Mother, 26, Dies After Going on Crash Diet

Helen Anderson could play the violin, piano and guitar. So accomplished a musician was she that at one stage she attended an audition for Northern Sinfonia, an orchestra based in Gateshead, a city on Tyneside in Northeastern England. Despite not being accepted by the orchestra, and spending only a year on a music degree course she started at Newcastle University, Ms Anderson still appeared to have much to live for. She had her daughter from a previous marriage, Niamh-Kate, and right about now should have been celebrating her engagement to her Swedish boyfriend Kristian Persson, the couple having met through the Internet. But Ms Anderson, described by her parents as having always been "a big-boned girl", was concerned about the extra pounds she had gained due to a course of medication. As a consequence, in late 2008, she went on a diet. But instead of following the recommendations of bodies such as the British Nutritional Foundation, who the Daily Express reports as saying that losing one to two pounds per week on a suitably balanced diet is the healthiest way to proceed, Ms Anderson embarked on a diet in which she consumed only water and soup. In addition she began taking slimming tablets and the combination of those and her meager intake of calories led to her losing around 6 pounds per week. As her appearance began to change as a result of her dramatic weight loss, Ms Anderson's family feared that she had developed anorexia and begged her to moderate her diet. But she refused to listen. What she may not have known was that her extreme diet was depriving her body of sugar. And without that sugar, her body had to look elsewhere for energy, that elsewhere being its fat reserves. According to the report in the Daily Mail it was the depletion of the body's fat reserves which led to the onset of a reaction in Ms Anderson's body known as Ketoacidosis. Terence Carney, the coroner who delivered the verdict of Accidental Death, described the effects of Ketoacidosis thus:

This phenomenon - this poison if you like - which developed within her body was made by her body itself. It arises as a result of the body reacting to a lack of sugar within itself and that was in part a consequence of the intensive diet with which Helen was attempting to balance her weight. The sad truth of the matter is there has been a development within her body, a natural phenomena, which has set up this poisoning of her body's system and has led to her death. It is a problem which can develop very rapidly and without the individual appreciating the consequences. I am totally certain that she had no intention to cause harm to herself

It was on April 6 this year that Ms Anderson eventually died, in bed at her home in South Shields, Tyne and Wear. She was discovered there by her mother. Ms Anderson, who stood at 5ft 9in tall, weighed 128 pounds when she died and had a body mass index of 19 which categorized her as being healthy. But in reality it was not the amount of weight that Ms Anderson lost that killed her. Rather, it was the rate at which she lost it. Whilst her parents were too distressed to talk after the coroner had given his verdict, shortly after Ms Anderson died in April her mother Hazel said that her daughter's death "should be a warning to other people about the dangers of eating disorders".