girls injecting insulin to get thin? is that right?

[spaceace]

My wife works in an ER, and she has been told that teenage girls have been injecting themselves with insulin in order to lose weight.

Based on my knowledge about insulin, which may be wrong, it seems like this would just make them fatter. Isn't insulin's function to usher sugar into the cells, including fat cells? Where am I going wrong in my thinking?

Thanks!

[Mitra]

It doesn't sound right, and I'd heard that some girls with type 1 diabetes don't use the insulin they need, because they don't want to gain weight.

[maxlharris]

My wife works in an ER, and she has been told that teenage girls have been injecting themselves with insulin in order to lose weight.

Based on my knowledge about insulin, which may be wrong, it seems like this would just make them fatter. Isn't insulin's function to usher sugar into the cells, including fat cells? Where am I going wrong in my thinking?

Thanks!

In my experience, what teenage girls do rarely has anything to do with the leading edge of science.

My inner nihilist wishes insulin induced comas for the lot of them.

[Frank Hagan]

I Googled "insulin abuse" and found links to articles about Type I diabetics who take too little insulin to lose weight as Mitra said. But nothing the other way around, except for body builders.