Sunday/Monday Smorgasbord
Ever wanted to know what it was like to be the parent of a child with an eating disorder? Drop everything and read this.
Emotion regulation deficits in eating disorders: A marker of eating pathology or general psychopathology?
Ask Surly Amy: Scared of a potato.
Brain activation during the perception of stressful word stimuli concerning interpersonal relationships in anorexia nervosa patients with high degrees of alexithymia in an fMRI paradigm.
What Would Great-Grandma Eat?
Weight suppression as a predictor of weight gain and response to intensive behavioral treatment in patients with anorexia nervosa.
What to Do If Your Friend Has an Eating Disorder.
Olanzapine, but Not Fluoxetine, Treatment Increases Survival in Activity-Based Anorexia in Mice.
Intuitive Eating Facebook Chat with Eating Well Magazine & Evelyn Tribole.
Differences in zinc status and the leptin axis in anorexic and recovered adolescents and young adults: a pilot study.
Feeding preferences shaped by taste receptors.
Prevalence and clinical impact of eating disorders in bipolar patients.
Daniel Radcliffe: Having OCD doesn't mean you're insane.
A comparison of eating, exercise, shape, and weight related symptomatology in males with muscle dysmorphia and anorexia nervosa.
Girls (12 to 18 years) with BN symptoms can participate in a study & receive free treatment.
Predictors of change in perceived burden among caregivers of patients with eating disorders.
On my reading list: Calories and Corsets: A History of Dieting over 2000 Years.
The burden of caring for someone with an eating disorder.
New Types of Eating Disorders (a reasonably decent introduction).
The relationship between compulsive exercise and emotion regulation in adolescents.
New research finds strong correlation between Anxiety Disorders and Eating Disorders.
The personality trait self-directedness predicts the amygdala's reaction to appetizing cues in fMRI.
Decision-Making Under Stress: The Brain Remembers Rewards, Forgets Punishments.
Scientists Gain New Insight Into Prefrontal Cortex Activity.
Excellent first-person account details how accommodating / enabling OCD in a loved will almost always backfire.
Negative Affect and Neural Response to Palatable Food Intake in Bulimia Nervosa.
Video shows how your brain communicates with your gut.
Study shows more men should be included in binge eating research.
5 comments:
Yay, I always look forward to your Sunday/Monday Smorgasbords!
Quick question re the weight suppression article: I know this is a minor detail, but I noticed it said that weight suppression varied from 0-78kg - I'm confused about how someone with AN could have 0kg of weight suppression? Wouldn't that mean that they haven't lost weight? Oh, I guess unless they've already been weight-restored at admission/assessment...hmm sorry if I'm being dense!
Anon,
It took me a few minutes to figure that one out, and you interpreted it the same way I did. Another possibility is that if it was a younger child whose AN developed as they grew, in which they might not have lost weight but not gained as expected.
The article on not accommodating/enabling OCD was interesting, but gave little in the way of "tips" for how to help a child with obsessive compulsions, or how to tell when it's ok to accommodate and when it is disabling to do so.
I know each child is different, but I can say what seems to work for our family- we have 2 children with tourette's and one of them is also obsessive/compulsive. What seems to work for dealing with the tics also seems to work for his compulsions.
We (his dad and I) have to take time and thought to ascertain each tic and compulsion- to consider if it is disrupting/harming our family in any way, or disrupting/harming our son in any way. Depending on the answer to that, we deal with them differently.
For example: He began washing his hands compulsively, for minutes on end, all throughout the day. His hands got raw and cracked. We bought him soap with lotion in it, and explained that it would help his hands to be more comfortable. We took the focus off the compulsion and put it onto his physical needs. He was very grateful, his hands healed, and the compulsion died down.
Another harmful compulsion was a tic he developed where he felt he "had" to grind his teeth down so hard that they'd "pop" off of each other with force- repeatedly- and it was making him cry because he had headaches/jaw aches from it, but couldn't stop. We worked with his therapist to help him "redirect" his tic into another part of his body.
A tic that disrupted our family was a sort of bark he started making- every time he did it, everyone in the house would JUMP- and eventually, tempers started flaring as a result. We explained to him that if he needed to do this tic, he needed to go do it privately in his room, preferably in a pillow.
Compassionate redirection has worked for us and for him. I do not think it is "enabling" a compulsion to accommodate it to some degree- but not while pretending it's not there. I think compulsions get out of hand when parents get anxious along with the child- and when parents are not honest about the fact that the compulsion is not "normal."
Our boy, at least, seems to respond well to us when we are completely honest with him- "You are feeling a compulsion." "You are having a tic." And then we give him options- "Instead of continuing to ask me if [whatever] is ok, go lie in bed and breathe deeply for at least 10 minutes. If you still need to come out and ask me, you may after that. Then we'll try 15 minutes." "Instead of redrawing that number five more times, let's look at it together for a while and see that it being imperfect won't hurt you." "Instead of grinding your teeth, try squeezing and unsqueezing your hands."
I'm not saying we've got it all figured out. He still struggles with all kinds of compulsions and things. There are days when it takes him 2 hours to complete 10 minutes of homework because he keeps erasing and rewriting every line- and he cries because he is so frustrated and wants to get on with his life but doesn't feel like he can help it.
My goal is to not get sucked into it with him- to not get angry to try to "force" him out of a compulsion or a tic- to not escalate with him when he is anxious- and to not "soothe" unrealistically by pretending that his obsessions are valid. To reflect truth while offering options.
I don't know if this will help anyone, but thought I'd post it anyway... that article seemed like a decent start but didn't offer any tips... this is what has helped us anyhow.
I also was going to comment on the OCD enabling article, as it hit so close to home. Well, except I'm the one with OCD.
I used to get so upset when my routine with food/exercise was disrupted that eventually I trained everyone to just work around my schedule. Although it's a big more flexible, it's still that way even though I'm 30 yrs old and on my own. In fact, being on my own has probably made it worse. I don't have much helpful info to add, but it really kind of hit home. Great links.
Hi, what an outstanding blog! I've lost touch with the eating disorder community and I'm happy to have found this blog on my way back.
I wanted to share something I wrote about my fifteen year long struggle with ed's - it's a message of hope for those of us who have been in the trenches with this thing for a long, long, time . . .
http://openingthedoorblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/yesterday-happy-surprise-came-in-mail.html
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