The insidious disorders are characterized by extreme eating behavior and distorted body image and often occur during adolescence and young adulthood.

A new study from the University of California – San Diego suggests that the altered function of neural circuitry contributes to restricted eating in anorexia and overeating in bulimia.

The research, published in the early online edition of the American Journal of Psychiatry, may eventually offer a pathway to new and more effective treatments for these serious eating disorders.

“It has been unknown whether individuals with anorexia or bulimia have a disturbance in the system that regulates appetite in the brain, or whether eating behavior is driven by other phenomena, such as an obsessional preoccupation with body image,” said Walter Kaye, M.D., director of the UCSD Eating Disorders Treatment and Research Program.

“However, this study confirms earlier studies by our group and others that establish a clear link between these disorders and neural processes in the insula, an area of the brain where taste is sensed and integrated with reward to help determine whether an individual feels hungry or full.”

The study used functional MRI to test this neurocircuitry by measuring the brain response to sweet tastes in 28 women who had recovered from either anorexia or bulimia.

Using a control group of 14 women who had never suffered from either disorder, researchers discovered that those recovered from anorexia had significantly diminished responses to the taste of sucrose in the right anterior insula.

They also found that those recovered from bulimia had significantly elevated responses to the taste of sucrose in the right anterior insula.

“One possibility is that restricted eating and weight loss occurs in anorexia because the brain fails to accurately recognize hunger signals,” said first author Tyson Oberndorfer, M.D.

“Alternately, overeating in bulimia could represent an exaggerated perception of hunger signals.”

A recent complementary study that investigated brain structure in anorexia and bulimia nervosa also focused on the insula as postentially an integral part of eating disorder pathology.

The researchers added that such studies could have very important implications for treatment, and that identifying abnormal neural substrates could help to reformulate the basic pathology of eating disorders and offer new targets for treatment.

“It may be possible to modulate the experience by, for example, enhancing insula activity in individuals with anorexia or dampening the exaggerated or unstable response to food in those with bulimia,” said Kaye.

Studies indicate that healthy subjects can use real-time fMRI, biofeedback or mindfulness training to alter the brain’s response to food stimuli.

For patients with anorexia who have an overly active satiety signal in response to palatable foods, the researchers suggest bland or even slightly aversive foods might prevent the brain’s overstimulation.

Medications may also be found that enhance the reward response to food, or decrease inhibition to food consumption in the brain’s reward circuitry.

Source: University of California-San Diego

University of Michigan researchers compared households watching commercial-free digital TV or other media without food advertising, to those that watched television with commercials.

For the study, Kristen Harrison and Mericarmen Peralta interviewed over 100 parents about a wide variety of home and family characteristics, including child and parent media exposure and child dietary intake.

They conducted separate interviews with children in preschools to get a sense of what children thought made up a healthy meal.

The goal was to see how family characteristics were associated with children’s dietary intake and perceptions of healthy meals.

Using food security as a marker, Harrison found that the media-junk food link is very strong among food-secure people, and almost zero among food-insecure people.

Since food insecurity is associated with limited income, it sets limits on how much people can spend on junk food.

Food-secure people, on the other hand, can afford to give in to cravings when watching food advertising. People in this category were more likely to consume junk food, and their children had distorted views on what constitutes a healthy meal.

Prior research has shown an association between childhood TV and obesity. However, research is limited on the influence of television on preschool diets and healthy meals.

Until now, researchers have combined commercial TV with digitally recorded TV, prohibiting comparisons of media influence on diet. Harrison and Peralta’s research aimed to address these less-studied topics to get a better sense of what children are learning about eating before they begin to make their own food choices.

“Even though parents and other caregivers are the primary gatekeepers regarding young children’s food intake, children are still learning about food as it relates to health from family, media, and other sources, and may use this knowledge later on to inform their decisions when parents or other adults aren’t there to supervise them,” Harrison said.

“The preschool years are especially important, because the adiposity rebound in kids who grow up to be normal weight tends to be around age 5 or 6, whereas for kids to grow up to be obese, it happens closer to 3.

