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News Articles About Eating Disorders

Women Misjudge Celebrities' Body Size
The media often portrays an unrealistic view of the "ideal" female body that can cause women to be dissatisfied about the way they look. The thin model image can also be linked to an increasing prevalence in eating disorders among young women and girls. However, it has never been determined why some women are affected by this media exposure of body shape while others are not.

Posting Date: 05/17/2000

The media often portrays an unrealistic view of the "ideal" female body that can cause women to be dissatisfied about the way they look. The thin model image can also be linked to an increasing prevalence in eating disorders among young women and girls.

However, it has never been determined why some women are affected by this media exposure of body shape while others are not.

Past research has shown that women who are dissatisfied with their bodies or have eating disorders tend to overestimate their body size after viewing thin models.

Now, a recent study by Australian researchers looked at 96 undergraduate psychology students from the University of Sydney in an attempt to find out who is most affected by media portrayals of body size.

Participants were divided into two groups, one with women who had a low concern about their body shape and a second with women who had a high concern. Both groups were then shown both accurate and distorted pictures of thin and heavy female celebrities and asked to choose which photos portrayed the true body shapes of the famous personalities.

In almost all cases, the group with high concern about body shape judged the thin celebrities to be thinner than they actually are. The low body shape concern group judged the celebrities more accurately, according to a report in Nutrition Research Newsletter.

One interesting result is that both groups judged the heavier celebrities to be heavier than they actually are, which researchers say reinforces the negative connotations associated with being overweight in today's society.

What this study shows is that if we learn to love our bodies and remember that the media exaggerates the ideal figure, we'll be much happier and healthier.

Source: Nutrition Research Newsletter, May 2000
 

Bone density of women who have recovered from anorexia nervosa.
Full clinical recovery from anorexia nervosa does not quite confer full establishment of normal bone density. However, pathological fractures are not a feature thereafter, within middle life.

Hartman D, Crisp A, Rooney B, Rackow C, Atkinson R, Patel S.

Department of General Psychiatry, St. George's Hospital Medical School, London, United Kingdom.

OBJECTIVE: To examine bone density in 19 women who had previously experienced classical anorexia nervosa from which they had been fully recovered for a mean of 21 years (current characteristics: median age 40.2 years; Eating Attitudes Test [EAT] score 2; body mass index [BMI] 21.1; average 1.8 offspring). METHOD: Probands were compared, blindly, in respect of bone density, with 13 control subjects matched for age and sex and with no history of eating disorders. Dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) was used to evaluate the bone mineral density (BMD) of the lumbar spine and the head of the femur. RESULTS: Femur BMD was still significantly less among ex-anorectic sufferers. Two subjects had experienced pathological fractures while anorectic, both having been strenuous exercisers. None appeared to have suffered post illness fractures. BMD at follow-up did not relate to the severity or chronicity of previous anorexia nervosa. DISCUSSION: Full clinical recovery from anorexia nervosa does not quite confer full establishment of normal bone density. However, pathological fractures are not a feature thereafter, within middle life. Copyright 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

PMID: 10800020 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Psychiatric comorbidity associated with eating disorder symptomatology among adolescents in the community.
Adolescents with dysthymia, panic and major depressive disorder were significantly more likely than those without these disorders to have an eating disorder. Only obsessive-compulsive personality disorder predicted eating disorder symptoms after controlling for other personality disorders.

Zaider TI, Johnson JG, Cockell SJ.

Genetic Epidemiology Core, Department of Child Psychiatry, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, New York, USA.

OBJECTIVE: This study investigates psychiatric comorbidity associated with eating disorder symptomatology among adolescents in the community. METHOD: Four hundred three adolescents in the community were administered structured clinical interviews to assess mood, anxiety, eating, substance use, and personality disorders. RESULTS: Adolescents with dysthymia, panic and major depressive disorder were significantly more likely than those without these disorders to have an eating disorder. After controlling for the effects of other Axis I disorders and personality disorders, only dysthymia independently predicted the presence of an eating disorder. Several personality disorders were also associated with eating disorder symptoms. However, only obsessive-compulsive personality disorder predicted eating disorder symptoms after controlling for other personality disorders. CONCLUSION: Although previous research on adults has focused on the association between major depressive disorder and eating disorders, dysthymia may be more strongly associated with eating disorders among adolescents in the community. This association is not accounted for by psychiatric comorbidity. Copyright 2000 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

PMID: 10800014 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Eating disorders: a situation of malnutrition with peculiar changes in the immune system.
Eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, are significant public health concerns for a great deal of the population, and thus are even considered to be epidemics. These syndromes have a common aim: the pursuit of a desirable and extremely low weight, which is obviously very far from the ideal body weight.

