Strollerderby : anorexia

Anorexia May Be Caused by Brain Chemistry

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 22:00:00 GMT

A study of 200 people—mostly females aged twelve to twenty-five—has radically changed the way doctors think about anorexia. While previous research on the disease has stressed cultural and familial causes of the disease, researchers have now determined that anorexia may be closely related to brain chemistry:

“They found that about 70% of the patients had suffered damage to their neurotransmitters, which help brain cells communicate with each other, had undergone subtle changes in the structure of their brains, or both.”

This finding helps to clarify a long confusion about the risk factors involved in developing anorexia, since all women are exposed to pop culture’s thin obsession, but only about four women in every thousand develop anorexia.

Researchers hope that it may be possible to treat the disease with drugs that work like antidepressants by altering brain chemistry—and to offer parents some peace of mind that their children’s eating disorders are not their fault. According to Susan Ringwood, who runs a leading charity for people suffering from eating disorders, “Parents always blame themselves when their child develops an eating disorder. But what we are learning more and more from research in this area is that some people are very vulnerable to anorexia and that is down to genetic factors and brain chemistry, and not them trying to look like celebrity models or suffering a major traumatic event early in their lives.”

Jezebel writer Hortense is certainly not the only anorexia sufferer who welcomes the news that anorexia can affect anyone, and does not necessarily say anything about one’s childhood or obsession with appearance.

Nevertheless, just as people who are prone to depression are more likely to actually become depressed when certain stress factors are present in their lives, parents and society still have a responsibility to encourage all children to have positive relationships with their bodies—a responsibility that society clearly continues to shirk.

Eventually, it may be possible to test children as young as eight to determine whether they have the anorexia-prone brain abnormality. Would you get your kids screened?

Photo: Jezebel

Are More Pregnant Women Suddenly Starving Themselves?

Miriam Axel-Lute — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:00:00 GMT

A blogger over at self-improvement site PeopleJam is warning us about a new buzzword, "pregorexia," and the supposed trend from which it stems—women suddenly trying to be like a couple of skinny celebs by staying thin during their pregnancies.

But the original article reporting on the topic in the Times of London paints a somewhat different picture—one of a world in which lots of women have eating disorders, and, surprise, surprise, they don't just disappear during pregnancy, though sometimes pregnancy does make some that have been in remission return. (Since eating disorders are as much about control as appearance, I can see that the feeling of being out of control that pregnancy can bring would be a risk factor.)

The article paints a depressing picture of insufficient care and doctors not asking about, or noticing, symptoms of unhealthy eating. But it doesn't make the case that there's actually any new upswing in cases, and in fact specifically notes that there is no data to show that. Perhaps there is just an upswing in awareness, which is often mistaken for an increase in the thing itself.

More awareness of eating disorders in general is good, and I suppose I can tolerate "pregorexia," a creepily cutesy term for a non-cutesy thing, if it helps with that, but my gut feeling is it would make more sense to use the words we have and not treat eating disorders in pregnancy as some new, separate thing that those crazy knocked up ladies are getting into.

There does seem to already be a disturbing willingness to assume that healthy pregnancy weight gain is going to screw with all of our delicate self esteems, even if we have no eating disorders. Take lines like this one from BabyCenter—"It's normal to feel anxious and even depressed as the numbers on the scale edge up" (Depressed? Just from that? If that's true, we're in sad shape) or the popular, defensive "I'm not fat, I'm knocked up" T-shirt.

So there's weirdness out there, but I'm still suspicious of making it a celebrity supermodel problem. There are an awful lot of normally protruding pregnant bellies in evidence on famous people. Enough that even under-a-pop-culture-rock me has seen the pictures.

On the other hand, from what I've heard from midwives and other mothers, fears about gestational diabetes (a real problem with extreme weight gain) and "babies too big for a natural birth" (which is almost always bunk) seem to lead an awful lot of nurses and doctors to cluck their tongues warningly over even slightly high weight gain. That won't create an eating disorder out of thin air, but it sure can sow doubt and paranoia. And if eating disorders are as common in pregnancy as the Times thinks, medical professionals might want to reconsider which side of caution they err on.

Photo by tomeppy.

Anorexia Now Illegal In France

Amy S.F. Lutz — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:33:00 GMT

Lawmakers in France are so concerned about the estimated 35,000 French women suffering from anorexia that the lower house of Parliament passed a controversial bill yesterday making it illegal to promote "extreme thinness" through magazines, websites and advertisements.

