An Epilogue of Youth

Ruslana Korshunova

2008-07-01T20:40:00.005+01:00

MODEL SUICIDE

2008-07-01T20:32:00.003+01:00

MODEL SUICIDE

KAZAKH BEAUTY JUMPS TO DEATH IN FINANCIAL DISTRICT

By MELISSA JANE KRONFELD, TATIANA DELIGIANNAKIS and TOM LIDDY

Last updated: 3:07 pmJune 30, 2008

A stunning supermodel leaped from her swank downtown apartment to her death today in an apparent suicide, officials said.

Ruslana Korshunova, 20, whose face has graced the cover of French Elle and Russian Vogue, apparently jumped from her ninth-floor apartment in her Water Street building in the Financial District just before 2:30 p.m.

"I heard what sounded like a gunshot or a bomb or an explosion," said a stunned Con Ed worker talking to a cop nearby before the beauty leaped.

"I looked down the street, and I say to the cop, 'Did that person just get hit by a car?' " said the worker, who identified himself only as Patrick, 32, of Brooklyn.

The two men raced over. "Her arms were crushed," Patrick said. "Her head was on the left side and blood was coming out in a pool."

Cops said there were no signs of a struggle in the apartment.

The window from which she fell had a balcony, which had construction netting around it that appeared to have been cut.

The 5-foot-8 head-turner has been featured in ads for DKNY, Vera Wang and Christian Dior among others and was hailed as "the next big thing" in a profile in Vogue three years ago.

"She's one of the sweetest, nicest people you'll ever meet," said a friend, who did not want to be identified by name.

"I'm still in shock. The world lost a great person."

The lithe looker has been a mainstay at Fashion Week in the Big Apple and London, working with all-star designers Jill Stuart, Betsey Johnson, Rosa Cha, Lela Rose and Libertine.

The pal said that Korshunova had just returned from a modeling gig in Paris and seemed to be "on top of the world."

"There were no signs," he said. "That's what's driving me crazy. I don't see one reason why she would do that."

Korshunova, who had been sending money back to her parents in Kazakhstan, was in love with the city.

"She really liked New York," said the friend. "People made her feel comfortable here."

Korshunova's doorman, who did not want to be identified, remembered the catwalker as "very soft-spoken."

"She always said hi and bye," he said. "She was beautiful, beautiful."

Source: NY Post

Purging Disorder: The Little-Known Facts

2008-07-01T20:28:00.003+01:00

Purging Disorder: The Little-Known Facts

We knew that some people suffer from eating disorders, which are often triggered by emotional or psychological stress. The most common of these, as we have seen on television, are bulimia nervosa and anorexia nervosa. However, there are also little-known eating disorders that common among people for a long time already. One of these is the "purging disorder."

Purging disorder has not been an officially recognized diagnosis in the classification of eating disorders. The American Psychiatric Association has not recognized it as a distinct condition. In current classification, purging disorder belonged to EDNOS, or "eating disorder not otherwise specified.

"Both purging disorder and bulimia nervosa are characterized by recurrent purging right after eating in order to control body weight or shape. However, people suffering from bulimia nervosa take in large, usually uncontrolled, amounts of food while people with purging disorder usually consume normal amounts, or even less, before they purge.

Purging disorder also differs from anorexia nervosa because individuals with purging disorder are not underweight. Anorexia nervosa is characterized by the inability to consistently maintain adequate body weight, an intense fear of becoming obese, and an unrealistic, negative body image. People with anorexia nervosa always "feel fat" despite their lanky appearance.

Like any other eating disorder, no one is really sure what causes purging disorder. Most often, it may be caused by stress or anxiety.

There are also some people who, without any valid reason, feel guilty after they eat. It could be that they're guilty or scared that they might soon grow fat. Thus, they resort to purging in order to remove all that they have eaten.

This usually happens to people who had recently made a promise to themselves to reduce their food intake. When they eat, they often feel guilty about breaking their promise. Furthermore, people who had reduced their eating frequency often feel that their mouth or stomach have a negative reaction every time they take in food. This could result to a psychological feeling of attempting to vomit the food or the feeling of being full already. Stomach discomforts may also be experienced.

Again, there is no exact and complete reason for the cause of purging disorder.

The dangers of purging disorder are similar to those of bulimia nervosa. These include potential dental problems due to self-induced vomiting, dehydration, and electrolyte imbalances affecting the heart and kidneys.There is currently no standard treatment for purging disorder. It is still uncertain whether treatment used for individuals suffering with bulimia nervosa will be effective for those with purging disorder.

For the meantime, friends and loved ones of individuals suffering with purging disorder are advised to help the person manage any eating-disorder-related medical problems, obtain healthy eating plan and nutrition education and learn to cope up with anxiety or stress.

By: littlepinoy

Published: 06/30/08

Source: Informative Post

STARVED Anorexia is the bad friend who lies to you

2008-07-01T20:16:00.003+01:00

STARVED Anorexia is the bad friend who lies to you

By Bettina Adragna/Features Writer

Julia, an 18-year-old from Arroyo Grande, got to know her friend ED during her sophomore year of high school.

She and her family had moved to Avila Beach from Arroyo Grande at the beginning of that school year, and she was becoming more and more isolated. On Valentine's Day, her boyfriend broke up with her. Julia took it hard because he was the only one she felt she could trust.ED told her that if she could listen to him and trust him, she would be OK. He was reassuring, at first.

But ED became more and more demanding. Julia began starving herself to death in an effort to avoid the shame she felt when she didn't do what he said.

Julia was diagnosed with anorexia at the end of her sophomore year in May 2006. Her friend “ED,” or her eating disorder, was revealed to be a false friend. But it took her a while to separate herself from him.

She checked in to the Central Coast Intensive Outpatient Eating Disorder Program (commonly called IOP) in San Luis Obispo, and was given one week to stop losing weight, or she would have to go to Stanford Hospital. It was at the IOP that she learned “ED's” true nature.

“I didn't care if I lived or died,” Julia said. “It took too much energy to think about purposefully hurting myself.”

Julia didn't have to go to Stanford at the end of the week, and began group therapy in San Luis Obispo, as well as sessions in Los Olivos, with registered dietitian Francie White.

White is the owner of the Central Coast IOP, and specializes in eating disorders.

Terry White, clinical director for the Central Coast IOP program and Francie's husband, said it takes a certain combination of factors to result in anorexia - a genetic predisposition in the individual, a perfectionistic, extrovert-focused culture, and traumatic or unhealthy circumstances or environment.

Holli Stewart, director of Dr. Holli Stewart and Associates Counseling and Psychotherapy and a specialist in eating disorders, said anorexia is encouraged by cultures that focus on an artificial body image. “It's certainly a societal thing, because we see it more in our culture than any other culture,” Stewart said.

Terry White said students in their first year of college have the highest statistical incidence of eating disorders. Stewart said she often sees cases starting in puberty.

“Puberty is a developmental age,” Stewart said. “Our brain is changing. Also, in our culture, youth are becoming aware of who they are (and) where they are in relation to others.”

Stewart said the causes tend to be multidimensional, and caused or aggravated by “the personality of the individual, the culture, the family, the friends, and how they interpret” the messages from those sources.

