Lara Frater's Blog, page 12

Bullying is unacceptable as well.

Jennifer Livingston, an anchor for WKBT in LaCrosse Wisconsin has some things to say to a critical email about her weight and her "bad influence on young girls". She does it with style and class without saying she's on a diet, eats healthy and exercises or that she has a thyroid condition.  She pointed out that being talk to this way was unacceptable.

"To the person who wrote me that letter — do you think I don't know that? That your cruel words are pointing out something that I don't see? You don't know me. You are not a friend of mine. You are not a part of my family. And you have admitted that you don't watch this show. So you know nothing about me but what you see on the outside. And I am much more than a number on the scale."

 

 The person who sent the email Kenneth Krause first stood by his message. Now says he would reword his email. I think partially because the spotlight casted him as an asshole and partially because he didn't know Livingston had a thyroid condition. Because Ms. Livingston has a disease that keeps her fat, she is now in the acceptable fat category. 

Krause probably didn't feel he was a bully because he was fat as a child and was now a thin and perfectly normal in every way adult (BTW, fat children don't always become fat adults. Sometimes thin children become fat adults) and we have made it socially acceptable to ridicule a fat person. Say critizing a fat woman with junk food in her cart.  

We have so entrenched fat = unacceptable and unhealthy and thin=beautiful and healthy that we have given bullies the right to lecture and shame us. Livingston had the power of TV to bitch slap this guy. We don't have the luxury.  

But we can try. First, you must not let the bullies have any power. They get a charge from knowing they make you feel bad. This is not to say they have a right to continue their behavior. Report bullies when you can. But let's be realistic. We can't always be in the same situation as Jennifer Livingston, sometimes we have to let the bully's words go as meaningless. I get nasty comments on my blog every week, which I ignore 100 percent (except the funny ones, I sometimes share those on facebook.) 

Ragan Chastiain has put together a website where you can make your own video to call out your bullies. I urge you to share stories, videos, whatever you want.  

 

Stigma against children is even worse.

Last week I wrote about stigma against fat people in general, but this week I want to talk about a more disturbing trend, namely stigma against fat children. I  have a theory that the diet industry sought to get into the untapped market of men and children (With children, it's the ingrained fat=bad message they will take with them to adulthood.) With billions of more dollars at stake, why not have propaganda and fear campaigns? (like OH MY GOD, ALL FAT CHILDREN EVENTUALLY DIE!)

It's not surprising that with this pressure to be thin or else eating disorders have risen.

As obesity in the United States rises, it is little wonder the overall perception about body image is going in the opposite direction. It is estimated that 10 percent of females between the ages of 10 and 20 struggles with bulimia, and 4 percent of women in college have the eating disorder, according to information released by Insight Behavioral Health Centers in Chicago.

A new anti-obesity program in Minnesota is putting pressure not only to become thin but to blame fat parents for encouraging their children to become fat. One of the ads features a fat woman shopping. As she puts food into her cart that looks like she's eating like a college freshman, her young daughter does the same. After all if you are fat, you obviously only eat junk food. And if you are thin you never eat junk food. (Of course in the real world, you fill your cart with healthy foods, while your kids fill their cart with junk food.)

I do not fucking eat chocolate cereal and buckets of ice cream. Here is what I actually do: Pretty much every morning before work I walk 1.1 miles uphill to a coffee shop, which is across the street from the organic co-op where I do all my grocery shopping. I eat normal, human amounts of unprocessed, fresh, largely local foods.

Once upon a time that cart looked like mine. "Really?" The fat haters might say "She's admitting it! She eats like that woman in the ad!" Actually that looked very much like my cart in my dieting/binge days. When on the diet, the cart would be filled with vegetables, fruits, diet soda and weight watchers meals. Off the diet, chips, ice cream, diet soda and weight watchers meals. 

Now my cart is of a person of normal eating, a mixture of all food groups, including OMFG, one bag of cookies. Your see Trader Joe's makes these awesome gluten free cookies. There are 14 in the bag. Which means I eat two cookies a day. OOOHHHHHH Every once in a while I buy ice cream (OMFG again).