Instituto de Nutricion, Facultad de Farmacia, Ciudad Universitaria, Madrid, Spain. amarcos@eucmax.sim.ucm.es

Eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, are significant public health concerns for a great deal of the population, and thus are even considered to be epidemics. These syndromes have a common aim: the pursuit of a desirable and extremely low weight, which is obviously very far from the ideal body weight. Therefore, these patients show abnormal food behavior, leading to a situation of malnutrition. Nutrients play an important role in the development and functionality of the immune system. Thus, the assessment of immunological parameters acquires great interest as a useful tool to evaluate the nutritional status of these patients. In addition, it is very well known that a depleted immune system as a consequence of malnutrition is linked to an increased susceptibility to infections. However, an extensive literature has pointed out that anorexic patients, even though severely malnourished, are relatively free from infectious diseases. As the immune system is altered by distorted food behaviors, such as in case of eating disorders, the awareness of the characteristics of other systems involved in these pathologies, and therefore altered, would be very helpful for the understanding of the mechanisms triggered in these syndromes. In fact, the interactions among the immune system and the remaining systems in eating disorders are beginning to be studied. Finally, the main goal is to limit the evolution of these illnesses through an early diagnosis and appropriate therapy to subsequently get a constant and definitive cure for the patients.
PMID: 10805041 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Losing Weight Makes You Healthier: Not Necessarily
I've often maintained we're being misled when it comes to claims that we have to lose weight to stay healthy. Now, there are two new studies that give support to my premise. Both studies published in the American Journal of Epidemiology find little evidence of health benefits or lower mortality rates in men and women who engage in intentional weight loss.

Both studies published in the American Journal of Epidemiology find little evidence of health benefits or lower mortality rates in men and women who engage in intentional weight loss.

One of the problems researchers have is differentiating between intentional weight loss and unintentional weight loss caused by disease. They're often lumped together and can make it seem like losing weight results in a higher death rate.

In the first study, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control looked at weight loss data for over 40,000 white men aged 40-64 and concluded that intentional weight loss had no effect on lowering the risk of heart attacks. However, dropping 20-35 extra pounds did result in a significant decrease in the risk of dying from diabetes.

The other study with postmenopausal women found a higher mortality rate associated with weight loss. Taking a closer look, researchers found most of the higher death rate occurred because of unintentional weight loss due to diseases such as cancer or cardiovascular ailments.

It should be noted that while 40 percent of adult women are reportedly trying to lose weight, those who do so intentionally with various diets almost always regain it.

What these studies show is that except in special circumstances - such as the benefits for diabetics - you're probably better off not dieting. Some people get upset when I say this, but there's no proof that losing weight improves your health or longevity. And what does constant worry about calories and weight loss do for your quality of life?

Having a few extra pounds isn't necessarily bad for you if you have healthy lifestyle habits.

Source: American Journal of Epidemiology, March 15, 1999

The joys of anorexia
Not everyone is destroyed by eating disorders.
I think if people understood how good starving themselves feels, they would understand people with eating disorders a lot better. They would also do their best to make sure no one ever got an inkling of the feeling, because once a trip has been taken down that road, it's a difficult trip back for most people.

By Georgie Binks

Jan. 27, 2000 | As far as bad habits go, if I were a pack-a-day smoker who kept falling off the wagon, I'd probably be getting friendly advice from everyone -- use the patch, try hypnosis, chew this gum and if none of those worked, maybe a smoker's rights group would work.

Drink too much? Well, as long as I wasn't driving and it didn't affect my job, my friends might simply take it as an appreciation of alcohol, especially if it was good red wine that had me by the collar.

But my bad habit is one that makes everybody's eyes widen when they hear it. It is not socially acceptable, and absolutely no one has a sense of humor about it. My bad habit is that I like to starve myself from time to time. The doctors say it must be a psychological problem. Perhaps I should be looking at what I am going through when I'm depriving myself of food. But I think it is just a very effective and enjoyable form of weight loss, one that I have had control over for years now.

I think if people understood how good starving themselves feels, they would understand people with eating disorders a lot better. They would also do their best to make sure no one ever got an inkling of the feeling, because once a trip has been taken down that road, it's a difficult trip back for most people. And that's probably why, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, there are 7 million women and 1 million men who suffer from eating disorders. (They report that 6 percent of all serious cases die from the disorder.) I am one of the fortunate ones, because I have always been able to stop before it became a serious problem.