Francie White said anorexics tend to be introverts.

“As introverts, they don't feel seen, and anorexia can be a way of getting attended to,” Francie White said.

She blames a culture that is fragmented and competitive, and that “externalizes” life's problems by offering a solution outside the consumer in the form of a product.

“For the most part, there's sort of this standard that we're supposed to be happy, and if we're not, we take Prozac,” Francie White said. “The truth about life that the advertising doesn't allude to is it's a journey, and it involves great amounts of suffering or loss Š never mind the whole media setting a standard for weight that's impossible.”

According to Stewart, treatment for anorexia often involves addressing other issues such as other mental disorders and substance abuse. Anxiety and depression tend to be common in anorexics, so that SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), a type of antidepressant, are sometimes prescribed by a psychiatrist.

Francie White said cognitive behavioral therapy is important to change erroneous core beliefs, such as “My worth is based on being thin,” and replacing them with beliefs such as “I have worth no matter what. I am a completely worthwhile, lovable human being.”

According to Francie White, a patient with anorexia needs a team composed of a physician, a psychotherapist, a registered dietitian, and sometimes a psychiatrist.

Nutrition therapy is necessary so the anorexia patient can be in good enough shape physically to go through therapy, Francie White said. The physician monitors the patient's physical condition and weight changes to make sure he or she is medically stable.

An Intensive Outpatient Program involves nine to 15 hours of therapy a week at the program's facilities. Outpatient care involves keeping the patient at home and working with the patient outside a facility. Inpatient care involves keeping a patient in a hospital or other institutional setting for 30 to 90 days.

Julia stayed at home with her parents while undergoing treatment. When her friends visited, they read magazines and watched movies. She wasn't allowed to do any strenuous physical activity.

She couldn't play tennis, her favorite sport, in the winter after she returned to school in the fall. But in her senior year, she got better and excelled in the sport.

Julia wants to go to Cal Poly and live in the dorms this fall. She's thinking of majoring in animal sciences, because she loves animals, or teaching, because she loves children.

She stopped going to church for a while, but has since regained her faith in God. She also has more faith in herself.

“Looking back, I'm kind of a better person,” Julia said. “I just have a way better sense of self.”

She learned that the people who love her would always be there for her, no matter what. And she's glad she's gone through anorexia and come out on the other side.

“I have total faith that it's going to work the way it's supposed to,” Julia said. “Looking back, it's like, why would you ever choose that other life?”

FYI:

Anorexia nervosa is a serious, potentially

life-threatening eating disorder characterized

by self-starvation andexcessive weight loss.

About 10 percent of patients with eatingdisorders are male.

Nearly 10 million women and 1 million men in the United States suffer from an eating disorder.

Anorexia nervosa has the highest

premature mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder.

- Source: TheNational Eating Disorders Association

Where to get help:

If you think someone you know has an eating disorder,

it's important to get professional help immediately.

The National Eating Disorders Association has an Information and Referral Help-line at (800) 931-2237. Information is also available at www.nationaleatingdisorders.org.

The Central Coast IOP can be reached at 688-5057, or by visiting www.centralcoastiop.com.

Dr. Holli Stewart and Associates Counseling andPsychotherapy can be reached at 925-0898.

EDITOR'S NOTE:“Julia's” name has been changed to protect her privacy.

Credit: Santa Maria Times

One woman’s battle with anorexia

2008-07-01T20:11:00.001+01:00

One woman’s battle with anorexia

Jun 29 2008 by Catherine Mary Evans, Wales On Sunday

A CHILDHOOD of abuse and neglect led 16-year-old Helena Wilkinson to starve herself until she weighed just five-and-a-half stone.

Writing a book about her experiences helped not only her own recovery, but has provided a shining light for thousands of other sufferers.

Now 44 and living in Swansea, Helena is dedicated to helping others overcome a range of eating disorders from her base at the Nicholaston House Christian retreat centre in Gower. She says she has finally beaten anorexia after developing the devastating illness in her teens.

“I was 13 when it started, but it wasn’t obvious,” she said. “It stayed at a low level for a few years, then suddenly I went downhill very quickly.

“I had been through a series of major traumas in my childhood – a lot of bullying and abuse, day and night. Anorexia was my coping mechanism, my way of shutting things out. I was at boarding school and had started to hit puberty and womanhood and it was then that my illness got particularly bad.

“There was nowhere to escape and because I could not control my environment I was controlling my body. It’s like a slow form of suicide.”

Helena put her body through a vigorous daily exercise regime and avoided mealtimes. But her teachers and peers mistook her illness for healthy dedication.

“I would get up at 5am and I would run around the hockey pitch so many times,” she said. “I wouldn’t have breakfast, then I would go into the gym at break times and make myself do a certain number of sit-ups.

“I was heavily into gymnastics and dancing so, to begin with, everyone saw me as just healthy because I was an athlete and a dancer. But then I would secretly miss meals and became very fearful of having anything that contained fat or sugar.

“But I didn’t actually know what anorexia was. I thought that if you had it that meant you didn’t eat at all and that because I ate fruit, I was OK. I think I knew in my heart that I was anorexic, but if anybody confronted me about it, I would lie about what I had eaten.

“I lost lots of weight very quickly. In one school term, I lost three stone, which was dangerous.”
Soon the strain of Helena’s punishing regime began to show. “I had stopped menstruating, but didn’t tell anybody. My skin was dry and my hair started to fall out. I found it hard to concentrate and had dreadful aches in my legs,” she said.

Out of desperation, Helena wrote to a teenage magazine. “I just said I felt very, very depressed and couldn’t eat,” she said. “The reply suggested I see a psychiatrist, but because I was in boarding school, everyone would have known about it, including my parents.

“I was brought up thinking that you weren’t allowed to have psychological problems and anorexia was a mental illness. So I did nothing.

Eventually, things got so bad that Helena was told she couldn’t go back to school unless she put on weight.

“I felt like I was in a spiral that could never stop. I was shy anyway and didn’t communicate much, but I had completely shut myself off at school. I wished I was dead.”

At 16, Helena almost got her wish. She was admitted to hospital, weighing only five-and-a-half stone.

“When they told me I had anorexia, I reacted with a mixture of disbelief and relief that someone was taking it out of my hands.”

But medical intervention to help her put on weight could not heal the emotional scars that had led to Helena’s eating disorder.

“The doctors were just concerned with how I would put weight back on, but I remember thinking why was nobody helping my head and curing my fear of life. I was so unhappy and felt completely trapped,” she said.

After a month, Helena slowly started gaining weight and visiting a child psychologist. But it was watching other patients fighting for life that provided a breakthrough.

“I was on an adult ward and I saw 11 patients die from things like cancer within three months,” said Helena. “They had no choice, but here I was wishing my life away. Seeing those people die in the hospital was the first turning point for me.”

Helena was discharged from hospital after three months. “I started writing, including a poem called Puppet On a String, which was about anorexia,” she said. “Then I was invited to a Christian youth camp and I started feeling secure in the knowledge of being loved and knowing there was a reason why I existed. Life started to make sense and I finally started to get better.”