I don't have a daughter who I can be a bad influence on with my bag of cookies but I have a niece who lives with me. If anything, none of my eating habits effect her. The whole local food thing my husband and I rant about so much bores her and she calls lectures on healthy eating a  "Narc fest". The one thing I'm grateful for is I was off dieting before my niece got to her self-conscious age and I got her to accept people of all sizes. I'm happy to say she sometimes got self-conscious but it never got bad AND she doesn't judge people on anything but their character. 

Had I still been dieting I worried that I might have made my niece self conscious or made her believed fat can be fixed with dieting. The ad talks about how fat parents are to blame, it doesn't talk about the encouragement of eating disorders. 

The tendency to undereat spins from a cycle that repeats itself in almost every female-to-female relationship, and everything from media to retail companies fuels the problem.

"You say, ‘I'm ugly, I'm fat,' and your friend says, ‘Oh no, you're pretty. I'm fat," McClanahan said. "You hear it from peers and from your parents, and the standard of beauty has gotten thinner and thinner. Now you see size double zero in stores. These negative standards have an effect on self-esteem.

This be thin at all costs is wreaking havoc on children who are being bullied not only by their peers but teachers and parents as well. 

Students report that weight is among the most common reasons that their peers are bullied. In one national study, 84 percent of adolescent students surveyed saw overweight students being called names, being teased in a mean way, and teased during physical activities. Over two-thirds reported observing overweight and obese peers being excluded, ignored, avoided, teased in the cafeteria, and targeted by negative rumors. The majority of students observed verbal threats and physical threats.

While peers are the most common perpetrators, teachers and parents also contribute to stigmatizing obese and overweight children. Teachers, including physical education teachers, report lower expectations for overweight students compared to thinner students, endorse negative stereotypes or believe that overweight and obese children have family problems. Even at home, children may face critical and negative comments, with significant numbers of overweight and obese children reporting weight-related teasing and criticism from their parents.

Pressure the parents that they are bad if they let their kids have junk food, pressure the children that they are bad for being fat and you will see an epidemic of kids with low self esteem, body and food hatred, eating disorders. Perhaps even easily influenced by the next new diet plan. 

There are better ways. First off we need to stop spreading the message fat=bad. When a fat kid does everything right but never gets into the thin ideal? What then? We need to accept that people, even children come in all shapes and sizes. We can encourage our children to be active, enjoy nutritious foods without worry and to accept their body.

Stigma doesn't make you thin

Stigma (Dictionary.com) - a mark of disgrace or infamy; a stain or reproach, as on one's reputation.

A few months ago I was in the doctor's office. CNN was playing loudly in the background. Most of it involved Republicans talking about how the health care law was the root of all evil. Then Sanjay Gupta came on and gave a five minute rant about the evils of obesity and how it's destroying all health care everywhere. I got annoyed, wanted to yell and throw stuff at the TV. (I didn't.) Thankfully I was called into see the doctor soon after.

I've never had an abnormal blood pressure reading in my life and I didn't when the nurse took my stats but I've always been on the low side of normal. Today's reading had me at the high side of normal. I had to wonder. Did Sanjay Grupta just raise my blood pressure?


Of course this isn't a study or proof of anything. But this 2012 study and 2010 study from the Rudd Center  does prove there are considerable health consequences to weight based stigma.

RESULTS: Participants responded most favorably to messages involving themes of increased fruit and vegetable consumption, and general messages involving multiple health behaviors. Messages that have been publicly criticized for their stigmatizing content received the most negative ratings and the lowest intentions to comply with message content. Furthermore, messages that were perceived to be most positive and motivating made no mention of the word ‘obesity’ at all, and instead focused on making healthy behavioral changes without reference to body weight.


I have huge issues with the Rudd Center and they are pro-weight loss. Even they recognized that stigmatizing a fat person doesn't help.


This week is Weight Stigma Awareness Week. It's time to point out that no matter what you believe about fat people, stigma doesn't help at all and if anything can make health worse.

"People who are severely obese were more likely than people of recommended weight to face some level of difficulty in doing activities of daily living," Schafer said. "Over 10 years, those odds of disability were nearly five times higher for people who reported some form of weight discrimination, but only twice as high for those who didn't face discrimination."

I created a list of 5 perceptions we need to change to end weight based stigma

1. End the assumption that  fat people are fat because we eat too much and don't exercise. Everyone has a unique body. Not all fat people are fat because they eat too much just like not all thin people are thin because they don't eat enough. There is a lot of proof that genetics play a strong role in your size. 

