We’ve all heard of diet trends: cleanses, fasts, and fads to get thin quick. Now the educated student, of course, has gone through health class and learned about the dangers of these “trends,” and has realized that these diets yield few results but a plethora of dangerous side effects. Here are a  few of the nation’s most extreme new diet fads to stay away from:

1) The Cotton Ball Diet. In this terrifying new trend, the idea is to feel full without gaining weight. Dieters will eat only five cotton balls covered in a smoothie or orange juice per day. Some dieters eat cotton balls before meals to limit food intake. Similar to eating cloth, this diet causes malnutrition and exposure to many of the harmful chemicals used to preserve cotton balls. Over time, the built up mass of cotton balls can cause a dangerous obstruction in your digestive tract.

2) The Tapeworm Diet. Also popular is this dangerous weight-loss strategy. In the tapeworm diet, the dieter swallows a tapeworm. The tapeworm, a larva that goes on to live inside of you, consumes the food in your stomach. Then, once you gain a desirable weight, the worm is killed with antibiotics, apparently, even though antibiotics don’t kill parasites like tapeworms. This diet can also kill you, or give you a distended, swollen stomach, which most dieters aren’t after.

3) The Sleeping Diet. This crazy fad functions as a way to keep dieters from eating through sleep. Whenever a dieter feels hungry, he or she just goes to sleep instead. However, the diet often leads to irresponsibility as dieters spend all their time asleep instead of doing their work. Lack of proper eating can lead to malnutrition and, of course, death, so keep that in mind before trying this terrible trend.

4) The Vinegar Diet. The idea behind this diet is that vinegar is supposed to help with weight loss. The plan is simple: you drink one to three teaspoons of vinegar fifteen minutes before meals. However, this diet is extremely dangerous and destructive to your body. Vinegar has a high acid content that causes irritation and deterioration in the stomach and throat linings. It also leads to mineral deficiencies and weakened tooth enamel.

Fad dieting is extremely dangerous and never the right idea. If you need to lose weight, talk to your doctor about a safe plan. Don’t do something ridiculous.