“We need to know as much as we can about the factors that encourage obesogenic eating during the preschool years, even if that eating doesn’t manifest as obesity until the child is older.”

Source: International Communication Association

Investigators discovered the offspring of obese mothers may be spared health problems linked to obesity, while their own children then inherit them.

This finding is startling as health professionals and policymakers currently focus attention on obesity in the general population, including the emergence of obesity among children.

The University of Edinburgh study has shown that moderately obese mothers can make an impact on the birth weight and diabetes risk of grandchildren, in the apparent absence of effects in their own children.

Experts say that rates of obesity are at an all-time high. Among the associated health problems are breast and colon cancer and stroke. Moderate obesity is a Body Mass Index (BMI) between 30 and 34.9.

Scientists studied moderately obese female mice fed on a diet high in fat and sugar before and during pregnancy. The mice were found to pass on the risks of obesity to the second generation of offspring, while virtually no ill effects were seen in the first generation.

Reasons why the first generation is apparently protected are not fully understood. Researchers suggest that reasons could include differences in maternal weight gain during pregnancy or specific food eaten during pregnancy.

They add that studying effects of this kind – referred to as developmental programming – in humans could be challenging but possible.

Dr. Amanda Drake, Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, said: “Given the worldwide increase in obesity, it is vital that we gain an understanding of how future generations may be affected.

“Future studies could look at these trends in humans but they would need to take into account genetics, environmental, social and cultural factors.”

Source: University of Edinburgh

Researchers found that anorexics believe their bodies are larger than what they really are and this disturbed body representation affects their movements.

The research, by Anouk Keizer and colleagues from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, is published in the open access journal PLOS ONE.

In the current study, researchers examined how these disturbances may extend to unconscious, action-related representations of the body by asking anorexic and healthy participants to walk through a door and observing when they began to rotate their shoulders to squeeze through.

While healthy participants started to turn when a doorway was about 25 percent wider, anorexic participants began to do so even when the opening was 40 percent wider than their shoulders.

Based on these observations, the authors conclude that anorexic patients’ disturbed representations of their body size are more pervasive than previously thought, affecting both conscious and unconscious actions.

Researchers said, “It appears that for anorexia nervosa patients, experiencing their body as fat goes beyond thinking and perceiving themselves in such a way, it is even reflected in how they move around in the world.”

Said Keizer, “This is why we believe that current therapeutic interventions should not only focus on changing how patients think about their body and how they look at it, but also target the body in action, in other words, treatment should aim to improve the experience of body size as a whole.”

Source: Public Library of Science

Woman with a distorted body image photo by shutterstock.

Brigham Young University sociology professors Drs. Ben Gibbs and Renata Forste found that clinical obesity at 24 months of age strongly traces back to infant feeding.

“If you are overweight at age two, it puts you on a trajectory where you are likely to be overweight into middle childhood and adolescence and as an adult,” said Forste. “That’s a big concern.”

The BYU researchers analyzed data from more than 8,000 families and found that babies predominantly fed formula were 2-1/2 times more likely to become obese toddlers than babies who were breastfed for the first six months.

But, the study authors argue, this pattern is not just about breastfeeding.

“There seems to be this cluster of infant feeding patterns that promote childhood obesity,” said Gibbs, lead author of the study.

As presented in the journal Pediatric Obesity, putting babies to bed with a bottle increased the risk of childhood obesity by 36 percent.

And introducing solid foods too soon – before four months of age – increased a child’s risk of obesity by 40 percent.

“Developing this pattern of needing to eat before you go to sleep, those kinds of things discourage children from monitoring their own eating patterns so they can self-regulate,” Forste said.

Forste said that the nature of breastfeeding lends itself to helping babies recognize when they feel full and should stop. But that same kind of skill can be developed by formula-fed infants.

“You can still do things even if you are bottle feeding to help your child learn to regulate their eating practices and develop healthy patterns,” Forste said. “When a child is full and pushes away, stop! Don’t encourage them to finish the whole bottle.”