2. Stop pressuring weight loss in the name of health. There is nothing wrong with encouraging people to cut down on junk food and enjoy healthy movement. There are several studies showing that healthy habits and movement are more important than weight loss. Encouraging weight loss will only make people stop healthy habits when weight loss stops.

3. Stop making fun of fat people, even the ones that fit the stereotype. You'll find many of them are normal kind human beings. All fat people deserve the same rights and privileges has everyone else.

4. If you are fat, start learning ways to love your body and avoid the stigma around you. While it might be hard in the doctor's office or work,  you can ignore the trolls and the weight based health programs.

5. Reducing stigma on fat people won't work if you push weigh loss. What might work is a healthy dose of self-esteem including ending discrimination at the doctor's office, the workplace and even the mall.  A perfect example is this MRI machine meant to accommodate very heavy people. 

Stigma against fat people will end if we make it socially unacceptable. We all need to be proud of our bodies, we need to say no to the diet industry, weight based health and hatred.

Fat and Fitness aren't opposites

I finally dropped my membership to the pool I constantly had issues with. Not only because of the lifeguard's assumption that because I'm fat, I'm a slow swimmer but that some other swimmers didn't respect my space (and the pool was terribly overcrowded).

I will attempt to find another pool because I want to be able to enter one swimming race next year, but I find that pools that aren't crowded are pricey and cheap ones have too many people. It irks me because swimming is hands down my favorite exercise and if I could I would swim every day. But I have yet to find a pool in NYC that isn't super crowded or super expensive.

Taylor Townsend is a 16 year old tennis player and she's supposed very good. (I don't know a lot about tennis but according to the WSJ: The Chicago-born tennis prodigy, who is part of a four-year-old USTA-funded development program, is the world's No. 1 junior girls player, the reigning junior Australian Open singles champion and the junior Wimbledon doubles champion.

So does this mean she should play in the US open? It's obvious that she's winning games. Looks like an amazing up and comer. At first she wasn't invited, then she was invited but benched. Why? Because she was too fat.

But unbeknownst to everyone outside her inner circle, the USTA wasn't happy to see Townsend in New York. Her coaches declined to pay her travel expenses to attend the Open and told her this summer that they wouldn't finance any tournament appearances until she makes sufficient progress in one area: slimming down and getting into better shape.

Here is a picture of her. 

She's a big muscular woman who I would actually fear if she hit a tennis ball at me. 

What does this have to do with me finding another pool? 

The US Open takes place in Flushing Meadow Park. Down the road from it was the pool I swam in. We are told that during the US open we are not to drive there and take public transportation. (Public transportation would be two bus rides and an hour trip. By car is 15 minutes). So for two weeks I didn't swim.  (And for four weeks before that I couldn't, but the pool seemed dangerously overcrowded, I am grateful for my week of twice-daily lake swimmng in Vermont.) So the US Open made impossible for both Taylor Townsend and I to exercise. For her it was it was outright discrimination against her weight, for me it was location and ease of use and of course the life guard's assumptions. The pool wasn't very fat friendly with small locker rooms, ladders hard to climb because ropes are hooked smack in the center and no stairs lead into the pool.

The whole idea is there seems to be so many hurdles put up when we try to find enjoyable movement. Despite the fact that fitness is more important than weight loss. 

...now a new study published in the European Heart Journal shows that "fat but fit" adults may be at no greater risk of developing or dying from heart disease or cancer than normal-weight fit individuals.

I feel like you have to be thin before you can exercise. 

First do no harm... unless you're fat

A woman who weighed about 250 lbs was dropped by her doctor for being fat.  The "Doctor", Helen Carter decided to pull a number out of the air about what weight is too much for her to see. The magic number is 200. The reason is apparently her staff was bench pressing fat people and some got injured. 

Actually that isn't true, but "Dr" Carter has claimed people in her practice have been injured by those pesky fatties. One incident was a doctor was seriously injured pulling out a foot rest for a woman who weighed 280 (Please someone who knows the case elaborate on this because I'm not sure how a person's weight effects pulling out a foot rest. Was the patient sitting on the foot rest?)