Helena’s first book, Puppet on a String, was published when she was only 20 and she has subsequently written another seven, all of which have also been published. But with success came a great deal of responsibility.

“The book came out at a time when anorexia was not really spoken about and received a lot of media attention,” she said. “I felt hounded at a vulnerable time in my life.

“What I hadn’t anticipated when I wrote the book was that people would write back to me.

There was this flood of other desperate sufferers asking: ‘How can I recover too?’
“I felt it was my responsibility to help these people, which put me under massive pressure.”

Unable to cope, Helena left the UK for South Africa, where she worked as a doctor’s research assistant. “One day, the doctor told me about a young girl who he thought had anorexia,” she said. “He asked me to speak to her.

“I worked with her for quite a long time and she slowly started to get better. I think if you have a calling and you run away from it, it finds you.”

Helena now runs residential courses for eating disorder sufferers at Nicholaston House, Penmaen. For more information, visit www.nicholastonhouse.org or email managers@nicholastonhouse.org

catherinemary.evans@mediawales.co.uk

Credit: Wales Online

The four-stone anorexic dubbed Skeletor who has battled back to health to become a model

2008-07-01T20:05:00.000+01:00

The four-stone anorexic dubbed Skeletor who has battled back to health to become a model

By Daily Mail ReporterLast updated at 4:57 PM on 01st July 2008

A former anorexic dubbed Skeletor by strangers has battled back to health and into the finals of a modelling competition.

Becky Hands, 21, was crippled by insecurities as a schoolgirl and bullied for being different, driving her into an obsession over her weight.

At one point she was eating just 100 calories a day - one twentieth of the recommended 2000 for a healthy woman - and her weight plummeted to a dangerous four stone.

But after years spent in and out of hospital and disorder clinics, she has got her disorder under control and reached the finals of a modelling contest.

She is even brave enough to strut her stuff down the catwalk in a swimsuit.

Pretty Becky, from Southend, Essex, said she was picked on at Westcliff High School by pupils because she worked hard and wanted to achieve.

She said: 'I was bullied because I was a bit different. I felt like I didn't fit in, which I think was because I worked hard and wanted to do well and wasn't always messing about.

'Looking back, I never really got bullied about my weight. I realise now I was just normal size.

'But I got it into my head that I was fat and that gave me an excuse to blame all my insecurities on my weight.

'I looked at the most popular girls in school who were all really skinny and thought I wanted to be like that.

'Then after I lost weight, I got a lot of positive comments from people and from that moment I was in a spiral.

'I would obsess about every calorie I ate. Gradually it got worse until I was eating just 100 calories or so a day. I would also exercise to the point of collapsing and sometimes took laxatives.'
In the beginning, Becky tried to hide her obsession from family and friends but they soon noticed her dangerously skeletal frame.

She said: 'I would be in the street and people would call me Skeletor. It was really hard.'
At her lowest ebb, the beauty would eat just a bowl of lettuce and cucumber a day.

But after a long fight to overcome her demons, Becky has now gained the confidence to enter the modelling contest and has reached the finals of Miss Essex FM 2008.

She will take to the catwalk for the judging at Liquid and Envy nightclub in Basildon, Essex, next month.

Becky said: 'I never thought I would have the confidence to strut down the catwalk dressed in a bikini - it's something that wouldn't have entered my head.

'But getting through to the final and even having the courage to enter the contest has given me the confidence I need.

'I have been battling anorexia for so long but at last I finally feel I have turned a corner and am making a recovery.'
Now looking the picture of health, Becky said she did not think she would ever be free from the disorder.

She said: 'I don't think you can ever be fully cured of anorexia but I'm at a point now where I control it rather than the other way round.

'One of my biggest regrets is that because of my anorexia, I had to be pulled out of school so i never got any qualifications.

'I have tried to go to college since then, but I have had to drop out due to my health.
'I would love to get a job or go back to studying one day soon. It's just a matter of taking it one day at a time.'

Becky also hit out at websites encouraging impressionable youngsters to get into anorexia and other eating disorders.

She said: 'On these websites, girls talk about how much they want anorexia and share tips on how to get it.

'Anorexia isn't a fad or fashion accessory, it's a disease which kills a lot of people every year.'

Credit: Daily Mail

Woman battling anorexia returns home

2008-04-14T17:10:00.002+01:00

Woman battling anorexia returns home

Anne Kelly, Record staffweb version

A Stratford woman with an extreme eating disorder, who was recently featured on the Dr Phil show, arrived back at her home in Stratford last night, after leaving an Alabama treatment facility early due to medical complications.

As she awaited her daughter’s return at her Stratford home, Aimee Moore’s mother Pat, said Aimee had been rushed to a Birmingham, Alabama, hospital Tuesday night, with extreme abdominal pain. A bowel obstruction was ruled out for the anorexic and bulimic, who was just 63 pounds when she entered residential treatment seven weeks ago at Magnolia Creek Treatment Centre, near Birmingham.

A doctor at the hospital determined Aimee’s stomach is not emptying properly, causing a backup in her gastrointestinal system and the formation of large, painful gas pockets.

He recommended she have a diagnostic scope of her gastrointestinal tract to determine what might be causing the problem.

It was Aimee’s decision to return home said Pat. Therapists at Magnolia Creek Treatment have told her she is welcome to come back to continue treatment at no charge when she feels ready, said Pat. They will counsel her over the phone until she can enter counseling at home.

Pat, who had an flight booked to Alabama to visit her daughter next week, was grappling with a mix of emotions last night after learning her daughter was flying home.

“I’m excited to see her. I’ve missed Aimee.”

“But there are certainly feelings of disappointment and just lots of thoughts about what’s going to happen next.

“In the past seven weeks she had made great progress considering where where she came from,” Pat added. “I’m very hopeful.”

Aimee has been battling anorexia and bulimia since age 14. Dr Phil host, Phil McGraw, said during the segment on her in February, that her disorder was the worst he’s seen. The show organized the stay at Magnolia Creek, which has been treating her for free.

Aimee has been in treatment facilities before, including two in the United States in recent years paid for the Ontario Ministry of Health. She left one early and was discharged from the other for not obeying the rules. After leaving treatment, her disorder worsened.

When she wrote to the Dr. Phil show in desperation, she was binging on up to 15,000 calories a day and vomiting up to 150 times a day.

Pat said she has experienced the problem with abdominal pain before when she starts a re-feeding program. But tests on her gastrointestinal tract two years ago at Stratford General Hospital indicated no problem.

Pat now hopes to get a second opinion at another hospital.

Aimee told her mother over the phone that she has gained about five founds. She had been keeping breakfast and lunch in without purging, but still purged after dinner. Pat said she her thinking was more rational and she seemed “like Aimee again”.

After the Waterloo Region Record first wrote about Aimee, a Waterloo woman who is part-way through treatment for anorexia in a Mississauga hospital, contacted the paper. Heather Coburn,35 , was featured in a story on Saturday, which described how the program at Credit Valley Hospital has given her hope. Coburn has since been in touch with Aimee and her mother by e-mail to offer encouragement.

Pat said she hopes the two can meet soon, adding her daughter was impressed with Coburn.

