Category: Eating Disorders

With summer just around the corner, we see constant reminders about getting in shape for swimsuit season. Magazines offer annual tips for slimming down. Pencil-thin models show us the bodies we can’t possibly achieve. We may feel inspired to shed a few pounds, but most of us don’t take these media messages too seriously. For the small minority of people with eating disorders, however, the relentless pursuit of an ideal body can have dire or even deadly consequences.

Fully 58 out of 68 former patients in child and adolescent psychiatry in northern Sweden recovered from their anorexia nervosa. In the follow-up, the group studied was characterized by self-reported good physical and mental health. This is shown in a 16-year follow-up that Karin Nilsson presents in her dissertation at Umeå University in Sweden. After only 8 years, 68 percent evinced no diagnosable eating disturbance.

Remuda Programs for Eating Disorders (www.remudaranch.com), the nation’s leading treatment center for women and girls with eating disorders, has partnered with FINDINGbalance, a Tennessee-based health and wellness organization, to launch the world’s first video-on-demand Web site for eating disorders and body image issues. The Web site is now online at www.

Eating disorders may be overlooked in some groups - boys and some ethnicities - by physicians accustomed to diagnosing the condition in white teenage girls, say researchers at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and the Stanford University School of Medicine.The problem is compounded when the sufferers don’t display the typical symptoms of disordered eating.

University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) psychologists have developed an animal model for the binge eating disorder, which affects an estimated one in 20 Americans. The Sprague-Dawley rat model could lead to the identification of physiological mechanisms that distinguish different types of eating disorders and to the creation of new, targeted drug therapies.

Common practice in the treatment of adolescent eating disorder patients has been to exclude the parents. Many experts consider parents part of the problem and thus keep them away during therapy. Two U.S based clinicians disagree and have written a “how to” book published in February that includes family in the treatment of these patients. They say parents are well poised to help their children overcome bulimia nervosa, a disorder characterized by binging and purging.