Breastfeeding rates are lowest in poor and less educated families. Sally Findley, Ph.D., a public health professor at Columbia University who was not involved in the study, said it shows that infant feeding practices are the primary reason that childhood obesity hits hardest below the poverty line.

“Bottle feeding somehow changes the feeding dynamic, and those who bottle feed, alone or mixed with some breastfeeding, are more likely to add cereal or sweeteners to their infant’s bottle at an early age, even before feeding cereal with a spoon,” said Findley.

Researchers next plan to reevaluate the link between breastfeeding and cognitive development in childhood. Forste has previously published research about why women stop breastfeeding.

“The health community is looking to the origins of the obesity epidemic, and more and more, scholars are looking toward early childhood,” Gibbs said. “I don’t think this is some nascent, unimportant time period. It’s very critical.”

Source: Brigham Young University

Investigators from the Child Study Center at New York University’s Langone Medical Center report the results of the 33-year follow-up study online in the journal Pediatrics.

“Few studies have focused on long-term outcomes for patients diagnosed with ADHD in childhood. In this study, we wanted to assess the health outcomes of children diagnosed with ADHD, focusing on obesity rates and body mass index,” said lead author Francisco Xavier Castellanos, M.D.

“Our results found that even when you control for other factors often associated with increased obesity rates such as socioeconomic status, men diagnosed with ADHD were at a significantly higher risk to suffer from high BMI and obesity as adults.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ADHD is one of the most common neurobehavioral disorders, often diagnosed in childhood and lasting into adulthood.

People with ADHD typically have trouble paying attention, controlling impulsive behaviors and tend to be overly active. ADHD has an estimated worldwide prevalence of five percent, with men more likely to be diagnosed than women.

The longitudinal prospective study included 207 white men diagnosed with ADHD at an average age of 8 and a comparison group of 178 men not diagnosed with childhood ADHD. Participants were matched for race, age, residence and social class.

The average age at follow up was 41 years old. The study was designed to compare body mass index (BMI) and obesity rates in grown men with and without childhood ADHD.

Results showed that, on average, men with childhood ADHD had significantly higher BMI (30.1 vs. 27.6) and obesity rates (41.1 percent vs. 21.6 percent) than men without childhood ADHD.

“The results of the study are concerning but not surprising to those who treat patients with ADHD. Lack of impulse control and poor planning skills are symptoms often associated with the condition and can lead to poor food choices and irregular eating habits,” noted Castellanos.

“This study emphasizes that children diagnosed with ADHD need to be monitored for long-term risk of obesity and taught healthy eating habits as they become teenagers and adults.”

Source: NYU Langone Medical Center

Florida State University researchers discovered people who gain weight are more likely to give in to temptations but also are more thoughtful about their actions.

The study is published in Psychological Science.

To understand how fluctuations in body weight might relate to personality changes, Angelina Sutin, Ph.D., and colleagues at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) examined data from two large-scale longitudinal studies of Baltimore residents.

“We know a great deal about how personality traits contribute to weight gain,” said Sutin.

“What we don’t know is whether significant changes in weight are associated with changes in our core personality traits. Weight can be such an emotional issue — we thought that weight gain may lead to long-term changes in psychological functioning.”

Researchers used the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA), and the Baltimore Epidemiologic Catchment Area (ECA) study, to review more than 1,900 people of all ages and socioeconomic levels.

Data about participants’ personality traits and their body weight were collected at two time points separated by nearly a decade.

In one study, a clinician measured participants’ weight at the two time points; in the other study, the participants reported their weight at baseline and had it measured by a clinician at follow-up.

Sutin and colleagues found that participants who had at least a 10 percent increase in body weight showed an increase in impulsiveness — with a greater tendency to give in to temptations — compared to those whose weight was stable.

While the study is not an experimental design to evaluate cause and effect, or whether increased impulsiveness is a cause, or an effect, of gaining weight – researchers say the findings suggest an intimate relationship between a person’s physiology and his or her psychology.

Researchers were surprised to find that people who gained weight also reported an increase in deliberation, with a greater tendency to think through their decisions.

Deliberation tends to increase for everyone in adulthood, but the increase was almost double for participants who gained weight compared to those whose weight stayed the same.