Credit: The Record.com

Anorexic Denied Coverage Under Health Plan's "Three-Day Rule"

2008-04-14T16:57:00.003+01:00

Anorexic Denied Coverage Under Health Plan's "Three-Day Rule"

By DIANE LEVICK Courant Staff Writer
April 14, 2008

Young Kathryn Laudadio, already battling anorexia and various mental disorders, now has another demon crushing her — guilt that her parents had to pay thousands for a treatment program last summer because insurance wouldn't cover it.

Kathryn, 17, entered the residential program after losing 10 pounds in three weeks and then running 80 minutes on a very hot day until she collapsed. She ended up in Bridgeport Hospital's emergency room with an abnormal heart rhythm. Doctors wanted her in the program for eating disorders, and her insurance covers such treatment under certain conditions.

The denial — which is still being challenged — is especially aggravating to Kathryn and her mother, Lisa Gfeller, of Fairfield, because they won an independent appeal against Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield that was supposed to be binding but hasn't been enforced.

Insurance fights over the "not medically necessary" refrain are common, but Kathryn's case centers on a different rule. It exposes a troublesome crack in the health care system, involving a state law that can be hard to comply with because of Connecticut's shortage of hospital beds for young mental health patients.

The rule in Gfeller's health plan is patterned on state law. The law says insurance doesn't have to pay for residential treatment of mental illness for children and adolescents unless the treatment starts immediately after a hospitalization of at least three days for the illness.

Doctors wanted to hospitalize Kathryn the day she was taken by ambulance to Bridgeport Hospital, but a psychiatric bed couldn't be found.

That insurance Catch-22 has happened to other patients around the state too, consumer advocates say. The three-day rule prevents some young patients from getting residential treatment, a live-in program that's less intensive than hospitalization. Parents who take on the financial burden themselves may not be able to afford enough treatment, raising the chances of patient relapse.

The three-day rule cost Kathryn's parents $13,420 that they had expected insurance to pay toward her stay in the Renfrew Center of Philadelphia, a live-in treatment center that specializes in eating disorders.

Gfeller had to take out a second mortgage because the 24-day stay cost more than $16,000, and Kathryn's anguish about the expense isn't making her recovery any easier.

"That has followed me to this day," said Kathryn, a 5-foot-2, 98-pound high school senior with a coif of dark ringlets. "I feel like I have cost way too much, and it's this horrible guilt.

"Her mother has told her not to worry about family finances, knowing Kathryn has enough to deal with. The teen has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and bipolar illness, which involves cycling between depressed and manic periods. Two of Kathryn's aunts were bipolar and committed suicide, Gfeller said.

Kathryn, in her fifth year of anorexia, has threatened suicide from time to time. She said that last June "my goal was to die by Christmas. I had it all mapped out. I realized the only thing I could do was starve."

Kathryn has also mutilated herself, using manicure scissors, a razor, and broken glass on various occasions, once even carving the word "vain" into an arm, Gfeller says.

Three Appeals

Gfeller says she didn't know about the three-day rule until the Renfrew center heard from Anthem the day before Kathryn was to enter the facility. Gfeller checked her in anyway because she believed her daughter's life was at risk and figured she would appeal the denial later.

The mother and daughter have been through three levels of insurance appeals over the Renfrew stay in Philadelphia, and over a subsequent "partial hospitalization" at Renfrew's center in Wilton. That was day treatment, with Kathryn returning home for the evening.

Gfeller is a clerk in the assessor's office in the town of Fairfield, and her insurance is the town's self-funded plan. The plan takes on the financial risk of claims itself and hires Anthem to administer the plan, which includes processing claims and handling appeals.

Anthem claimed the Renfrew day treatment in Wilton wasn't medically necessary, but denied the Renfrew Philadelphia program solely on the basis of the three-day rule.

Gfeller lost two appeals to Anthem, despite help at a hearing from the attorney general's office and the Office of the Healthcare Advocate. Then she appealed to an independent firm in an "external review" available to many consumers through the Connecticut Insurance Department. She won.

The independent reviewer, the Maximus Center for Health Dispute Resolution, said the residential and day treatment were both medically necessary, and in a Feb. 1 letter reversed Anthem's denials. Anthem has paid what it owed for the day treatment in Wilton, but nothing for the Philadelphia stay.

Gfeller says Anthem has been "cowardly" by "hanging their hat on an obsolete and ridiculous rule."

Anthem believes the matter of the Philadelphia treatment should never have been accepted for external review, which by law is supposed to handle only questions of medical necessity, said Beth Cook, counsel at the Connecticut Insurance Department.

The department agrees with Anthem because the denial wasn't based on medical necessity. Even if it had been, a finding of medical necessity can't override rules and limitations written into an insurance contract, such as the three-day rule, Cook says.

A Rule Under Fire

Complying with the rule isn't always possible.

"There is a terrible shortage of inpatient hospital beds for children and adolescents in the state of Connecticut" that creates back-ups in emergency rooms, says Dr. Harold I. Schwartz, psychiatrist-in-chief at Hartford Hospital's Institute of Living. Cook says she's aware of the shortage, but the statute grants no exemption for that in the three-day rule. And the Insurance Department has no jurisdiction over self-funded health plans. However, Fairfield, which can specify what its self-funded plan can or can't cover, has the power to make an exception to its plan.

So the Insurance Department has asked Anthem to see whether Fairfield might do so in the Laudadio matter.

Anthem issued a statement last week to The Courant explaining how the three-day rule had not been met, and which said the company "is currently working with the Town of Fairfield to review this matter."

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's office has been in talks with Richard Saxl, town attorney of Fairfield.

As of Friday, Fairfield hadn't made a decision. Saxl says he's been doing some fact-finding.

"In the town of Fairfield, we do things the right way," Saxl said. If we owe [Gfeller] the money, she's absolutely going to get paid."

The attorney general's office, interpreting the law on external reviews differently from the Insurance Department, believes the reviewer's decision on the Philadelphia treatment must be enforced and Fairfield must pay up.

Anthem operates the network of health care providers for Fairfield's plan and had a responsibility to make sure that network would have psychiatric beds available, said Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.

Meanwhile, he's supporting repeal of the three-day rule, which he calls "short-sighted and unwise and unfair." He and state Healthcare Advocate Kevin Lembo testified at a public hearing in February in favor of Senate Bill 278, which would ax the rule and revise the pre-conditions for getting residential treatment.

The bill was never brought to a vote in the insurance and real estate committee. Sen. Joseph J. Crisco, D- Woodbridge, a co-chairman of the panel, says there was testimony that the three-day rule ensured that a patient's condition could be thoroughly and professionally evaluated in a hospital setting.

The committee has approved many bills augmenting insurance coverage, and should not be held responsible for the public health issue of hospital bed shortages, Crisco said.

"It's unfair to burden the insurance committee with the blame," he said.

Blumenthal and Lembo's office are still hoping the General Assembly will address the residential treatment issue in its current session.

Meanwhile, Kathryn, a drama enthusiast who has written a play about pressures on people, feels she has been relapsing since mid-December. At 98 pounds, which is below the minimum 100 that doctors set for her, she said she feels "like a whale." She thinks she may need residential treatment again and calls the Renfrew experience "amazing" but is anxious about insurance rules and cost.