The bill - which carries penalties ranging from fines of $47,000 to a three-year prison sentence if an afflicted person dies from anorexia - still needs to be approved by the Senate in order to go into effect.

Naturally, the prominent figures in French couture denounced the bill. "Never will we accept in our profession that a judge decides if a young girl is skinny or not skinny," claimed Didier Grumbach, president of the French Federation of Couture," adding, "That doesn't exist in the world, and it will certainly not exist in France."

Sacre bleu, Didier! It looks as if a judge may very well be deciding who is too skinny in France. And even if the bill is too vague, as opponents suggest, or too simplistic, as other critics allege, it can't possibly hurt to make editors, designers, and advertisers think twice before sending more images of starved models out into the world.

Weekly Check-Up: Eating Disorders On the Rise In Young Kids

Kelly Mills — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:31:00 GMT

With all the news about the rise in childhood obesity and how we have to do something about it, it's interesting to see coverage of another topic: Increasing numbers of elementary school-aged children may be developing eating disorders. An eating disorder treatment center reported a 300 percent increase in calls for pre-teen patients. Oh, and get this: 80 percent of preteen girls are dieting. WTF? Dieting is linked with an increased liklihood of developing an eating disorder, which makes sense, cuz it's often just a matter of crossing a line a few too many times.

Treatment centers aren't the only ones who are worried: 63 percent of elementary school teachers say they are worried about eating disorders in their classrooms. Oy. And in case you thought maybe kids didn't get the message about how important it is to be thin, 81 percent of ten-year-olds are afraid of getting fat. The adverse health effects of anorexia and bulemia are much clearer than the health effects of being overweight, by the way. Perhaps as we loudly wage a war on an obesity "epidemic," we might want to spend some time looking at what other messages we are sending our kids.

Phobic Kids Fear Fat

Karen Murphy — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 12:26:00 GMT

Thin is in, and even kids know it. How could they not? The messages are undeniable, and they're everywhere, even in their own homes. After all, kids are fatter than ever before, right? And there's been a huge outpouring of time, energy, and money into programs to save our fat kids from getting fatter. But there's also the flip side, that all this fat-o-phobia is turning regular-sized kids into mini stick insects.

Adults everywhere are focused not only on looking good but on feeling good, too, but this focus on food consumption, health, and exercise trickles down to the kids who distill it and concentrate it into their own personal anorexia-making mantras. And while dropping 15 or 20 pounds in even a thin Mom or Dad won't make a huge overall difference, weight loss in kids can easily escalate into malnutrition and illness. When my older son was 8 he had a stomach virus that kept him from eating for a few days; a 5-lb loss on most kids wouldn't have been a big deal but on my already stick-thin kid it turned him nearly skeletal (he gained it back easily after he began eating again, but it was a huge wakeup call that let me know that my kids just don't have much latitude for such things). And other regular-sized or thinner kids are rapidly becoming too thin when they try to eat less or even lose weight.

Signs your kid may be obsessed with weight and heading into eating-disorder territory:

1. Avoiding eating with the family.

2. Constantly complaining their stomach hurts or they aren't hungry.

3. Being cold and tired most of the time.

(here's a list of warning signs associated more with teens)

Sadly, most weight-obessed parents don't realize that all kids need is to eat a good amount of quality foods, avoid a lot of junk, and play a lot. Period. Oh, and that their own obession is sending their kids a message.

Photo: www.gospellightbc.com

Research Says Depression, Anorexia, and Being a New Mom All Mess With Your Sex Life, But Not In the Same Way

Kelly Mills — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 17:01:00 GMT

A new study lumps some stuff together to show us the big differences between being anorexic and depressed, and being a new mom, besides the fact that anorexics and depressed women probably get more sleep. The women in all three groups for this study were married or in stable relationships, and they were surveyed about doing the nasty. At first I was confused as to why these were being compared, but it turns out that all three groups reported sex problems in previous research studies.

Here's what they found: depressed women and anorexics have sex more often than new moms. Surprise! Hey, nuns have sex more than new moms. New moms could probably be used as a baseline for hardly ever ever ever getting down. But while the anorexic and depressed women were getting it more often, they were also more likely to report "problems" in sex, and the postnatal women reported no problems during wild love. "This suggests that anorexia and depression have similar effects on a woman's sex life, while childbirth has a different sort of impact, according to the researchers." Okay, perhaps that information will be helpful in some way I don't yet get.