“If mind and body are intertwined, then if one changes the other should change too,” she said. “That’s what our findings suggest.”

Sutin and colleagues speculate that this increase in deliberation could be the result of negative feedback from family or friends — people are likely to think twice about grabbing a second slice of cake if they feel that everyone is watching them take it.

These findings suggest that even though people who gain weight are more conscious of their decision-making, they may still have difficulty resisting temptations.

“The inability to control cravings may reinforce a vicious cycle that weakens the self-control muscle,” the researchers note.

“Yielding to temptation today may reduce the ability to resist cravings tomorrow. Thus, individuals who gain weight may have increased risk for additional weight gain through changes in their personality.”

Source: Florida State University

Woman on weight scales photo by shutterstock.

In the University of Notre Dame study, college-age women were presented with a series of photos of either noticeably thin or noticeably overweight women engaging in “fat talk” or positive body talk. They were then asked to rate the women on various dimensions, including how likable they were.

The women in the photos were rated significantly less likable when they made “fat talk” statements about their bodies, whether or not they were overweight, the researchers found.

The women rated most likable were the overweight women who made positive statements about their bodies.

“Though it has become a regular part of everyday conversation, ‘fat talk’ is far from innocuous,” said Dr. Alexandra Corning, research associate professor of psychology and director of Notre Dame’s Body Image and Eating Disorder Lab.

“It is strongly associated with, and can even cause, body dissatisfaction, which is a known risk factor for the development of eating disorders.”

While some psychologists believe fat talk is one way women attempt to initiate or strengthen social bonds, the new research finds that fat-talkers are liked less than women who make positive statements about their bodies.

“These findings are important because they raise awareness about how women actually are being perceived when they engage in this self-abasing kind of talk,” she said.

“This knowledge can be used to help national efforts to reduce ‘fat talking’ on college campuses.”

Source: University of Notre Dame 

Two women having a conversation photo by shutterstock.

Researchers report that more than 85 percent of patients enrolled in the trial completed treatment, which is almost three times the usual retention rate. After eight months of outpatient treatment, patients reported improved quality of life, reduced symptoms of mood disorders and enhanced social adjustment, researchers noted.

The key difference, according to researchers, was reprioritizing how the goals of treatment were presented to the patients.

Typically, treatment focuses on weight recovery. But for this study, conducted at the University of Sydney, University of London and University of Chicago, there was less emphasis on weight gain and more on quality of life, reduction of mood disorders, and enhanced social adjustment.

“Our goal was to peel back the negative impact of anorexia and to shift the traditional pressure to gain weight to an emphasis on improving quality of life and overall functioning,” said the study’s lead author Stephen Touyz, Ph.D., from the University of Sydney.

“By refocusing the core of treatment, we were able to engage highly resistant individuals with severe and enduring anorexia nervosa in treatment, circumvent the notoriously high dropout rates and help them make their lives a little better.”

Patients with severe and enduring anorexia nervosa (SE-AN) are difficult to treat, he noted. Most develop anorexia as adolescents and do not respond to treatment. Participants in the study had suffered from severe anorexia for at least seven years, with an average duration of more than 15 years.

Anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder, according to the researchers. Most of the individuals who have it have been through many unsuccessful treatments. Repeated failure leaves them with low motivation and a self-image dominated by illness.

This is compounded by the physical effects of the disease. After prolonged malnourishment, many are disabled and unable to hold a job. They can suffer from neurocognitive, cardiac or liver problems, as well as osteoporosis. Insurance companies frequently refuse to pay for treatment because so few individuals improve.

The new study compared two standard treatments — cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and special supportive clinical management (SSCM) — but modified them to focus on retention, improved quality of life and to avoid further failure.

The researchers enrolled 63 patients, all female, at clinical centers at the University of Sydney and St George’s Hospital, University of London. The average body mass index of study participants was 16.2, with a range from 11.8 to 18.5. Normal BMI ranges from 18.5 to 25, researchers noted. The University of Chicago served as the data-coordinating center.