After what Kathryn has been through, she offers the insurance industry a piece of her mind.

"If someone needs help, give it to them," she says. "Because people don't ask for help if they don't need it. Trust me."

Contact Diane Levick at dlevick@courant.com.

Credit: http://www.courant.com/news/health/hc-gfeller.artapr14,0,4772.story?page=2

Models to curve enthusiasm

2008-04-14T16:52:00.003+01:00

Models to curve enthusiasm

Robyn Riley
April 15, 2008 12:00am

COULD it be? Are we actually going to see fashionistas sent to jail for flogging their finest on ridiculously thin models?

I've heard about fashion police, but is the long arm of the law really going to stamp out the bony arms and legs of the modelling world?

The French fashion industry signed a charter last week promising to promote healthy body images and to stamp out anorexia.

Tomorrow the French National Assembly will discuss bringing in a law to offer jail sentences of up to three years, and hefty fines, to anyone encouraging others to slim to the point of death through websites or advertisements.

The British may also consider similar legislation.

Just think of it; an end to the silly size zero mentality.

Gaunt will be gauche. By law.

Welcome to a brave new, more generously curved world.

Does my enthusiasm sound hollow?

Good, because I am troubled by nagging doubt.

If only there had not been so many promises before by the industry to change; if only so much that had been said and done so far didn't sound like so much politically correct, but ultimately empty, rhetoric. I am not being a pessimist, more a realist.

The French have been promising to do something for so long now and the promises are racking up like an unwanted fashion line.

In the meantime, young women are still dying - they are still unalterably influenced, slowing starving themselves to death trying to emulate an impossible image.

About 18 months ago, when Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston died at the age of 21 weighing a pitiful 39kg, there was outrage and a demand for answers.

Ms Reston was the second young model to die, reportedly of complications caused by anorexia, in three months.

A year after talks began in Paris as part of a worldwide effort to stop anorexia, the best we have is a charter full of noble intent, but in many ways it is unworkable.

Sure, the top design houses may have pledged to put a stop to super-skinny models being featured in advertisements and on the catwalks, but the charter fell short of what it could have achieved.

It offered to stop "images of people, in particular youth, that could contribute to promoting a model of extreme thinness", but did not get tough enough and impose restrictions.

In Italy, an anti-anorexia charter bans girls under 16 from catwalks.

It is a step in the right direction, but can go further still.

It can't be just an age limit - it also has to be about body shape.

Designers must put their words into action and send a real model down the catwalk in a couture creation.

Only then will our daughters have role models they can really live up to.

I can't see jail being an option, but commercial penalties could be imposed that would hurt the bottom line of fashion designers and stop the duplicity that still permeates the industry to this day.

Join the discussion with Robyn at blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/robynriley

Credit: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23540223-5000117,00.html

French will jail those encouraging anorexia

2008-04-14T16:41:00.003+01:00

French will jail those encouraging anorexia
By Henry Samuel in Paris
Last Updated: 2:35am BST 14/04/2008

Anyone encouraging dangerous thinness and excessive dieting could be jailed under a draft law aimed at tackling the growing problem of anorexia in France.

The proposal would punish "incitement to excessive thinness" in magazines, on websites and in other media. Up to 40,000 people, the vast majority women, suffer from anorexia in France - an illness that strikes most frequently in adolescence.

The figure, while still far lower than Britain's, challenges the notion that France remains immune to eating disorders experienced by other Western nations.

The draft law, to be debated next week, proposes up to three years in jail and a £36,000 fine if the incitement provoked the death of an anorexia sufferer. Incitement alone would carry two years in jail.

While not seeking to target bona fide dieting, the law would punish any encouragement to make "people deprive themselves of food in order to get excessively thin", or that constituted an "open apology of anorexia".

The proposal coincides with the French fashion industry signing a charter to promote healthy body images among models.

Valerié Boyer, a Right-wing UMP senator, said she felt compelled to draw up the Bill after being shocked by an advertising campaign featuring an anorexic French woman last year.

At the other extreme, France, like America and Britain, is in the throes of an obesity epidemic - fuelled by the rise of junk food, hamburger restaurants, a lack of exercise and "le snacking".

Although the prevalence of obesity in British adults is more than twice that in France, with 25 per cent in Britain compared to 10 per cent in France, child obesity is now almost on a par.

Credit: Telegraph.co.uk

Mary-Kate Olsen Shops at David Yurman

2007-10-28T15:39:00.000Z

Mother spreads eating-disorder awareness

2007-10-28T15:32:00.000Z

Mother spreads eating-disorder awareness

By Jeanine Benca
STAFF WRITER
Article Launched: 10/27/2007 03:05:37 AM PDT

Though it has been almost seven years, Nancy Clarkson still remembers how helpless she felt when she first realized her daughter might have an eating disorder.

"It was like, 'Where do I go? Who do I call?'" the San Ramon resident recalled.

For Nancy -- a school office clerk -- and her husband, Bill Clarkson -- a past president of the Rotary who serves on the San Ramon Valley Unified school board -- it was uncharted territory.

The two community leaders watched in fear as their daughter, Lauren, then 14, transformed from a happy child into a troubled adolescent with a life-threatening problem they couldn't fix on their own.

"It crosses socio-economic lines ... eating disorders can affect anyone," Clarkson said.

The San Ramon mother said this week that she wants to form a weekly support group for families of children with eating disorders. She is inviting interested residents to get in touch with her so she can begin making plans.

"Through my experience of having a loved one with an eating disorder, I learned how important it is for the family and spouses to have somewhere safe to go," said Clarkson. "I believe there probably is a need for it in our area."

Lauren Clarkson, now 20, is in recovery from her six-year battle with anorexia. But although her daughter appears to be in "the home stretch," Clarkson said she feels compelled to reach out to other local parents whose children may be at the very beginning of their struggles.

If they are anything like she was, they are probably at a loss as to where to get help for their kids, Clarkson said.

According to estimates from The National Institute of Mental Health, 5 percent to 10 percent of U.S. girls and women suffer from various eating disorders.

Experts say anorexia, bulimia and related mental illnesses are on the rise in Western countries, even among men. Once thought to be exclusive to affluent, white women, the psychological conditions underpinning eating disorders may actually be just as prevalent among minorities, recent studies suggest.

Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses -- a strong case for early intervention, experts say.

Though it is difficult to know exactly how many women in the San Ramon Valley are battling eating disorders, reports from local therapists, school officials and parents suggest the Tri-Valley -- which is home to scores of wealthy, high-achieving families -- is not immune.

People in the area feel pressure to succeed and be perfect, and they may develop eating disorders as a coping mechanism, Clarkson said.

It was only after she made contact with another parent of a daughter with an eating disorder that she and her husband were able to get Lauren the help she needed, Clarkson recalled.

Earlier this month, she attended the 2007 National Eating Disorders Association Conference in San Diego, where she met hundreds of other parents from around the country. Many of them told her they had been helped by support groups in their own communities.

Through her support group, Clarkson hopes to provide families with much-needed emotional support and resources, such as a list of local eating disorder specialists and treatment centers.

