In a March 24 article for Canada's Nanaimo News Bulletin, writer Jenn Marshall reported on the struggle that many rural Canadians have to endure in their search for effective eating disorder treatment:

Cindy Dobbe, president of The Looking Glass Foundation, a Vancouver-based charitable organization made up of individuals who have watched someone struggle with an eating disorder, said public treatment in Canada falls woefully short of demand.

If people cannot get into the seven-bed program at St. Pauls Hospital or the 14-bed program for youth at B.C. Childrens Hospital, their options are relying on limited government-funded outpatient services (the nearest one for Nanaimo residents is in Victoria) or paying for treatment privately -- Dobbe re-mortgaged her house to send her own daughter for treatment in Arizona several years ago.

The foundation is raising money to open Canadas first private, non-profit treatment facility for adolescents on property it bought on Galiano Island. The only hurdle remaining is final approval from the province.

The proposed facility would accept patients who have already been medically stabilized in hospital.

"If we filled eight beds at $800 a day, we could give away 12 beds," said Dobbe.

Next month, the foundation is also starting up online support groups for youth, adults and parents and caregivers, which people from across the province will be able to access once a week.

Labels: canada, treatment

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Although many women are concerned about the impact of skinny models in fashion magazines, a new study concludes that using plus-sized models can also have an impact on the self-esteem of the women who view these ads:

• Researchers from Arizona State University, the University of Cologne in Germany, and Erasmus University in the Netherlands asked female students to assess advertisements featuring models of different sizes.
  
• The thinnest participants experienced increased self-esteem when they viewed models of any size because they identified positively with the thinner ones and saw themselves as different from the overweight ones.
  
• Overweight participants felt a drop in self-esteem, no matter what size the models were.
  
• The normal weight women in the study shifted the most in self-esteem depending on what images they saw.
  
• Moderately thin models made them feel good, and moderately heavy models make them worry that they were overweight.

"We show it is not just the size of the models in the ads but also the relative distance between the consumer's size and the model's size that affect self-esteem, said Dr. Naomi Mandel, a professor at ASU.

The study appeared in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Labels: media_influences, self-esteem

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As a teenager, Liz Jones never drank, even though she was the only one among her friends who didn't. She never smoked, and never experimented with drugs.

Despite her seemingly squeaky-clean adolescence -- especially for a person who came of age during the 1970s -- Jones says her unhealthy diet and exercise behaviors indicate that she was still an addict:

My drugs of choice were exercise and starvation: both gave me a high, both were illicit and frowned upon by adults. They involved huge amounts of deceit, and elaborate cover-ups; I hid my arms, not because of track marks, but so no one could see how thin they had become. My form of rebellion, my crutch if you like, was as life-threatening as if I were on heroin.

No one told me how to be anorexic, I came up with it all by myself: there were no pro-anorexia websites, and none of my friends were doing the same thing.

The reasons why teenagers feel the need to abuse their bodies, to experiment, are complex.

My particular brand of self-harm was tied up with low self-esteem, crippling shyness  fear, basically.

Im pretty sure that fear is what drives most young people to dabble in dangerous things. We want to quiet that gnawing in our tummy, that churning.

[Source: www.dailymail.co.uk, March 22]

Labels: teenagers

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Though quick-fix diet plans have been proved to be unhealthy, they unfortunately remain popular among those who hope to shed a considerable amount of weight in a short period of time. With Spring Break on the horizon, a March 4 article by Kirsten Kwon of The University Daily Kansan warns students about the dangers of crash dieting:

A crash diet is a very restrictive weight loss plan that involves significantly cutting back on calorie and fat intake. In most cases, people who participate in crash dieting do so for two to five weeks in hopes of losing a drastic amount of weight in a short period of time. Some reports show people have lost 12 to 20 pounds upon the completion of a crash diet.

With spring break only a week away and the warm season approaching, some students are thinking of ways to lose weight fast and might turn to crash diets.

Ann Chapman, coordinator of nutrition services at Watkins Memorial Health Center, said this is a time of year when some students can become fixated on body image. ...

Although a crash diet can be seen as simply a quick fix, these types of eating habits can lead to more serious issues. The lack of nutrients alone deprives the body in the same ways starvation would.

Labels: crash diet, college_students

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The man who coined the term "orthorexia nervosa" says he has some misgivings about the way these words have been interpreted.

In a March 11 post on the blog jezebel.com, Dr. Steven Bratman spoke about topics including the relationship between highly regulated eating patterns and obsessive-compulsive disorder:

Now that his term has taken on a life of its own, he's a bit skeptical. He says that while many people are probably "overly-obsessed with diet" and "should lighten up a little," those who truly endanger their health in a quest for dietary purity are probably rare.

He speculates that orthorexia could be a variant of obsessive-compulsive disorder rather than anorexia, and adds that the disorder has "a religious quality to it." He points to extreme raw-foodism, some of whose adherents teach "that the great enemy of man is the cooking stove," as an example of such religiosity.

Labels: orthorexia

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A British teenager who is attempting to raise money for her sister's care has opened up about the effect that eating disorders can have on the entire family.

In an article that appeared in the March 10 edition of the Free Press, Nicole Ball described how she was affected by watching her sister, Kristy, struggle: with anorexia and bulimia:
"It wasn't until I was 12 that I began to understand what her disorder involved.

"When Kirsty and I were alone together -- that's when I could see it happening. She would eat more than she should and then throw it up."

Although Nicole was too young to understand what was happening to Kirsty, she began to pick up on her habits.

Nicole said: "Because she didnt eat in front of people, I wouldnt eat in front of anybody except my family and I found it strange to eat for a while."

Kristy Ball, who suffers from brain damage as a result of a 2005 drug overdose, now resides in Llanhennock Lodge Cheshire Home, a comprehensive care facility.

Labels: siblings, family

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New research out of Wales has revealed that a shockingly high number of people still have gross misconceptions about eating disorders and their causes.

"A survey commissioned by the charity Beat reveals that one in five people in Wales do not believe that eating disorders are a serious mental health problem. And a quarter of people questioned in Wales believe that people only get eating disorders because they want to lose weight." [Source: Wales Online]

The study also found that many people think eating disorders are just a teenage fad, something kids will grow out of as they get older. The survey results are disappointing, and prove that there is still much work to be done to help people understand the true nature of eating disorders.

Labels: research, awareness

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