For the study, 31 patients were assigned to CBT and 32 to SSCM. Both treatments involved 30 outpatient therapy sessions over eight months. Patients were assessed at the end of treatment, with follow-up assessments six and 12 months later.

Results from both treatments were comparable, with improvements ranging from “moderate” to “large” on many measures, the researchers reported.

CBT had a greater impact on eating-disorder symptoms and readiness to change, they said. SSCM produced larger improvements in health-related quality of life and depression. Average BMI for both groups increased from 16.2 to 16.8, about 4 percent.

“The results were far better than most people in the field would have expected,” said Daniel Le Grange, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and director of the eating disorders program at the University of Chicago and the principal investigator for the data-coordinating center. “Many of these patients were profoundly ill.

“The prevailing wisdom is that current treatments have not been effective and patients are best served by refeeding in the hospital setting. This study showed that specific modification of these behavioral approaches could overcome the high dropout rates and lead to meaningful positive change.”

The researchers acknowledged there were limitations to the study, including the moderate sample size of 63 study participants, and a relatively short follow-up period of 12 months for a disorder that had been present for more than seven years.

Despite the limitations, the high retention rate and the magnitude of improvement in most of the outcome measures were very encouraging, especially in the setting of a disorder with poor compliance and limited previous clinical success, the researchers reported.

“This study clearly shows that SE-AN patients do respond to, and benefit from, two specialized treatments when done by clinicians with specialist knowledge,” the researchers wrote in the study, which was published in the journal Psychological Medicine.

“This study should provide hope for those suffering from severe and enduring AN as well as stimulate interest in the development of new psychosocial treatment approaches.”

Source: University of Chicago Medical Center

Words about anorexia photo by shutterstock.

The study, by Abby King, Ph.D., and colleagues from the Stanford School of Medicine is published in the journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine.

Medical professionals, health experts and policy advisers know that given the busy and stressful lives many people lead, advice on healthy eating or physical activity often ends up being just another source of stress.

Until now, health professionals were concerned that people would find multiple messages overwhelming and had encouraged making small changes, one at a time.

Researchers now believe this method may actually end up reducing compliance. Each subsequent change requires another bout of motivation which may, by then, be in short supply.

The current study was therefore designed to systematically test one method against the other to see which might be more beneficial long-term.

The researchers divided 200 participants into four groups. All participants were aged 45 years and older, did little exercise, ate fewer than five fruit and vegetable portions per day and had a higher than recommended saturated fat intake.

They also reported elevated stress levels. The four groups were given differing sequences of telephone-based advice: one group received exercise advice first, then nutrition advice was added after four months; a second group was given nutrition advice first, then exercise advice was added after four months; the third group received simultaneous delivery of nutrition and exercise advice; and a control group was advised on stress management only.

While all three groups showed positive increases in their dietary patterns relative to controls, there were differences in success when it came to physical activity.

Participants who had received the exercise advice first significantly increased their physical activity levels at four months relative to controls, whereas physical activity did not increase significantly in the ‘simultaneous’ group at this early stage.

However, by 12 months, both the exercise-first and simultaneous groups had increased their exercise to the nationally recommended levels.

In contrast, the group obtaining the nutrition advice first was not, on average, able to increase their exercise to the recommended levels by 12 months. Those in the simultaneous group were the only ones who succeeded in meeting the national recommendations for both dietary and physical activity behaviors at 12 months.

These results suggest that it may be easier to incorporate changes in eating habits than exercise, particularly when eating patterns are targeted at the beginning of a program.

This could be because eating is already a scheduled activity. Adding physical activity to an already busy schedule may be more difficult, especially when people are attempting to change their eating habits as well.

Experts believe that focusing similar attention on both health behaviors from the start may signal the importance of making both a priority.

Source: Springer

Woman exercising and eating healthy by shutterstock.

Monitoring population mental illness trends has been an historic challenge for scientists and clinicians alike. Telephone surveys have been the primary method to determine the prevalence of mental issues, but this approach is limited because respondents may be reluctant to honestly discuss their mental health.

This approach also has high material costs and a low return rate. As a result, investigators have not had the data they need.