Anyone interested in joining Clarkson's support group may call her at 925-829-5554 or e-mail her at lablimo@pacbell.net.

Reach Jeanine Benca at 925-847-2125 or jbenca@bayareanewsgroup.com.

Source: Contra Costa Times

WOMAN SUFFERED FROM ANOREXIA FOR 30 YEARS

2007-10-28T15:25:00.000Z

WOMAN SUFFERED FROM ANOREXIA FOR 30 YEARS

BY SARAH WHELAN

SWHELAN@DERBYTELEGRAPH.CO.UK

09:30 - 23 October 2007

An anorexic woman who collapsed and died in hospital had been suffering from the eating disorder for over 30 years.

Karen Sellers, 47, never weighed more than six-and-a-half stones in that time, an inquest heard.

A postmortem examination revealed that she had an abnormally small heart, weighing 177 grams. A normal heart weighs between 200 and 400 grams.

The report said that Miss Sellers' heart was not working sufficiently and failed, something which was aggravated by her anorexia. The inquest, held yesterday, ruled that she died of natural causes on May 18 at Derby City General Hospital a few days after admitting herself with abdominal pain.

Miss Sellers' brother, David, told Derby Coroner's Court that his sister began suffering from anorexia at the age of 16 or 17, while taking examinations at school.

He said: "It seemed to creep up on her. Just before Karen started taking her exams, my Nana died. Karen was close to her and a lot happened around that time.

"That's when she started to change her diet. She cut out dairy products and sugar and it went on gradually from there."

Miss Sellers had seen specialists in Derby hospitals and other hospitals over the years but her condition continued to deteriorate.

Mr Sellers said: "She didn't seem to want to help herself. I took her to see a specialist in Wimbledon and she was admitted to hospital when in her 20s but discharged herself."

Mr Sellers also described how, towards the end of her life, Miss Sellers, of Cockayne Mews, Ashbourne, had become increasingly weak and needed help to do everyday things.

He said: "In the last two years, she deteriorated to a degree that my mum had to look after her. In the last 12 months, my mum did all Karen's cleaning and shopping because she was physically too weak.

"In the last six months, my mum even had to bathe her."

The court also heard that Miss Sellers suffered from the bone condition osteoporosis, brought on by her anorexia.

She was on several courses of drugs throughout her life to tackle the symptoms associated with the eating disorder.

Derby and South Derbyshire Coroner Dr Robert Hunter said that Miss Sellers had obviously battled with anorexia for a long time.

He said: "We would not usually hold an inquest into the death of a person with anorexia but, as this was reported as a collapse at hospital, we had to rule out a head injury or something similar.

"Clearly, there was no sign of any injuries of that kind."

Speaking after the inquest, Mr Sellers said: "Karen had so much support - the family all wanted to help her but she needed to want to help herself. It was as if there was nothing we could do."

Source: This is Derbyshire.co.uk

Management of Eating Disorders in Children and Teens Reviewed

2007-10-20T13:56:00.001+01:00

Management of Eating Disorders in Children and Teens Reviewed

October 17, 2007 — The clinical presentation and management of several eating disorders in children and teens are reviewed in the October 9 Online First issue of Archives of Disease in Childhood.

"The eating disorders, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and their variants, typically develop in adolescence or early adulthood, mainly in females," write Simon G. Gowers, professor of Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom. "Despite a long history, the evidence base for effective treatments is weak and existing clinical guidelines are based on consensus views rather than strong research. Effective coordinated management of physical and psychological aspects of the disorders is crucial, but outcomes remain very variable, with adverse outcomes commonly extending into adulthood."

Anorexia nervosa carries a high morbidity and occasional mortality. It may begin at about 8 years of age, peaking at about 15 to 18 years. Self-imposed restriction of calorific foods, exercise, vomiting, or purging results in weight loss or failure to thrive. Body weight remains at least 15% below age norms, with stunted or reversed pubertal development, and delayed menarche or secondary amenorrhea.

Anorexia nervosa is usually associated with poor self-esteem, feelings of ineffectiveness, depressive and anxiety features, poor concentration, obsessional symptoms, and waning social interest.

Although bulimia nervosa seldom begins before 13 years of age, by young adulthood, prevalence is greater than that of anorexia nervosa. Bulimia nervosa is characterized by a persistent preoccupation with eating, accompanied by craving and binges. Weight is maintained in normal range by self-induced vomiting or purging. Compared with adolescents with anorexia nervosa, those with bulimia nervosa may be less perfectionistic and socially withdrawn but more apt to engage in drug and alcohol misuse.

Atypical forms of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are more prevalent than full syndrome disorders. Other clinical eating disturbances in this age group may include selective eating, as well as other phobic and obsessional disorders presenting with eating disturbances, which differ from anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa in core psychopathology and management.

In addition to thorough history with both patient and parents individually, and complete physical examination, assessment tools may include Child versions of the Eating Attitudes Test (ChEAT) and the Eating Disorder Examination.

"It is helpful to take an approach which is respectful and age-appropriate but recognises the role of parents in providing a developmental history, their perspective on the problem and their potential role in treatment," the author writes. "Time should be taken with the young person alone to enable a sympathetic understanding of their own point of view and a full assessment of their mental state including cognition and risk. Family, social or educational stressors which may be acting as maintaining factors should be explored."

Evaluation may include determining the extent of malnutrition and electrolyte disturbance from vomiting or purging; electrocardiogram if the patient is emaciated; tests for muscle weakness; luteinizing hormone (LH) levels and their response to LH-releasing factor; ovarian ultrasonography to evaluate ovarian maturity; and levels of growth hormone, cortisol, and insulin secretion.

Differential diagnosis may include normal dieting; hyperthyroidism, diabetes, or other physical or psychological illnesses; organic causes of diarrhea, such as idiopathic steatorrhea or inflammatory bowel disease; ovarian or pituitary disease causing amenorrhoea; or depressive and obsessional symptoms.

There are no large scale randomized controlled drug trials in anorexia nervosa at any age, but preliminary findings suggest that olanzapine may be well tolerated, resulting in weight gain, improved compliance with treatment, and decreased agitation and mealtime anxiety. A recent Cochrane review did not recommend antidepressants in anorexia nervosa.

"There is then, as yet little empirical support for the use of psychopharmacological interventions targeted at AN [anorexia nervosa] specifically," the author writes. "Nonetheless, for those with high levels of anxiety, obsessionality or mood disorder, the use of either atypical antipsychotics selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants or both may be clinically useful."

However, in adults with bulimia nervosa, antidepressant drugs appear to have an "antibulimic" effect, often resulting in a rapid decline in the frequency of binge eating and purging and in improved mood.

Despite the lack of agreement regarding oral feeding requirements, weight gain goals are around 1 kg/week for inpatients and 0.5 kg/week for outpatients, with adjustment after an initial safe weight has been achieved to ensure that growth is in line with normal weight and height trajectories.

Nasogastric feeding should only be a last resort for patients who persistently refuse normal eating. Strict behavioral regimes are not effective and may be perceived by the young person as coercive, abusive, or reinforcing low self-esteem.

