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Vegan influencer Zhanna Samsonova has reportedly “died of starvation” after subsisting exclusively off a diet of exotic fruit in Malaysia, according to her friends and family. She was 39. The Russian national — who frequently promoted raw foods on social media where she was known to her millions of viewers on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram as Zhanna D’Art — reportedly died July 21 after finally seeking medical treatment during a tour in Southeast Asia, according to local media outlet reports. “A few months ago, in Sri Lanka, she already looked exhausted, with swollen legs oozing lymph,” one unidentified friend told...

Hall of Fame gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi and his wife, Martha, face fresh allegations of physical and psychological abuse of young female athletes dating to the 1960s in a newly published book, according to the Daily Mail. Romanian author Stejarel Olaru wrote in “Nadia si Securitatea” that Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci — the first gymnast to score a perfect 10 at the Olympics, in 1976 — is among the victims who were starved to the point of developing eating disorders, slapped, and denied medical treatment, according to the report. Comaneci was Bela Karolyi’s first prodigy and his gateway to defecting...

Four years ago, Molly Seidel wasn’t just the next big thing. She was the top female distance runner in the NCAA with four national titles and the Olympic Trials on the horizon. But instead of signing a splashy contract with a shoe company, Seidel was sidelined with a sacral stress fracture and watched the U.S. Olympic Track Trials from the stands at Hayward Field, where her Notre Dame teammate Dani Aragon gave her a reality check. “You look like you’re dying,” Seidel remembers her friend saying. “You need to get help.” The truth was, the fastest woman in the NCAA...

So that’s how the Rev. Al stays so thin. Al Sharpton outlined a super specific diet and workout regimen that for years has helped him maintain his 130-pound weight in a Q&A with GQ Thursday. The 64-year-old activist turned MSNBC host’s exercise routine has him up at 4 a.m. seven days a week — and he follows a diet that includes three slices of seven-grain toast a day. “I have to stay at a hotel with a fitness room and that also has seven-grain toast,” he told the magazine. Sharpton was once over 300 pounds, but the controversial activist has...

A new dangerous eating disorder has been plaguing college campuses, a study has found. 'Drunkorexia' describes a behavior when a student will skip a meal or exercise excessively before drinking. They will then deliberately purge during or afterward. The main point of drunkorexia is to cut down on calories and instead save them for drinking. It's intent is also to increase a buzz when drinking.

A mother-of-one who developed cravings for sponge during her pregnancy has spoken out about her unusual addiction to foam. Vicky Cullen, 28, not only eats the padding in her own armchair but buys washing-up sponges to snack on and likes to add foam to her recipes when cooking. The single mother from Wakefield, South Yorkshire, estimated she has eaten her way through 2000 sponges since she developed the obsession when she was five-months pregnant with her daughter Olivia, now five. Vicky, who has been diagnosed with pica, an eating disorder which means adults ingest non-nutritive substances, said: 'It's weird to...

No one knows exactly how early I was born. I weighed 5lb, and until just a few weeks before my arrival, I was assumed to be a tumour in my mother’s stomach. Her belly, which had been painfully concave for as long as anyone could remember, had swollen like a balloon, while her arms and legs remained stick-like. Pregnancy might sound like the obvious diagnosis — but my mother was anorexic, and, as far as anyone knew, infertile. And as I would soon learn, when it comes to anorexia, things are rarely as they seem.

It's no surprise that a lot of Americans watch what they eat. Counting calories, nutrients and fat grams is practically a national pastime. But what happens when people go over the line, and the pursuit of healthy eating actually becomes unhealthy? For Johnny Righini, a 26-year-old from California, eating a nutritious lunch is a painstaking ritual. "Sometimes it takes days to prepare meals, because I have to sprout things, ferment things," he said. "I am constantly thinking about what I am gonna have for my next meal." Charlotte Andersen, a 29-year-old Minnesota mother of three, says she went through the...

She is, on first impressions, just like any other first-time mother. The cot and the pram are on order, she has bought more cuddly toys than she will ever need and she has even given her little girl a name – Molly. With less than six weeks to go before the birth, the baby is kicking and it brings Fran Lyon an undeniable thrill of pleasure. At least, it does now she finally feels safe to enjoy it. For all the innocent joys of impending motherhood have been denied Fran since social workers warned her four months ago that Molly...

No Mention of A-word in Eating Disorder News A widely reported Associated Press story, "Experts: More Women Over 30 Are Seeking Help for Eating Disorders," made no mention that some women suffer from such disorders after abortions. Sadly, the eating disorder/post-abortion problem link is one of those subjects deemed not worthy of discussion outside of pro-life circles, much like the premature birth/previous abortion link. Theresa Burke describes her discovery of the connection between eating disorders and past abortions early in the groundbreaking book Forbidden Grief: The Unspoken Pain of Abortion that she wrote with David C. Reardon. Reardon includes eating...

He arrived laughing and joking. Just over two hours later Armin Meiwes, the self-confessed German cannibal who killed and ate another man, left a stunned courtroom scarcely able to believe his luck. After a unique two-month trial that has gripped both Germany and the wider world with its gory details, a judge on Friday sentenced Meiwes to a mere eight and a half years in jail after ruling that he was guilty of manslaughter and not murder. The prosecution had demanded a 15-year-term. But Judge Volker Mütze said he accepted the cannibal's argument that the man he met through the...