In the study to be published in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers now believe the Internet, and specifically Google, can provide an accurate barometer of mental health trends.

“The Internet is a game changer,” said lead investigator John W. Ayers, Ph.D. “By passively monitoring how individuals search online we can figuratively look inside the heads of searchers to understand population mental health patterns.”

Using Google’s public database of queries, the study team identified and monitored mental health queries in the United States and Australia for 2006 through 2010.

All queries relating to mental health were captured and then grouped by type of mental illness, including ADHD (attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder), anxiety, bipolar, depression, eating disorders (including anorexia or bulimia), OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), schizophrenia, and suicide.

Using advanced mathematical methods to identify trends, the authors found all mental health queries in both countries were consistently higher in winter than summer.

The research showed eating disorder searches were down 37 percent in summers versus winters in the U.S., and 42 percent in summers in Australia. Schizophrenia searches decreased 37 percent during U.S. summers and by 36 percent in Australia.

Bipolar searches were down 16 percent during U.S. summers and 17 percent during Australian summers; ADHD searches decreased by 28 percent in the U.S. and 31 percent in Australia during summertime. OCD searches were down 18 percent and 15 percent, and bipolar searches decreased by 18 percent and 16 percent, in the U.S. and Australia respectively.

Searches for suicide declined 24 and 29 percent during U.S. and Australian summers and anxiety searches had the smallest seasonal change – down 7 percent during U.S. summers and 15 percent during Australian summers.

Researchers said they were startled by the discovery of apparent seasonal trends for mental illness.

While some conditions, such as seasonal affective disorder, are known to be associated with seasonal weather patterns, the connections between seasons and a number of major disorders were surprising.

“We didn’t expect to find similar winter peaks and summer troughs for queries involving every specific mental illness or problem we studied,” said co-author James Niels Rosenquist, M.D., Ph.D. “However, the results consistently showed seasonal effects across all conditions – even after adjusting for media trends.”

“It is very exciting to ponder the potential for a universal mental health emollient, like Vitamin D (a metabolite of sun exposure). But it will be years before our findings are linked to serious mental illness and then linked to mechanisms that may be included in treatment and prevention programs,” said Ayers.

“Is it biologic, environmental, or social mechanisms explaining universal patterns in mental health information seeking? We don’t know.”

“Our findings can help researchers across the field of mental health generate additional new hypotheses while exploring other trends inexpensively in real-time,” said Benjamin Althouse, a doctoral candidate at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and researcher on the study.

“For instance, moving forward, we can explore daily patterns in mental health information seeking … maybe even finding a ‘Monday effect.’ The potential is limitless.”

Source: Elsevier

Abstract of person and light photo by shutterstock.

New research suggests this behavior may be counterproductive as researchers discover mood may actually worsen after unhealthy eating choices for women who are concerned about their diet and self-image.

Penn State researchers studied college-age women who were concerned about their eating behaviors and discovered that moods worsened after bouts of disordered eating.

“There was little in the way of mood changes right before the unhealthy eating behaviors,” said Kristin Heron, Ph.D., research associate at the Survey Research Center at Penn State University. “However, negative mood was significantly higher after these behaviors.”

According to Heron, people who experience disordered eating patterns may exhibit behaviors such as binge eating, loss of control over eating and food intake restriction.

While negative mood was worse after disordered eating, a positive mood did not change either before or after any of the behaviors studied by the researchers.

The researchers gathered data from participants in real-life situations. The team gave handheld computers to 131 women who had high levels of unhealthy eating habits and concerns about their body shape and weight, but did not have eating disorders.

Several times during the day, the devices would prompt the participants to answer questions about their mood and eating behaviors.

“What we know about mood and eating behaviors comes primarily from studies with eating disorder patients or from laboratory studies,” said Heron.

“We were interested in studying women in their everyday lives to see whether mood changed before or after they engaged in unhealthy eating and weight control behaviors.”

Smyth said that the study could lead to better treatments for women experiencing eating problems.

