On Anorexia
Feb. 18th, 2004 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
danaerisI read a GREAT article in Seed Magazine about a new theory about the cause of Anorexia. Based on more recent research, I'm pretty convinced that this is it.
Anorexia has always been treated as a psychological disorder in the past, and treatments are largely ineffective.
Now, a researcher named TK has proposed that the disorder is in fact biophysical in origin. Why? Well, one of the reasons that really caught my attention is that anorexia is always preceded by sudden loss of about 10% of someone's weight. This is NOT always due to dieting. Sometimes someone with a fine body image will be ill, lose that weight, and find that he or she can no longer eat.
Why would this be?
Apparently, back when we were hunter gatherers, we'd sometimes have to move on from one place that was running out of food to another. Some people have a metabolism that, when kicked into starvation mode, goes kinda hypomanic. Dopamine and other happy brain chemicals are jacked up and although the person is unable to bring hirself to eat and is in fact starving to death, zie feels energetic and "better than ever." Notably, anorexics tend to have a lot of nervous energy.
In a tribal environment, such people would have the energy to goad the rest of the tribe on to greener pastures. Once they had settled down, pressure from the rest of the tribe would lead to them eating again... apparently once someone in this state is kicked out of starvation mode (which may take a lot of work), they go back to normal.
Other research which can be read below recently found a genetic marker for anorexia and bulimia, which supports the above theory at least in the assertion that it is biological and not psychological.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/mar02/genetic.html
Anyway. I thought that was pretty nifty. And maybe if psychologists stop viewing it as a mental problem, there will be less of a cycle of guilt for the anorexics, which will make the road to recovery that much easier. *Croses fingers*
Anorexia has always been treated as a psychological disorder in the past, and treatments are largely ineffective.
Now, a researcher named TK has proposed that the disorder is in fact biophysical in origin. Why? Well, one of the reasons that really caught my attention is that anorexia is always preceded by sudden loss of about 10% of someone's weight. This is NOT always due to dieting. Sometimes someone with a fine body image will be ill, lose that weight, and find that he or she can no longer eat.
Why would this be?
Apparently, back when we were hunter gatherers, we'd sometimes have to move on from one place that was running out of food to another. Some people have a metabolism that, when kicked into starvation mode, goes kinda hypomanic. Dopamine and other happy brain chemicals are jacked up and although the person is unable to bring hirself to eat and is in fact starving to death, zie feels energetic and "better than ever." Notably, anorexics tend to have a lot of nervous energy.
In a tribal environment, such people would have the energy to goad the rest of the tribe on to greener pastures. Once they had settled down, pressure from the rest of the tribe would lead to them eating again... apparently once someone in this state is kicked out of starvation mode (which may take a lot of work), they go back to normal.
Other research which can be read below recently found a genetic marker for anorexia and bulimia, which supports the above theory at least in the assertion that it is biological and not psychological.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/mar02/genetic.html
Anyway. I thought that was pretty nifty. And maybe if psychologists stop viewing it as a mental problem, there will be less of a cycle of guilt for the anorexics, which will make the road to recovery that much easier. *Croses fingers*
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no subject
Date: 2004-02-18 11:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-18 11:42 pm (UTC)Not being a physiologist, I'm not well for this argument, but I've studied psychology, and there seems to be more to Anorexia than higher energy and dopamine--things that are, forgive me, very disorder-ish in nature.
But as with all things this is probably an explaination that fits some of the cases, and might explain part of the whole, and it's incorporation into the understanding will enrich the holistic view of the whole.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-19 12:33 am (UTC)And you're right. I bet there are some people who have body image issues and in so doing, invoke the starvation mode. Then, when people tell them they have a problem, not only do they not see a thin person in the mirror, but they feel great, not like they're starving, because of this biological mechanism! It is a mechanism that a lot of migratory animals have, apparently.
But. The article had a lot of really interesting points to make that I didn't even mention. Pretty persuasive stuff. We'll see if this becomes the accepted theory, I guess, as time passes.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-18 11:43 pm (UTC)Yes, that is cool... anything that leads to treatments that actually work is a good thing.
It is a somewhat sad statement about our society that biophysical maladies are "okay", but mental illness (itself often a biophysical malady) is something to feel guilty about.