She did recommend fat patients go to Obesity Centers. Marianne Kirby remarked on Obesity centers:

An obesity center, for those not in on the medical language of fatness, is not going to provide the same services as a primary care physician. An obesity center is not where a fat person goes when they have the flu. No, this primary care physician, who is meant to be treating the whole patient as a general care provider, is saying that patients really ought to go to that diet place down the road. Obesity centers are focused on weight loss through dieting, supplemented by weight loss surgery. None of that is going to deal with your hay fever or whatever else you’d go to your primary physician for.

The woman who was turned away, Ida Davison happens to be around my height and weight. I have never injured a medical professional, I have never damaged equipment. Many doctors (even the fat hating ones) have pulled out footrests without sustaining a life-threatening injury) If I told Helen Carter my history over the phone without mentioning my weight, I bet she would see me. I also have to wonder if she would see a man who was muscular but happened to weigh more than 200. Oh wait, the 200 lbs number is for women only.

If the injuries were to patients as Marianne Kirby mentioned in her article, I have, in fact, been injured. About 15 or so years ago, I went to a lab to get blood tests and I was stabbed repeatedly by several phlebotomists trying to get blood. Finally they used a big ass needle. Many doctors might blame that on my being fat. However I've never had an experience like that in any other lab or doctor's office. The issue wasn't me but the lack of skilled phlebotomists at this lab. It's easy to blame fat people when actually it's the doctor's office who either doesn't have skilled people or are unwilling to make a reasonable accommodation.

NAAFA puts out a great brochure for Doctors dealing with fat patients. It's not just a matter of equipment, but a matter of respect. Something "Doctor" Carter seems to be lacking in.

Recently a study came out indicating that $750 billion is wasted in the health care system. Some of it is fraud but about 210 million of it was unnecessary services. I had to wonder how much of this "Unnecessary services" was where the so called "obesity costs" come from. I have to wonder how many doctors see their fat patients and assume that they have all of the "fat related diseases". How many healthy fat people have gotten tests they didn't need? 

Still the worst diet in the world.

A few years ago, proponents of weight loss surgery (WLS) toted that it cured diabetes. 

Other research has found that bariatric surgery cures Type 2 diabetes in a majority of patients studied...

Said a 2009 article in the Los Angeles Times. 

Of course the same author wrote another article that gave these stats:

As many as 86% of obese people with Type 2 diabetes find their diabetes is gone or much easier to control within days of having weight-loss surgery, according to a meta-analysis of 19 studies published earlier this year in the American Journal of Medicine (78% of patients with a remission of diabetes and 86.6% with remission or improvement). But experts still aren't sure why obesity surgery helps resolve Type 2 diabetes or how long the effect might last. And they disagree on how big a role surgery should take in treating the illness.

Remission is the absence of disease symptoms but does not mean cure. WLS can put your diabetes into remission.

But how?

Some suggests it is the extremely low calorie diet WLS forces you to do. Type 2 Diabetes is based on insulin. When you eat a normal diet you release insulin. If you don't eat enough, you don't release insulin and diabetes can "go away." In fact just six weeks of starvation may put diabetes into remission. (btw starvation isn't healthy. A recent study showed it doesn't extend life in monkeys.) 

For the eight week study - published in the June 24 issue of "Diabetologia"- researchers tracked the insulin levels of the diabetics as they ate an extreme 600-calorie-a-day diet consisting solely of diet shakes and non-starchy vegetables. After one week on the diet, the diabetics' blood sugar levels were no longer elevated. After eight weeks on the diet, their bodies' regained the ability to make insulin, essentially curing them of diabetes.

Laurie Klipfel a diabetes educator and nurse who is pro-HAES points out in a blog post:

The immediate drop in calories (more so with Roux En-Y due to both decrease in food eaten and food absorbed) significantly decreases demand of insulin (less insulin is needed for less calories.)  Depending on the supply and demand, this decreased demand may now make the difference between making budget or not.  Therefore there are times the surgery appears to have ‘cured’ diabetes even before weight loss has occurred. Reducing calories in general such as in garden variety weight loss will produce the same effect and look like it “cures” diabetes, when in actuality it too just decreases demand.  Usually with weight loss diets, the drop in calories is not as sudden and drastic and usually weight is lost before benefit is seen. 

A study recently came out that while WLS has put diabetes into remission for some but not for others, the Mayo clinic estimates (based on a small sample of only 72 patients) that 21% of those who diabetes go into remission get it back between 3-5 years.