“This study is unique because it evaluates moods and eating behaviors as they occur in people’s daily lives, which can provide a more accurate picture of the relationship between emotions and eating,” said co-author Joshua Smyth, professor of biobehavioral health.

“The results from this study can help us to better understand the role mood may play in the development and maintenance of unhealthy eating, and weight-control behaviors, which could be useful for creating more effective treatment programs for people with eating and weight concerns.”

Source: Penn State

Woman sitting in front of refrigerator eating photo by shutterstock.

A team of researchers from Krembil Neuroscience Centre at Toronto Western Hospital and the University Health Network in Toronto investigated the use of DBS in six patients afflicted with the chronic illness.

The patients, who had an average age of 38, had dealt with the illness for years. In addition to anorexia, all of the patients, except one, also suffered from psychiatric conditions such as depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

All of the patients also had suffered various medical complications related to their anorexia. The researchers report that, between them, the six patients had about 50 hospitalizations during their illnesses.

During the phase one safety trial, the patients were treated with DBS, a neurosurgical procedure that moderates the activity of dysfunctional brain circuits. Neuroimaging has shown that there are structural and functional differences in brain circuits that regulate mood, anxiety, and body perception in anorexia patients compared to healthy subjects, according to the researchers.

Patients were awake when they underwent the procedure, which implanted electrodes into a specific part of the brain involved with emotion. During the procedure, each electrode was stimulated to look for changes in mood, anxiety or adverse effects, the researchers noted.

Once implanted, the electrodes were connected to a pulse generator implanted below the right clavicle, much like a heart pacemaker.

Testing was repeated at one, three, and six-month intervals after activation of the pulse generator device. After nine months, three of the six patients had gained weight, with a body-mass index (BMI) significantly greater than they had ever experienced. For these patients, this was the longest period of sustained weight gain since the onset of their illness, the researchers reported.

Four of the six patients also experienced changes in mood, anxiety, urges to binge and purge, and other symptoms related to anorexia, such as obsessions and compulsions. As a result of these changes, two of the patients completed an inpatient eating disorders program for the first time in the course of their illness, according to the researchers.

“We are truly ushering in a new of era of understanding of the brain and the role it can play in certain neurological disorders,” said Dr. Andres Lozano, a neurosurgeon at the Krembil Neuroscience Centre and chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Toronto. “By pinpointing and correcting the precise circuits in the brain associated with the symptoms of some of these conditions, we are finding additional options to treat these illnesses.”

The treatment, still considered experimental, is believed to work by stimulating a specific area of the brain to reverse abnormalities linked to mood, anxiety, emotional control, obsessions and compulsions, the researchers explained.

The research may provide an additional therapy option in the future, as well as further the understanding of anorexia and the factors that cause it to be persistent, the scientists claim.

“There is an urgent need for additional therapies to help those suffering from severe anorexia,” said Dr. Blake Woodside, medical director of Canada’s largest eating disorders program at Toronto General Hospital and a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto. “Eating disorders have the highest death rate of any mental illness and more and more women are dying from anorexia. Any treatment that could potentially change the natural course of this illness is not just offering hope, but saving the lives of those that suffer from the extreme form of this condition.”

The study was published in the medical journal The Lancet.

Source: University Health Network

Abstract of brain photo by shutterstock.

Experts suggest that such devaluatiion is an extension of “fat talk” in girls and young women – behaviors that compromise self-image and cause self-esteem issues.

Phillippa Diedrichs, Ph.D., is co-author of the new study led by Carolyn Becker, Ph.D., at Trinity University published in BioMed Central’s open access journal, Journal of Eating Disorder.

“Fat talk” includes any speech that reinforces the thin-ideal standard of female beauty (e.g., “do I look fat in this?” “wow, you look great — have you lost weight?”), and has been targeted by international campaigns aiming to reduce its frequency.

However, it now appears that body image researchers and advocates may have been too narrow in their focus on negative body talk.

New research suggests that talking about looking old (e.g., “Look at these wrinkles!” “I’m too old to wear a swimsuit,” “You don’t look your age, tell me your secret”), also may be associated with problems related to body dissatisfaction.