Girls to Blame for Male Anorexia

Madeline Holler — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 22:08:00 GMT

I know it is ignorant of me, but I’m always surprised when I hear about guys suffering from anorexia. When I first heard about anorexia sometime as a pre-teen, it was pitched to me as a girl disease. So I filed it under “girl probs” and, I suppose, kept forgetting to go in and revise.

But according to this study, anorexia really IS pretty much a girl problem, just one that afflicts a small but significant percentage of males. Anorexia is 10 times more common in girls than guys. While health experts don’t know why there is this gender divide, studies on twins indicate there is likely something girly going on.

Health records of Swedish twins from the years 1935-1958 showed that females were more likely than males to develop the disease, except in one case: when the male’s twin was a girl.

First, another thing for the file: anorexia is NOT a modern disease, even though I somehow thought it started with Karen Carpenter and picked up the pace around the time of my first subscription to Seventeen magazine. Second, bummer, because I didn’t want femaleness to have to take the fall for this.

The researchers say:
"A plausible explanation for this phenomenon is that in pregnancies bearing a female fetus, a substance is produced, probably hormonal, that increases the risk of having anorexia nervosa in adulthood," the authors write. "Because the male half of an opposite-sex twin pair would also be exposed to this substance, it could account for the observed elevated risk in males with female twins. The most likely candidates are sex steroid hormones."

I suppose the good news out of this is that, as many have suspected for a while, anorexia has quite a bit to do with chemicals. I've always had some reservations about claiming, wholesale, that fashion mags are mainly at fault. (Though, from experience, I'll grant the magazines are intimately involved in female self-loathing.)

Any guys out there have experience with anorexia? May I ask, do you have a twin sister?

Best of FameCrawler: Angelina Jolie is One Hot Anorectic!

Rachael Brownell (Redsy) — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 21:32:00 GMT

Posted by HerBadMother

Angelina Jolie gave birth, what? A year and a half ago? How is it that she has the body of an eighteen-year-old?

I could be all pissy and snarky and point out that the good photo editors over at Park Avenue Magazine probably had to photoshop in some curves on Ms. Jolie, but that would be unnecessarily petty of me. She's gorgeous, bony elbows and all. How many mothers-of-four could rock a sheet that fantabulously?

So I'll give credit where credit is due: she's spectacular. No wonder Brad Pitt signed up to be her slave boy.

Other Angelina fun at FC:

Telling Our Girls They're Not Pretty Enough

Karen Murphy — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:53:00 GMT

My daughter Serena, age 7 and in the 2nd grade, thinks she's fat. Not only that, but she doesn't like her eye color (golden brown) and thinks her hair is wrong too (it should be blonde). Hardly a day goes by when she doesn't mention her appearance in some way, apparently not seeing that she's a lithe and slender girl with huge dark eyes, and my heart sinks every time I hear it. I don't know where it comes from, either, as I don't reference myself or anyone that way, she doesn't watch TV all that much, doesn't own Bratz or Barbies, and her subscription to Cosmo hasn't kicked in yet.

It breaks my heart, because I know what it's like to have body dysmorphia and think you're towering over all the tiny petite people in the universe while you lumber along like an elephant. I know all about anorexia and bulemia and diet pills, and I'll do anything to keep my beautiful daughter from going down that same torturous road.

Which is why things like Girl Tech's Digi Makeover make me sick. With this contraption your kid can do her very own airbrushing and "portrait enhancement" because, you know, she's not good enough as she is. I don't know what to make of this other than to ask what the hell are we doing to our daughters?

What are you doing to help your daughters maintain a sensible image of themselves and not buy into the undeniable excesses of today's culture regarding image?

Anorexia: Not Just for Teens

MetroDad — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 19:03:00 GMT

From the Associated Press comes an article about a group of people not normally paid much attention to: older anorexics. Anorexia is usually thought of as a disease affecting young women in their teens and early 20s (which is, for the most part, true), but the AP reports that anorexia is increasingly being seen in women in their 30s, 40s and even 50s.

There are several theories as to what's causing this increase in diagnoses. The first is that, quite simply, we've started paying more attention. Second, some people who have anorexia in their 20s never fully recover, so continue to be symptomatic later in life. And third, there's the ever-present societal pressure to be thin, coupled with an "ageing group of baby boomers." As the AP puts it, "While body image is an issue for any age group, women over 30 are dealing with problems that teens don't have, such as work, divorce, stepchildren and ageing parents."