Clinicians must avoid inducing the refeeding syndrome, a rare, potentially fatal fluid and electrolyte disturbance that may follow sudden increases in nutritional intake in patients near starvation, especially with parenteral nutrition. Regular monitoring of vital signs and serum electrolytes, including phosphorous, glucose, magnesium, and potassium are essential.

Individual psychological therapies have little research evidence to support them. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) focuses on modifying the behavior and ways of thinking that maintain the eating disorder. CBT usually involves about 20 individual treatment sessions for 5 months and has been shown to be the most effective treatment for adults with bulimia nervosa.

Family therapy is the most studied intervention for adolescents with anorexia nervosa. This at first focuses on behavioral change around eating to promote weight gain. Parents are advised to offer support and commitment to refeeding.

Hospital admission for the severely malnourished young person allows physical health monitoring, introduction of normal eating habits, intensive psychological therapy, and respite for the family. Potential harms of admission may include disruption of schooling and family life and difficulty ensuring continuity of care after discharge.

"Recent developments have seen a growth in family based treatments and evidence-based individual therapeutic approaches, including motivational treatments," the author concludes. "Clear guidance on the most effective treatments is hampered by a lack of quality treatment studies. However a wealth of experience has contributed to valuable clinical guidelines to direct management in both a paediatric and mental health setting."

This study received no external funding, and the author has disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

Arch Dis Child. Published online October 9, 2007.

Clinical Context

Eating disorders, which comprise anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and their variants, tend to occur in adolescence or early adulthood, mainly in females. The evidence base for the efficacy of treatments is weak, with effective coordinated care recommended, but outcomes are still variable and the condition often persists into adulthood with a high morbidity.

This is a review of the clinical features and types of eating disorders and discusses pharmacologic, psychological, psychosocial, and in-hospital strategies for management.

Study Highlights

Eating disorders comprise anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and associated disorders.
Anorexia nervosa develops from age 8 years, reaching a peak at 15 to 18 years, whereas bulimia nervosa is rare for those younger than 13 years and becomes more common in adulthood.
The eating disorder syndromes comprise a range of physical, psychological, and behavioral features.
In bulimia nervosa, persistent preoccupation with food and binges are more dominant behaviors.
Cyclical bingeing and purging and missing meals is a feature of bulimia nervosa.
In anorexia nervosa, body weight is maintained at least 15% below expected, and pubertal development is stunted or reversed.
Delay in menarche or amenorrhea may occur.
In anorexia nervosa, the dominant feature is cognitive distortion with self-worth dependent on the ability to restrict food intake and there is no loss of appetite with weight loss seen as an achievement.
Dieting may be an expression of competitiveness or battle of wills, and self-induced vomiting and laxative abuse may be practiced by a subgroup.
Young persons may present with emaciation, starvation, menstrual disturbance, or dietary disturbance.
The ChEAT and the Eating Disorder Examination are screening tools that recognized parents' roles and patients' motivations.
For anorexia nervosa, the degree of malnutrition should be assessed together with electrolyte disturbance associated with vomiting and bingeing or purging.
Body mass index should be assessed against age-appropriate norms, and temperature, pulse, and blood pressure and electrocardiogram measured.
Comorbidities and differential diagnoses to be considered include obsessive-compulsive disorders or symptoms, depression, and psychotic illnesses.
There are no large scale randomized trials to demonstrate efficacy of any pharmacologic agents for anorexia nervosa.
Preliminary findings suggest that olanzapine is well tolerated and associated with weight gain and overall decrease in agitation and mealtime anxiety.
Fluoxetine may reduce the rate of relapse after inpatient management, but findings have not been replicated.
Patients with eating disorders and concurrent anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and social phobia may benefit from atypical antipsychotics or antidepressants.
For bulimia nervosa, antidepressants may be linked with a decline in frequency of binge eating and purging, but results have not been shown to be sustained.
There is a lack of consensus about refeeding requirements.
The refeeding syndrome describes a potentially life-threatening disturbance of fluid and electrolyte imbalance linked with rapid nutritional intake after starvation; close monitoring is advocated during refeeding.
Among psychological approaches, CBT, interpersonal psychotherapy, and transtheoretical models of change have been used to modify eating behaviors.
A recent emphasis on outpatient family therapy has resulted in greater evaluation of this strategy.
For inpatient management, age-appropriate facilities are recommended with active consent of patients and participation by family members.
Inpatient psychiatric care varies internationally with a combination of nutritional rehabilitation, family therapies, psychosocial rehabilitation, and psychotherapy.
Specialized day patient treatment units usually offer attendance for 4 to 7 days with supervised meals and concurrent individual, family, and medical and pharmacologic management.

Pearls for Practice

Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are the primary eating disorders and have different clinical presentations.
Newer management strategies focus on family-based and outpatient approaches with limited evidence for the efficacy of pharmacologic interventions.

Source: MedScape Today

Perfect Bodies? Gay Men, Athletics and Anorexia

2007-10-20T13:51:00.001+01:00

Perfect Bodies? Gay Men, Athletics and Anorexia

Article Date: 10/15/2007

By E. Dixon

The media doesn't just love Derek Jeter because he pulled down MVP honors in the 2000 World Series; it also loves to talk about how great his butt looks in that pin-striped Yankee uniform. And men don't just take up cycling for the euphoria of the downhill; they also do it to get a body like Lance. While playing sports and exercising makes us feel good, there's no denying that trying to look good plays an important role in our culture's obsession with sports and fitness. But the desire to look ripped, cut, and "hot" can lead many women and men—and especially gay men—to contract the dangerous disease of anorexia nervosa.

You thought anorexia was only a women's disease? Think again. Men account for 10 to 15 percent of all cases of anorexia or bulimia, according to a 1997 report in the American Journal of Psychiatry. And gay men make up a shocking number of those cases: A 2002 International Journal of Eating Disorders report found that 20 percent of gay men are anorexic, and 14 percent suffer from the related eating disorder bulimia.

Whoa! While the reasons for these astronomical numbers are not fully known, researchers speculate two primary causes: gay culture's obsession with the body beautiful, success, and perfectionism; and perhaps less obvious, the low self-esteem associated with the negative culture of the closet.

Carolyn Costin, executive director of the Monte Nido Treatment Center for Eating Disorders (which Town & Country magazine named as one of the best anorexia treatment clinics in the country) says that the condition tends to be more prevalent in conflicted or closeted gay men than in those who are out. Focusing on their anorexia can distract closeted gay men from the fact that they can't be openly gay, and can be a way to help repress their sexual needs. Being in the closet inevitably leads to low self-esteem, and low self-esteem is one of the primary causes of anorexia.

Gay Athletes at Particular Risk

Costin says that gay athletes in particular are at an increased risk of developing the condition. "People with anorexia are very rejection-sensitive, and look at the rejection that can come in this society from being gay." she says. "Not winning the gold medal, not coming in first, can be a kind of rejection, too."

According to Costin, the competitive nature and perfectionism of many elite athletes—which are assets in the hockey rink or at the track—also make them more prone to developing anorexia. And in team sports such as baseball or soccer, the athlete may lose a sense of himself as an individual, putting the team's goals to win above his own health and wellbeing. "There is something about following orders that both a good athlete and an anorexic have [in common]," she says.