I never made a conscious effort to use starving myself as a dieting tool. I was always a skinny child because I was utterly bored with food. But at 16, I discovered fast food. My first taste of a Harvey's burger was heaven. I used to lie to my parents, pushing my plate away at dinner and telling them I was off to the library, while my friends and I headed off for a cheeseburger with extra dill pickles. After a few months, we discovered a little crepe house downtown and began to frequent it without our parents' knowledge. I gained a bit of weight, but at 5-foot-7 and 107 pounds, I definitely had nothing to worry about. I had grown quickly and my weight hadn't yet caught up with me.

My first real flirtation with starving came during my second year at college. I admit that part of my problem was that I was in an up-and-down love affair. But it wasn't my first, so why would I start starving myself now and not for the other romances? At the beginning I simply didn't feel like eating. So for the first couple of days I just downed a Coke for breakfast and smoked a cigarette, the same for lunch and about a half a portion of dinner. After about three days I dubbed it the "Coke and cigarettes diet." After a month and a half I weighed 102, down from the 118 I had weighed when I arrived at the university. Cheekbones had replaced the baby fat on my face and my hipbones actually stood out. To this day, that is a memory I cherish.

However, my boyfriend (the up-and-down one) told me I looked awful and fortunately I believed him. Or if I didn't, I heeded his comments anyway and started eating. That summer I gained back the weight and the cheeks during my job as a waitress at a Rocky Mountains resort.

Bulimia
It is devastating that young girls and women still put so much emphasis on how their bodies compare to that of models and celebrities. My mother recently remarked how obsessed women of her generation were with their weight, with role models like Twiggy, and how sad is it when she looks back at photos of herself when she was teenager and realized in retrospect how how beautiful her figure was with all its glorious curves.

Except now we seem to have an even greater prevalence of eating disorders such as bullimia and anorexia nervosa. The most prevalent reason intelligent young women ram their fingers down their throats or starve themselves near to death is because they possesss a poor self image stemming from a lack of realistic role models in the fashion and advertising industry. Recently I stumbled across an interview with a leading Australian fashion designer and several representatives of the advertising industry. I couldn't help but be amused that these perpetuators of the perfect body (ie size 8 and under) still believe that they are void of any kind of moral responsibility for projecting images into society of undernourished looking women, that suggest that this waify look is the only way women can be sexy or desirable.

The interview was conducted by Ray Martin, who for those of my readers who aren't Australian, is one of our most painful and sensationalistic journalists around, even attributing him with the title journalist is questionable. Martin seems to take great pleasure in scapegoating the minority groups in our society that have trouble defending themselves against the images his network are obsessed with depicting. Ray and his gang at "A Current Affair" appeal to the conservative tastes of some of our population. Single mothers, Aboriginals, unemployed teenagers, migrants, basically anyone who is not white, male and middle class, are regularly targeted. I'm sure you get the picture. Every country has their own version of our "Little Ray of Sunshine."

Now this interview was set out as a informal dinner of sorts, with designer Peter Morrissey, and several high level advertising executives, representing the fashion and advertising industries, and on the other side of the fence was a size 14 model, and the editor of New Woman, who was sacked for endeavouring to use realistic sized women in her magazine. I was fascinated and somewhat amused by the attempts of Morrissey and his colleagues to justify their exclusive use of thin women. The size 14 model in fact pointed out that Morrisey and many of his designer collegues didn't even produce clothes for size 14 women, despite the huge percentage of women that fall into this catogory. One advertising excecutive thought he could void his moral responsibility for the overwhelming lack of self-esteem amoungst women by pointing out that this years academy award winners, Helen Hunt and Kim Bassinger were incredibly slender, arguing that Hollywood also featured thin women as it's central role models. At this point I was jumping up and down in front of the television, wishing desperately I could be at this dinner. I wanted to point out to this imbecile that, while it was true Hollywood did have more than its fair share of bordering anorexic women, a quick glance at the rest of the nominees would have identified Kate Winslet and Minnie Driver, women who don't fit the pencil thin stereotype. So at least Hollywood does provide some alternative body types in it's stars. The fashion industry however certainly doesn't, and as gorgeous as this size 14 model at Ray's dinner was, Morrissey and his collegues informed her that her body type wouldn't sell clothes. It's interesting how advertisers and designers love to use buzzwords like "innovative" and "revolutionary" to describe their products, its a pity they can't apply the same buzzwords to their campaigns.

