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Posted on Dec 19, 2006, 10 a.m.
By Bill Freeman
Unhappy with her weight, Charmaine Tong decided two years ago to try a slimming tea, which supposedly contained only traditional Chinese herbs. She was overjoyed when she lost her appetite and the bathroom scales began dipping, but her happiness vanished when she began suffering a racing heart beat a month later. "I chose Chinese medicine as I thought it wouldn't have chemicals and would have fewer side effects, but my heart went out of control," said Tong, a marketing executive in Hong Kong.
Unhappy with her weight, Charmaine Tong decided two years ago to try a slimming tea, which supposedly contained only traditional Chinese herbs.
She was overjoyed when she lost her appetite and the bathroom scales began dipping, but her happiness vanished when she began suffering a racing heart beat a month later.
"I chose Chinese medicine as I thought it wouldn't have chemicals and would have fewer side effects, but my heart went out of control," said Tong, a marketing executive in Hong Kong.
She stopped drinking the tea at once, and has since regained the seven pounds she lost, and more.
Pills and teas purporting to "melt away body fat" and help shed unwanted pounds are sold widely across Hong Kong.
Growing affluence, a penchant for eating and a sedentary lifestyle have swollen the ranks of people who are overweight or obese in Hong Kong and China, doctors say.
Thirty percent of Hong Kong's nearly 7 million people are overweight, double the figure 10 years ago, local doctors say.
In China, nearly one in every five Chinese are overweight and there are now at least 60 million Chinese who are obese, according to the British Medical Journal.
It also found that 10 million children from the ages of 7 to 18 were overweight in 2000 in China, 28 times more than in 1985. A further four million were obese.
Obesity and overweight are major risk factors for serious chronic diseases -- such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and stroke, and certain forms of cancer -- which caused 60 percent of all deaths worldwide in 2005.
"What we are seeing in our part of the world are people coming in with heart attacks at 40, strokes at 40-ish, kidney problems at 40-ish. Many of these are young mothers still looking after kids and many are breadwinners for the family," Juliana Chan, a professor of medicine and therapeutics at the Chinese University in Hong Kong, told Reuters.
"We are going to see a lot of early deaths, disabilities and there will be an enormous burden on the health care system, which can't cope. Lots of young people will come in requiring bypass operations, dialysis, rehabilitation for strokes and our productivity will reduce."