While body image is an issue for any age group, women over 30 are dealing with problems that teens don't have, such as work, divorce, stepchildren and aging parents. The article urges these women to seek assistance in battling anorexia. Interestingly, many older anorexics who have sought treatment state motherhood as a primary motivator. One mother quoted in the article entered treatment when she was told she might have internal damage that could affect her ability to have children. Now 39 and out of treatment, she and her husband are parents to a 2-year-old boy. She says she's in recovery, and her primary goal these days is to be healthy.

Six-Year-Old Boy Treated for Anorexia

MetroDad — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 15:37:00 GMT

With Hollywood's super-thin stars serving as role models, it's no wonder that many young girls don't like what they see in the mirror. The American Academy of Pediatrics, reporting on a survey of 5th- through 12th-grade girls, found that the majority were dissatisfied with their body shape. Two-thirds wanted to lose weight, even though less than a third were actually overweight!

However, much less discussed is the fact that many young boys are also increasingly being treated for eating disorders. In fact, it's possible that anorexia and bulimia affects more young boys than they do girls.

According to an article from the UK's Evening Standard, a study released today reveals that a six-year-old is the youngest boy to be treated for anorexia. The NHS study shows that in 2003, UK hospitals made 93 admissions of boys under 10 with eating problems, compared with 21 admissions of girls. While most of the girls were treated for eating disorders that were similar to those encountered by their older counterparts, the young boys were more likely to be suffering from selective eating, where they will only eat a very narrow range of foods.

The six-year-old in question was Nicholas Pilcher. From the age of two until he was six, Nicholas ate nothing but cheese spread. Even now, after years of successful treatment, the 15-year-old still struggles to eat vegetables and eats soft cheese on all his sandwiches. His father said that young Nicholas would often strave himself for long periods of time unless he could eat cheese.

Personally, I had no idea that anorexia among young boys was such an issue and I'm glad I came across this article. Any of you have experience with this?

Isn't it Ironic?: Donatella Versace's Daughter Suffering from Anorexia

Stefania Pomponi Butler (CityMama) — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 15:01:00 GMT

Fashion designer Donatella Versace, 52, revealed yesterday that her daughter Allegra, 20, has been "battling anorexia" for many years. She is now "desperately ill" and being treated by a team of specialists. She is said to be responding well. Anyone that follows fashion knows that these rumours have been circulating for years. In every photo I have seen of her she looks skeletal, and the recent photos surfacing now are shocking.

Anorexia has been the fashion industry's dirty little secret for years and several recent anorexia-related deaths of models have helped to bring the disease into the spotlight. Several countries now have BMI requirements for models participating in fashion week shows and there is the promise of medical care for those not meeting the requirements.

After writing the title, it's like I don't even need to write a post about this. What is there to say? It is sad, ironic, but not really that surprising that Allegra is suffering from anorexia. Not only has she grown up in the fashion industry where the emphasis is placed on extreme thinness, but she has a mother that, from the looks of it, can't stop hacking at her face and body. I wonder how many other "fashion kids" are suffering from eating-related diseases?

The Versace family is requesting privacy as Allegra fights for her life. Let's hope she's successful; she has a long road ahead of her if she is ever going to be "well."

Janice Dickinson Wants Your Kids to be Anorexic

Sarah, Goon Squad Sarah — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 16:30:00 GMT

Wow. I knew Janice Dickinson was a nut job, but I didn't know that she actively wished eating disorders on children.

Seriously. This is a direct quote from an article in the New York Post by Deborah Starr Seibel - "'I'm dying to find kids who are too thin. I've got 42 models in my agency and I'm trying to get them to lose weight. In fact, I wish they'd come down with some anorexia.' When you laugh at such politically incorrect statements, Dickinson yells back, 'I'm not kidding. I'm running into a bunch of fat-assed, lazy little bitches who don't know how to do the stairs or get their butts into the gym'. "

I have spent a lot of time on my personal blog complaining about what the media is doing to kids and bitching that nobody should be surprised that so many adolescent and teenaged girls (and now even much younger children) end up with anorexia or bulimia.

With all the talk on banning ultra-thin models, I had started believing that the fashion industry might be trying to promote healthier body images. But then I read about Janice Dickinson. My point being, nobody, for the love of God, sign your daughter (or son) up with Janice Dickinson's modeling agency.