There are other less extreme ways than mangling your stomach to help type 2 diabetes. Diet (Not a weight loss one, but one related to diabetes), exercise, and stress reduction.

"Curing" diabetes with WLS seems to me the same as cutting off a broken leg. 

 

Run like the wind or a snail.

I am currently reading "Talking Fat" by Lonie McMichaels which I will be reviewing in a few weeks. But it opens with a story of a fat woman named Sarah who does a triathlon. When she posted a picture of her in a swimsuit, she was attacked with nasty comments. 

Nike recently released a commercial "Find your Greatness" that shows a lone jogger. As the person gets closer it is of a fat young man running.  

 

The positive aspect of the commercial is it shows a fat person doing movement and breaking a stereotype that fat people don't exercise (Some of us do and some of us don't just the same as thin people). There is no mention of dieting or weight loss. Just an ordinary kid on a run. 

On its website, Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity praised Nike for demonstrating “its commitment to demystify myths about overweight and obese people.” Rebecca Puhl, Rudd’s director of research, was surprised — pleasantly — by the ad, which she believes challenges stereotypes of obese people as lazy, crazy for junk food and lacking in willpower or self-discipline.

The negative aspects is what we didn't see. During the filming the kid threw up in a ditch. And this ad has made him decided to lose weight the old fashion way through diet and exercise.

It turns out Nathan is not actually an early-dawn runner. In fact, he threw up in a ditch during the shoot. In an editorial, the paper heralds Nathan as an inspiration, though it seems he was the one most inspired by the shoot. Nathan and his mother Monica have vowed to help each other lose weight through good old-fashioned diet and exercise.

I've never been against anyone trying to eat healthy or getting in more exercise.I hope one day in the future Nathan runs without throwing up. I hope he doesn't stop running even if he doesn't become thin. I wish him not to have my childhood, riddled with old fashion dieting that caused me to gain more weight than lose.

The other issue is stigma about a fat person exercising. In May I wrote that a fat person can't get a break. If they don't exercise, they face stigma for not doing it. If they do, they are made fun of. Dr. David Katz was happy to mention how horrible Nathan looked while running.

“He looks miserably uncomfortable, and as if he’s about to topple over. There is no hint of greatness in it — other than, perhaps, his commitment to do it.  But maybe he is a great mathematician — or orator — or pianist…” he wrote in an email.

 “So, I would have preferred they showed his pursuit of greatness in a way that was not so obviously far from great, so obviously impeded by his weight and so blatantly uncomfortable!”

In other words, because he looked uncomfortable, and not that "great", he should stop running?

Also next year I have decided to do at least one swim race. I'm sure I'll come in last. I don't care.

Snacks at school

Before I start, I don't mind keeping corporate products out of school. To me they take advantage of a vulnerable population who can be easily influenced. I also don't mind if schools cut back on vending machines or junk food in the cafeteria. I think it gets a little ridiculous if the kids can't have occasional treats for a celebration or buy a few snacks at a bake sale or even at school (Growing up I consumed most of my junk food at home bought from my corner store). 

A study in the Journal Pediatrics recently came out that showed that states that had stricter rules on snacks sold in schools had kids with lower weights than schools that didn't. It's a fucking miracle some might say. Here is how we can make all children super thin again (because they have never been fat children before.)

Except for one thing, the net weight loss between restrictive and unrestricted was about 2.25lbs . That's right. My weight in the morning compared to my weight in the evening is exactly the average that the good schools had over the bad ones.  However, another study in Sociology of Education looked at 20,000 kids from Kindergarten to eight grade discovered the same thing and dismissed the findings as insignificant.

It's not that middle schoolers aren't eating junk food; indeed they are, just like most Americans. It's that most of the junk food they're eating is not coming through the schools.

Again, I don't mind having less junk food in school.

But I have to wonder about one thing.

The Pediatrics study followed students from 5th grade to 8th. When I was 10, I was fat but didn't really care yet. When I was 13, I was dieting. I have to wonder if the same schools the restricted the snacks also hitting the anti-obesity message hard? Could the food restricting/anti obesity atmosphere be causing more kids to diet? 

The problem is discovering eating disorder statistics by state is near impossible. The only thing I could find was a study showing those in Western countries (Which have more pressure to get thin) have higher rates than non-western countries. Something the Pediatrics study failed to look into.

