Bogus figure-8s on supermarket shelves

If nature did not endow you with a curvaceous bosom, you can now pick one from a supermarket near you. But there is a down side to it.

The curves may last for only a day... or be a permanent fixture. It all depends on the herbal chemical components in the compound you will need to use. Either way, experts have warned, this body enhancement method may be dangerous to your health.

The African woman is, in most cases, naturally endowed around the hips, but there are those who feel that they could do with more curves.

It starts mildly with today’s street uniform — the blue stretch jeans — cut low and tight at the back and designed to make one’s behind look bigger. To make the jeans look fuller, beauty shops are offering silicon-padded panties which give extra emphasis to the desired areas.

The silicon (or foam) padded panties are just catching on in Kenyan, closely following the more popular stuffed bra.

However, the pads are said to look great in jeans but fake in skirts and dresses.

But, while these panties will instantly give you what your genes didn’t, the look vanishes when you remove them.

That is why the more daring woman is going for a more permanent solution: herbal hip supplements whose permanency, just like other cosmetics, is not indicated on the label.

Huge stocks

Nairobi is teeming with shops, including major supermarkets, that have huge stocks of different types of these herbal hip-upping and breast-firming gels.

Of the many-purpose gels, the “hip-ups” are the fastest moving, head and bust ahead of breast firm-ups, says Susan Atieno, a sales assistant at Ebrahim’s Supermarket in Nairobi.

But, do they work? Atieno thinks so.

“I have been selling these products for the past six years, and I have seen customers who bring in new ones,” she says.

Like any other range of cosmetics, the gels, she says, may react within a shorter period for some women, while for others it may take longer.

“At the worst, the gels may even fail to work,” she cautions.

A salesman with Tuskys Supermarkets says the gels are gaining popularity with women, whose word-of-mouth marketing has worked quite well for the manufacturers.

“This is a fast-moving product. You don’t even need to advertise it. Once it works for one person, she will always spread the message to others, and thus build the consumer chain,” he says.

An administrator at the Ebrahim’s Supermarket says the shop stocks the products because there is a high demand.

“I am not for the idea of artificially altering body parts, but there is a big demand out there. If I don’t, somebody else will take it up.”

Like cosmetics and food supplements, these gels operate in a gray legal area. Because they don’t trade as medicines, they are exempt from registration and the strict safety regulations applied to medical products.

The Pharmacy and Poisons Board has tried to bring herbal medical products under its ambit, but this is yet to happen because there are no laws to regulate the products, even though evidence indicates that herbal medicines, just like conventional ones, have side effects too.

Most of the products we found in the market were labelled in Chinese, and those in English offered little comprehensible information.

Ingredients

One of the products claimed to contain 18 different herbal mixtures and several chemical components, but there were no indications about the quantities of these ingredients.

However, what is clear is that most body part-enhancing gels contain chemicals called phytoestrogens, which are weak hormones found in many plants.

Phytoestrogens are currently being promoted, sometimes in highly refined forms, for relief of the symptoms of menopause, but there are concerns about their safety.

Scientists measuring the amount of phytoestrogen residues in the urine of healthy women found that those with the least were four times more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer than those with the most.

But this happened only after ingesting unprocessed phytoestrogen. Once refined and packed into pills, the results are reversed.

“When phytoestrogens are isolated, concentrated, and sold to us in pills and gels, then the equation changes.

They become dangerous hormones quite capable of promoting cancer,” says one study.

“Any product with the unlikely capacity to alter selectively a specific body part must be administered with a lot of caution,” says Fred Woyengo, a Nairobi pharmacist.

“In my medical career, I have never heard of a drug or a product that can enhance growth only in one part of the body. I know of nutritional supplements such as steroids, which stimulate growth of muscles in the whole body. That is why they are commonly used by body builders,” says Woyengo.

But Atieno says if such products were not effective, then her business would have been closed years ago.

Medical doctors and regulatory authorities, on the other hand, do not want to be drawn into the debate.

“The products don’t claim to cure anything since a flat behind is not a disease,” one of them says.

Sylvia Njeri, from Kayole in Nairobi, says she knows of a woman who regrets ever using the drugs after one of her breasts grew larger than the other. “Now she pads her other breast to balance her bosom.”

“Like any other medical product, side effects are inevitable, but they are always limited to particular individuals,” points out Atieno.

Kenyans rely mostly on cosmetic gels because they are affordable.

In the major markets, the cost of hips and buttocks as well as enlargement gels ranges from between Sh500 and Sh1,100. Their popularity cuts across different age groups.

“I have customers ranging from young teenage girls to elderly women in their 50s,” says Atieno

The other alternative to body enhancement is through food. Nutritionists say carbohydrates found in pasta and bread provide the energy needed to for hip widening.

The proteins help in building muscles on the outer hips to make them look wider.

Additional reporting by Gatonye Gathura