Anorexia -- You will not believe how this eating disorder can transform people
Patients with anorexia nervosa the most lethal psychiatric condition feel compelled to diet and exercise despite negative consequences restricting food become automatic and consuming high-calorie foods causes anxiety. A research group works to improve treatment for anorexia nervosa and to understand its addictive nature they studied how dieting affects hunger stress and reward signals and their impact on decision making regarding what and when to eat by altering brain and gut function starvation contributes to anorexic thoughts feelings and behaviors to correct preoccupations with food and body shape we must first restore weight and relearn normal eating.
You may hear before about this disorder in different ways, here some other names people tend to call it: eating disorders, anorexia nervosa, bulimia, binge eating disorder, binge eating, bulimia nervosa
Here are some pictures of people who are struggling with this disorder
A very interesting finding from this researches is actually how the genetics of anorexia fit in with other disorders and traits and some correlations between the genes that influence risk for anorexia all the genes that influence risk for anorexia and those that influence other traits and what has been found was a positive genetic correlation between anorexia and many other psychiatric illnesses including obsessive-compulsive disorder depression and anxiety and this is really interesting because we see this all the time in the clinic people with anorexia nervosa commonly have OCD they have anxiety disorders but now we know why now we know that the reason is that the same genes are actually influencing risk for those disorders.
What’s really novel about this study is we also observe genetic correlations with a whole slew of metabolic and anthropometric traits like body mass index weight circumference on insulin resistance so now this tells us that there’s actually a metabolic origin to anorexia nervosa as well and that’s why we’re suggesting that we now really need to think about anorexia nervosa as a metabolite a trick disease I think these findings both validate what parents and patients have been telling us for a long time and also offer them hope for the future.
Parents have always told us there’s much more to this than the psychology my daughter or my son was fine one day and then all of a sudden almost like a switch went on or went off and it started this descent into anorexia nervosa and often patients will want to gain weight but they can’t and one of the things that we see so often is we’ll bring someone into the hospital and nourish them will stabilize their weight but they often get kicked out of hospital too soon before their bodies have really had a chance to react.
I think this study is really telling us that we need to focus on both the psychiatric and the metabolic factors and by doing that we might improve the treatments that we’re able to deliver to these individuals and then hopefully down the line we’ll actually be able to develop medications that target the underlying biology of the illness.
People may experience these as symptoms:
**Whole-body: **dehydration, dizziness, fainting, fatigue, low blood pressure, low body temperature, osteoporosis, water-electrolyte imbalance, or feeling cold
**Behavioral: **binge eating, compulsive behavior, hyperactivity, impulsivity, or social isolation
**Weight: **underweight, weight loss, or extreme weight loss and thinness
**Mood: **anxiety, apprehension, or guilt
**Gastrointestinal: **constipation or vomiting
**Menstrual: **irregular menstruation or absence of menstruation
**Developmental: **delayed puberty or slow growth
**Also common: **brittle nails, bruising, depression, dieting, dry hair, dry skin, and headache, sensitivity to cold, or slow heart rate
Finally, we have some testimonials from people experienced some degree of this disease