 

Strongest women in the world

Very short post tonight as I just go back from a vacation of limited interweb.

While I was sorry not to see  Holley Mangold or Sarah Robles win any Olympics medals, kudos to them for their attempts. I know Holley hurt her wrist so she lifted 30kg less than her best. I hope to see them at the next summer Olympics in 2016.

That being said, the winner of the Gold medal in Women's heavy weight lifting was this woman Zhou Lulu of China:

All together, she lifted about 734 lbs.

The silver was won by Tatiana Kashirina who was only 2 kilograms short of beating Lulu Zhou. However she did managed to beat two world records.

Both women would be considered obese by American standards. Zhou Lulu would be considered morbidily obese. If she lived in America, she would probably be pushed by pundits, academicians, doctors, and the weight loss industry to lose weight.

One stupid diet, OMG!

No blog post next week, I will be on vacation swimming and hiking. 

When I was in college,  I took a course on Anthropology and discovered that hunter/ gatherers were lazy. They did not work 40 hour weeks. 

"Experts" often give us their opinion that Our Great American Obesity Epidemic is caused by too little activity. We are not moving the way our hunter/gather ancestors did. Except that the activity levels of Hunter/Gatherers and westerners  use are apparently the same.

Despite spending their days trekking long distances to forage for wild plants and game, the Hadza burned no more calories each day than adults in the U.S. and Europe. The team ran several analyses accounting for the effects of body weight, body fat percentage, age, and gender. In all analyses, daily energy expenditure among the Hadza hunter-gatherers was indistinguishable from that of Westerners. 

Meanwhile Lancet is saying the exact opposite, people aren't exercising enough in the Americas and Europe and it's spreading. Soon people in third world countries might become fat. Oh nos! Maybe they even start having a higher life expectancy. We don't want that to happen!

Despite mentioning both studies, I am not advocating decreasing anyone's activity level. I am merely trying to show two things: one is that the OMG obesity alarmists don't necessarily know what is good or bad for you. To them all fat people are the same regardless of their health or fittness. The second is they don't really know how much exercise is good for you. When I took a class with Ragen Chastain she mentioned how some days you have a lot of energy for exercise and some days you don't. And it's true. Some days I like to walk from the subway (anywhere from 1-3 mile trek depending on the stop) and I can cover those three miles like it's nothing, other days, even the one mile can give me trouble (For me activity later depends a lot of the weather and the amount of sleep).  I mentioned a few weeks ago that a small percent of the population doesn't benefit from exercise.

According to an article on Alternet focusing on fitness may be no better than focusing on impossible beauty ideals and may be a class issue (i.e. fitness is for the rich only.)

Beyond body image, there’s also the issue of class and money. Within the pages of fitness publications are hundreds of advertisements for products that we’re told will solve our body woes and make us instantly healthier. The imagery is familiar: the woman who’s ever-so-lightly tanned, blonde-ponytailed, free of body hair, and toting an expensive gym bag full of color-coordinated gear, her legs and abs tightened by hours of private training sessions, Zumba and Pilates. Above all, you know she is upper-class.

I have mentioned before about the victimization of fat people especially poor fat people as people who are too stupid to understand fitness and nutrition. I have also mentioned that I eat fresh organic local vegetables because I can afford them and I get in my most activity during vacation. Everyone has been given a different body and can has their own limit. Not everyone's limits the same. But if we can't exchange body acceptance for healthism. 

Oh, and speaking of OMG, I saw a sign on the subway about a new revolution in dieting. It's everything the experts don't want you to know. You should take cold baths, drink black coffee, skip breakfast and in six weeks you will lose 20 lbs.

I'm sure if you follow this diet, you will lose weight. Just as I and 95% of other dieters lose weight in the beginning. Losing weight was never a problem. The first twenty pounds came off quickly until my body said "What the fuck are you doing?"

Even the author of these book has claimed this is not life style changes but merely just to lose weight quick. (BTW, I am not mentioning this book by name because I don't want to give it publicity).

It will be quick and as will the weight regain plus more.  

To me and anyone who accepts their size big or small, we will look at this and say it's another crappy fad diet, the same as all the others, but the book is marketed to teens and young adults who have the highest rates of eating disorders which makes it not just a piece of crap but dangerous.