It depresses me to see Cosmopolitan's token effort at choosing a bigger sized model for a photo shoot, with positive and negative feedback all noted in the following edition. How I long for the day when having a size 14 model in a magazine doesn't seem like a novelty.

So I look at myself and my body type and even I can be disappointed by my occasional habit of buying into the beauty myth, sucking my little pot belly in when I try on bikinis, examining my growing cellulite, wondering if any of those new miracle cures on the market would make a difference. At Christmas I was standing in my uncle's bedroom and he remarked on how rounded my belly had got, self-consciously I sucked it in and he reprimanded me, saying he thought it was beautiful that it was good for women to have a little bit of belly. I was surprised at how difficult it was for me to take that as a compliment.

These kind of attitudes that I occasionally entertain are part of my driving force for working on yOni, because I know that if I, as an educated, confident and self aware individual, can buy into the bullshit, how hard must it be for those younger girls who haven't my years of self awareness and acceptance on their side.

Unfortunately some women spend their whole lives obsessing about their weight, and the physical and emotional damage that you can inflict on yourself can have some devastating effects. One such physical effect of that very popular eating disorder bulimia is the unrepairable damage bulimia can have on your teeth.

To start at the beginning of the story, when I was 15 my best friend came to live with my family, and suddenly decided one day that we wanted to be bulimic, (very mature) we were both unhappy with our weight, (foolishly so, we both had beautiful bodies) and decided we didn't want to give up eating (goddess forbid), so we would do the next best thing, every time we ate something fattening we would go upstairs to the bathroom and throw it up. Of course this isn't the true definition of bulimia, a true bulimic eats obsessively and constantly throws everything up. Nevertheless vomiting up our food became an addition to our teenage lives. This vomiting became almost like a game to us, we even confided in my younger sister, who in horror would come and bang on the door in tears every time either of us would go to the toilet and order us to stop throwing up. Eventually my friend grew weary of the game and realised how stupid it was, and I agreed it was stupid and we went on to find another adventure to amuse ourselves. But I never told her that I hadn't decided I would give it up and continued to do it in private on and off for at least three years. Not regularly, just whenever I had eaten a lot of junk food.

I can still remember the two things that turned me off vomiting up my food and made me stop. One day I read about the damaging effects of stomach acid on teeth, and how vomiting could cause them to decay. I also read that throwing up all the time could make you infertile. I have since found out that the infertile story is incorrect, but today after visiting my new dentist I've realised that the damage stomach acid has on your teeth is irriversible. For years I have had extensive work done on my teeth, every single one of my back teeth, upper and lower, have fillings in them. I wouldn't go to the dentist for two years and then find out I needed eight fillings. I was unlucky enough to have a really bad dentist from the age of 12 to 21, who never actually sat down with me and discussed the reasons behind this, he just patched me up, told me to stop eating so much sugar and sent me on my way. But today a new dentist examined me and was horrified to see how much decay I had, and how many fillings I had at the age of 23. She ran a few tests and determined that it wasn't anything to do with my diet or how I brush my teeth, she said I had serious decay in places that it was extremely difficult to get in. She then asked me if I had ever had any extensive illness that might cause me to vomit, and I told her about my bulimia adventures, and she decided that was probably the most likely cause.

Thankfully she didn't lecture me, instead laid out a plan to prevent any further decay. So here I am wondering how I am going to finance the thousands of dollars worth of dental work I am going to need, and wishing, oh so fervently, that I hadn't been so obsessed with my weight as a teenager and trying to solve my insecurity by vomiting up all my food.

So Maidens if any of you are bulimic or thinking about venturing in that direction, please take heed of my bad experiences and remember that women are beautiful in all shapes and sizes, and no matter what any stupid ad or magazine tells you, you are gorgeous because you are a woman and if you have curves that is just a reinforcement of your womanliness. You only have to look at Renaissance paintings to see that definitions of beauty are inconstant, and if you can individually assess for yourself what is beautiful then that is much more useful than some silly overpaid unenlightened clothes designer's definition of beauty.

For further information on the myths behind modern day constructions of beauty I highly recommend Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth.

By Salona

Diets lead to mental illness, study finds
Teenage girls who put themselves on strict diets are 18 times more likely to develop eating disorders than those who do not try to lose weight by dieting. Even girls who go on moderate diets are found to be more at risk. Their chances of developing anorexia or bulimia are five times higher than non-dieters, researchers said this week.

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