Becker, a professor of psychology, noted that “until now, most research has focused on the negative effects of the thin-ideal and speech such as ‘fat talk’ in younger women, but we need to remember that the thin-ideal is also a young-ideal which additionally may contribute to negative body image, particularly as women age.”

Body dissatisfaction is known to be correlated with, and often predictive of, physical health problems as well as mental health problems such as eating disorders and depression. Higher than normal levels of negative body talk can be a good indicator of body dissatisfaction.

Researchers surveyed 1000 women from the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, between the ages 18 to 87.

Investigators discovered that both kinds of talk occurred throughout women’s lives, but engaging in “fat talk” decreased with age, while “old talk” increased.

Additional findings include:

Women who reported higher levels of ‘fat talk’ and ‘old talk’ also reported more problems with negative body image.

• “Old talk” was particularly associated with body dissatisfaction in women 46 years and older;
• Body dissatisfaction is known to be correlated with, and often predictive of, physical health problems as well as mental health problems such as eating disorders and depression;
• Higher than normal levels of negative body talk can be a good indicator of body dissatisfaction.

Study participants also reported being exposed to a high degree of both “fat talk” and “old talk” via friends and the media.

Previous research indicates that even small (as little as five minute) doses of “fat talk” can significantly increase body dissatisfaction.

“This study suggests ‘old talk’ may have similar negative effects on women. It also indicates that we should begin to explore the effects of media driven ‘old talk’ and ‘fat talk,’” said Diedrichs.

“Overall, our results suggest that researchers need to broaden their understanding of body image and eating disorders to include ‘old talk’, particularly when studying midlife and older women,” Becker said.

Experts say additional research is needed on the impact of negative body image in adult women.

Furthermore, investigation on the negative messages adult women may be passing on to the younger generation, is sorely needed to improve body satisfaction and quality of life throughout the aging process.

Source: University of the West of England – Bristol

Two elderly women talking photo by shutterstock.

“Our results suggest that some children who are at risk of becoming obese can be identified by their biological response to a stressor,” said Lori Francis, Ph.D., associate professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State.

“Ultimately, the goal is to help children manage stress in ways that promote health and reduce the risks associated with an over- or under-reactive stress response.”

Francis and her colleagues recruited 43 children ages 5- to 9-years-old and their parents to participate in the study.

Researchers evaluated a child’s reactions to stress via the Trier Social Stress Test for Children — a tool that consists of a five-minute anticipation period followed by a 10-minute stress period.

During the stress period, the children were asked to deliver a speech and perform a mathematics task. The team measured the children’s responses to these stressors by comparing the cortisol content of their saliva before and after the procedure.

The researchers also measured the extent to which the children ate after saying they were not hungry using a protocol known as the Free Access Procedure. The team provided the children with lunch, asked them to indicate their hunger level and then gave them free access to generous portions of 10 snack foods, along with a variety of toys and activities.

The children were told they could play or eat while the researchers were out of the room.

The team found that, on average, the children consumed 250 kilocalories of the snack foods during the Free Access Procedure, with some consuming small amounts (20 kilocalories) and others consuming large amounts (700 kilocalories).

“We found that older kids, ages 8 to 11, who exhibited greater cortisol release over the course of the procedure had significantly higher body-mass indices [BMI] and consumed significantly more calories in the absence of hunger than kids whose cortisol levels rose only slightly in response to the stressor,” Francis said.

“We also found that kids whose cortisol levels stayed high — in other words, they had low recovery — had the highest BMIs and consumed the greatest number of calories in the absence of hunger.”

According to Francis, the study suggests that children who have poor responses to stressors already are or are at risk of becoming overweight or obese. Future research will examine whether children who live in chronically stressful environments are more susceptible to eating in the absence of hunger and, thus, becoming overweight or obese.

“It is possible that such factors as living in poverty, in violent environments, or in homes where food is not always available may increase eating in the absence of hunger and, therefore, increase children’s risk of becoming obese,” she said.

The study may be found online in the journal Appetite.

Source: Penn State

Obese boy holding his head photo by shutterstock.