dieting and, perhaps, where we could read more about it?

Certain words, as Pete correctly points out, are danger flags; they indicate shoals and reefs: "Here be flimflam; here be arrogant ignorance; here be meaningless maundering; here be selfrighteous denigration of the very workers whose revelations are uncomprehendingly misquoted!"

"Toxins" is a very good example; when fringe authorities talk of toxins, it carries overtones similar to when politicians speak of "rights"; they know it is a good word, and the fact that they don't know what it means or implies doesn't inhibit their use of it. 

When a person has abused his body into a state of pathological obesity (read: "nauseating fatness", as opposed to merely "naughty plumpness", or "indulgent cuddliness") then it is very difficult to do much about it without what the medical fraternity call "heroic measures", or at least stringent measures on a heroic scale. Generally anything of that type implies stressing the system in ways that require the body to release fat molecules and catabolic products of fat molecules a lot faster than your adipose tissues can lay down stores of new fat molecules. 

Typical effects include the release of ketone bodies (perfectly natural and routine products of fat catabolism, as you may readily confirm for your own purposes by inspecting the metabolic pathways, but producing poisonous effects when their concentrations rise. Think of the healthful effects of drinking acetone from your nail-polish remover bottle or paint thinners if you have any difficulty following this.)

However, those are not the only effects; the drastic increase of levels of free fatty acids in the blood can cause effects ranging from persistent unexplained migraines to aggravated deposition or release of atheromas. 

None of this should be surprising. Calling the substances "toxins" is hen-witted. They are natural metabolites. The harm can no more sensibly be blamed on them than the consequences of gross gluttony could be blamed on the good foods that had been abused and wasted. All the same, sensible choices of foods in sensible quantities might require a formal daily regimen that many people would call a "diet". Many more people would instead eat nauseating mushes at nauseating prices, or grossly unhealthy, ineffective, and expensive distortions of a healthy allowance, such as the Atkins fiasco, which generally causes the release of far more poisonous protein catabolites in far greater quantities, leading to such ill health that very few of his enthusiasts last out more than a quarter of the course.

So?

So anything of the like is object defeating. It is aimed at bringing down your gobs of fat to a desirable level. Damned stupid idea! Totally nitwitted objective.

Firstly it invites backsliding, which is what happens to most dieters.

Secondly it suggests that when you reach your target you can stop. After all, who wants to diet??? Who wants to torment himself daily forever? If all that is going to happen is that you never again eat a steak or choccie just so that you can go to your grave in a slim coffin, then why bother?

What you have to do is to develop a lifestyle that is pleasant enough and natural enough for you not to mind living like that indefinitely. For most healthy people that is surprisingly easy (especially if your wife will keep you at it!)

And once you are on such a practical lifestyle, you can stay that way indefinitely with occasional treats like a favourite dinner or dessert. And forget about about diets and toxins and yet another book to swell the bank balance of some fatty over the water.    

Interesting views on dieting but I was really just wondering in relation to a NS article I had read earlier this year regarding POPs.   http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19406-losing-weight-may-pollute-the-blood.html

OK. Fair enough. I still agree with Pete that something like "poisons" would be a fairer term, but never mind that for now.

As for the report, I may have missed it, but thanks for the url. I am slightly surprised. I encountered similar material informally back in the sixties, when people first became interested in some of the consequences of oil-soluble poisons accumulating in the adipose tissues. I remember the boss of a local insecticide-manufacturing company getting all hot under the collar about it all being harmless as long as the stuff stayed in the "inert" adipose cells. That seemed to have some merit, but no real cogency. Adipose tissue certainly is not inert and has important hormonal functions, though the latter point was not (afaik) known in the sixties. But yes, whether it had been demonstrated in those days afaik, I think it was pretty widely accepted that if you mobilised the fat you were likely to mobilise some of the dissolved stable pollutants as well.

How much damage the stuff might have been doing while stowed in the cell, I cannot say. How much more it might do when released, I certainly cannot say, bearing in mind that POCs vary from seriously harmful to effectively harmless, or even for all I could guess, beneficial. It does not have to be harmful just because it is persistent after all!

I bet that for most common compounds (though there certainly will be other highly poisonous compounds for which this is far from true) the harm they do would be far less on average than by abusing ones adipose organ by gross obesity or dieting or both.  And cyclic obesity, dieting and backsliding would almost certainly be the worst of all worlds.

Note that certain pharmaceuticals, most prominently certain anaesthetics, are examples of chemicals that have a modest period of clinical activity, but are metabolically present in the adipose tissue for days, slowly diffusing out and being excreted largely through the lungs, though the vict.... er... patient, is not aware of it. There certainly would many other compounds that behave similarly, possibly equally harmlessly.

Sorry I can't be more specific; it is a wide and vague field.

OK. You guessed it! $%^&*()!!! Extra keystrole presumably.