Increasingly, dentists are becoming aware of just how much information a person's mouth holds about her overall health. Dental problems are sometimes indicators of other, more serious, health issues -- such as eating disorders.

"Upper front teeth that are paper thin, with the enamel almost completely worn away, and teeth that hurt [are symptoms of bulimia]," Washington Post writer Michael Birnbaum reported in a June 23 article. "[These symptoms are] distinguishable from acid reflux because different teeth are affected."

A Feb. 19 article on the Medical News Today website also addressed the connection between dental health and eating disorders:

A parent may not recognize a child is anorexic or bulimic, however, through a routine dental checkup, a dentist may spot the oral signs of the disease," said Dr. Katina Morelli, D.D.S., dental director for Delta Dental of Illinois. ...

Bad breath, sensitive teeth and eroded tooth enamel are just a few of the signs that dentists use to determine whether a patient suffers from an eating disorder. Other signs include teeth that are worn and appear almost translucent, mouth sores, dry mouth, cracked lips, bleeding gums, and tender mouth, throat and salivary glands.

Dentists who find suspicious symptoms should have the patient come back in two weeks. If the gum or teeth conditions persist, the patient should be referred to a physician.

Labels: dentists

Mia St. John is a boxing champion, mixed martial arts competitor, model, author, and businesswomen. She is also a survivor of a teen eating disorder.

A June 23 article on the boxing website The Sweet Science addresses St. John's struggle with an eating disorder, a challenge that she describes in her new fitness book, The Knockout Workout:

She tells that she had a "love-hate relationship with food and with her body," brought on by the insecurity of living with an alcoholic father who was "an angry and oftentimes violent drunk."

"At age 13, I became obsessed with my weight," she writes. "For every pound I lost, I felt as if I had deposited one more dollar in the bank. The skinnier I became, the better I felt about myself. Weight was the only thing I could control. By simply focusing on my weight and the caloric content of every known food, I could escape everything that was a mess in my life.

"I had so many reasons to self-destruct: my father’s unpredictable and explosive behavior, kids hurling racial insults at me and worse, calling me fat. I started to blame and resent my mother for being Mexican. I drank every day, all day, and not surprisingly was flunking my classes. Then, as if to torture myself further, I began to binge and purge. I ate whatever food I desired and then purged it by taking laxatives, throwing up, or even overexercising."

St. John is also the founder of the El Saber Es Poder Foundation, which her website describes as an effort "to empower Latinos by providing schools with better supplies, equipment and development of programs to help further education."

Labels: binge eating, celebrities, purging

A new study out of Chiba University in Japan has found that women with anorexia have different levels of a certain type of brain protein, suggesting a possible underlying biological cause.

BDNF [brain-derived neurotrophic factor] is a protein made in the brain that is important for the growth and survival of neurons during development, and the researchers found that women with low BDNF also had the lowest self-image, suffered from anxiety and depression, and performed poorly on certain tests of cognitive ability. (Source: News-Medical.net)

Researchers are unclear what role BDNF plays in anorexia -- for example, whether it's a trigger, a result, or some other type of indicator -- and say more study is needed.

Labels: brain_chemistry