Anorexia Risk Begins In Womb
Ian Frampton (honorary consultant in paediatric psychology at London's Great Ormond Street hospital) and colleagues studied over 200 young women aged 12 - 25 who were being treated for anorexia.
As The Guardian newspaper explains:
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.
In the past, scientists believed that being severely underweight caused changes in brain chemistry: Framptom's research suggests it's the other way round: the changes are caused in the womb. (There is no link to poor maternal diet, or environmental factors.)
The findings have given hope to eating disorder charities and campaigners, who believe that this could revolutionise the way anorexia is treated. Some hope that drugs could be produced to correct the brain chemistry, in a similar way to using anti-depressants to treat depression.
The head of the eating disorders charity Beat, Susan Ringwood, welcomed the news and told the Guardian that:
It will help parents understand that they aren't to blame. 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.
The study is due to be presented at the 9th London International Eating Disorders Conference.
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Aha.... so another pill will hit our shelves and make some pharmaceutical company happy and the fact that their are societies where anorexia doesn't even exist (because they don't have all the societal pressure to be thin) will be ignored.
ReplyThat's exactly what I was thinking Cari...another pill...another crutch. As a mother of a 19 girl, I think the biggest factor is what these young people idolize...on TV and in magazines and in a million other highly visible places. I work as a wardrobe stylist and what the actors look like in real person is very different than what they end up looking like on a magazine cover. Every single one of my daughter's girlfriends had some form of an eating disorder and suffered from poor body image to some degree. It's an epidemic to be sure. They don't need a pill, they need to learn to love their body and do better by it.
ReplyThis is pure bullshyt. Eating disorders are only found in cultures that idolize thinness.
ReplyWell, that's not true. The cultures that idolize fatness go to extreme disorded methods to gain weight, they're just not as familiar in the Western world because it's not what's popular here.
ReplyThere has been links between Anorexia and depression right? It makes since that there is a biological root to the susceptibility to eating disorders, though the culture effects manifestation.
Not true, surprisingly enough.
ReplyWhen I was struggling with my eating disorder, I was put on a SSRI to try and regulate my neurotransmitters to prevent me from wanting to binge. It seemed to help, I suppose, but I also needed therapy to actually beat the disease. It's the same with depression; you can take a pill for it, but without therapy to treat the underlying cause, a pill won't do a whole lot.
ReplyBrain chemicals, parenting, and the media do not singularly "cause" eating disorders. I think this study is a good example of how people can be born with a vulnerability that parenting, peer relations, and media can influence to trigger an eating disorder.
The study says that parents shouldn't blame themselves, but I think that too depends on the situation. When I hear some of the things that parents say to their kids, I am horrified. A girl in my ED group who is visibly emaciated has a father who still tells her she needs to lose weight and is fat. That sonofabitch needs a good kick in the head.
ReplyPeople tend to forget and act like it's not the choice of the person who has the eating disorder. It may spiral out of control but here's the thing, nobody hit them and said, stop eating, throw up your food. Yes people are easily influenced and maybe even predispositioned to want to do that but it all comes down to personal choices that that person makes. Yes it may be hard to stop but who started in the first place? Same thing with addicts of drugs, they chose to put that drug in their body in the first place, they chose the bad road and now their addicted and can't go back.
ReplyReally? So when your family tells you continuously that you need to lose weight despite being at a normal weight, when eating normally is commented upon as though it is too much, what are you going to do as a teenager or younger? Try to please people. And when you're eating so little and your body finally screams out for food to such an extent that you can no longer battle it and then binge, what are you going to do? You've already been convinced that you are fat/need to lose weight, so you do what you can to avoid gaining weight: exercising and throwing up. It is not as simple as saying it's a choice.
Replyseriously? you think an ED is a choice? you think people choose to have an illness that ruins your life, friendships, relationships, health, and so on? you obviously have no clue what you are talking about. i wish my ED had been a choice, then i could have chosen not to have it.
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