While being extremely thin may temporarily put a sprinter at a competitive advantage, a fighter into a desired weight zone, or make a figure skater look great in his costume, it's obviously a case of a very short-term gain for a big long-term loss—the body needs a certain amount of fat for organs to function properly. The extreme thinness of anorexia can damage the heart, liver, and kidneys, and cause brittle bones.

Most ironically for an athlete who is making himself thin for the good of his athletic performance, a lack of proper nutrition may actually cause that performance to deteriorate. It could also put him at greater risk of injury—which could sideline him for the season.

Stopping Anorexia Before It Starts

How can you protect yourself from developing anorexia? Since this is a psychological addiction, there are no easy answers. But Costin recommends that if you tend to be a perfectionist, you should try to stay away from situations where your appearance is a factor in how you're judged, such as sports like figure skating and gymnastics. You may also want to avoid the more body-obsessed gay events like circuit parties.

She also recommends avoiding extremes in both your eating and your workouts—don't overly restrict your diet, but also don't overdo your exercise routine.

"When I see that a client has an exercise addiction, I expect there will probably also be an eating disorder," says Costin, "because food deprivation and compulsive exercise are physiologically linked. We don't exactly know how, but we know that they are. If you deprive a rat of food and then put an exercise wheel into its cage, it will exercise compulsively to the point of exhaustion or even death."

Anorexia Warning Signs

As with other serious conditions such as alcoholism or drug addiction, the longer anorexia goes untreated, the more difficult it is to overcome. If you're concerned that you might have anorexia, check out the warning signs: You have lost 15 to 20 percent of your body weight. Friends say you're too skinny, but when you look in the mirror, you can't see it. You're preoccupied with thoughts about food and calories. When you're hungry but don't eat, you feel a sense of victory. You weigh yourself a lot. You feel bloated or nauseated after eating only a small or normal amount of food. You feel cold when the air temperature is normal. Anorexia is a serious disease that causes unnecessary suffering and, in extreme cases, even death. But the good news is that great treatment options are available; start by talking to your doctor. Recovery will greatly benefit your health, make you look and feel much better—and, perhaps best of all, will allow you to get back to being the very best athlete you can be.

Anorexia Resources

Want to learn more about anorexia? Check out these web sites for more information:
- Something Fishy: Eating Disorders for Men
- Do I Look Fat
- National Eating Disorders
Article courtesy of RealJock.com

Source: Gay Wired.com

In good shape

2007-10-20T13:45:00.000+01:00

In good shape

Although Grace Bowman had beaten anorexia, she was haunted by fears of it returning. But since becoming pregnant, she's learned to relish having a body that feels happily beyond her control.

Tuesday October 16, 2007

The Guardian

When I was 18 I went on a diet. My body had changed from a girl's to a woman's - I had hips and curves - and although I wasn't overweight I felt uncomfortable with this new shape, which seemed to symbolise responsibility and change. If I controlled what I ate, it felt as if I could control the rest of my life - the prospect of leaving home for university, exam stress, friends and boyfriend issues - which seemed overwhelming. The more I didn't eat, the more my emotions clouded over. I concentrated on calorie-counting and exercising instead. Within six months I was addicted to starving myself. I lived on a diet of Weight Watchers' soup, tomatoes and apples. I wasn't in control at all. I had developed anorexia nervosa.

It was a long and hard battle to recover from the 5st 8lbs (37kg) to which I had plummeted. My periods stopped, my hair fell out and I was freezing cold the whole time. I couldn't go to university. Instead, I lay on the sofa while my family tried everything they could to help me. In the end, I started eating more to try to get better for them. After a year, I'd put on enough weight to escape.

The physical symptoms of anorexia disappeared. I looked like a normal girl - just thin. People I met didn't know what I had suffered. But anorexia is not mended when the body conforms to a certain body mass index; it is a mental battle. I was haunted by a voice in my head, which plagued me throughout university. I exercised intensely; I sometimes made myself sick, and I kept it all a secret. Because anorexia's most dramatic representation is on the body, it is this which people use to measure its impact. However, the way someone looks is not necessarily a barometer of mental health. In fact, the healthier I looked on the outside, the more turbulent my mind became.

Letting go of control was the biggest challenge in recovery. After graduating I decided to dump my scales and stop counting calories and dieting. I settled at a size 10. I was conscious of maintaining a balance, so I exercised and tried to eat healthily. Eventually I learned not to berate myself if I ate chocolate and chips or missed a session at the gym. The voice of anorexia quietened down. Then it just got lost altogether. I fell in love, I started writing and found other more important things to live for.

Still, I was haunted by the fear that the anorexia would return.

And then, last year, I got married. My husband and I both wanted to start a family. We knew it would transform our lives, and I was aware that it would also transform my body. Anorexia preys on times of change, and pregnancy is one such major event. With reports of more older women being diagnosed, it can't be written off as a teenage illness. Ten years since diagnosis, I felt that because I had beaten it so thoroughly I would be able to deal with the changes, but I had no idea how it would feel when it happened.

I got pregnant quickly. At 12 weeks, when we announced it to our families, my stomach was distinctly curved. After years of trying to prove that I was really better, even documenting that recovery in a book about my experiences, I felt this physical sign might be the one that everyone else needed.

By five months, I was thrilled to be buying maternity wear; it made it feel real. I stood in changing rooms alongside other women with bumps at various stages and actually felt jealous that mine wasn't bigger. Anorexia had once programmed me to look at women and envy their thinness because the distorted perception I had of my own body meant that everyone appeared smaller than I was. Now pregnancy was teaching me to look with new eyes.

Today, nearly eight months pregnant, my shape has shifted even further and I've got those same womanly curves I once tried so hard to remove. My body today is nothing like I have known before. It has certainly made me realise that I am much more than the shape I'm in. Pregnancy has been a release into a body that feels happily beyond my control. I've watched it grow and transform. I've looked at it in the mirror and been fascinated by it. I'm much more interested in nourishing my baby than caring about what dress size I am.

I didn't know how my body would change in pregnancy. I knew my stomach would grow, but I wasn't sure how other weight changes might be distributed. It was the advent of hips and curvy thighs that made me dislike my body so much as a teenager, and I have definitely seen them grow over the past few months. This time, though, I have let go of the perfectionist feelings that hit me after puberty. I know that everything is transitory. Once the baby is born maybe I will want to tone up, but for the moment, it's not a priority. I have been attending antenatal yoga classes, walking and generally trying to keep moving, not because of an obsession with body fat, but because I want to stretch my aching muscles and be fit and healthy for labour and being a mother. I've realised how far I am from those feelings of self-absorption and repression that the eating disorder imposed.

For a long time people were nervous about asking me about my body and my eating habits. Anorexia made me hostile and defensive and I didn't make it easy. Once you have revealed that you once suffered from an eating disorder, people look at you differently, watch what you eat and wonder if you are really being honest (this is understandable - anorexia strips you of honesty). Things are certainly different now. People comment on my body in ways they would never have done before. Whereas once I would have felt reluctant to talk about it, the pregnancy has freed me of the sense of secrecy I have had about my body for many years.

Anorexia was self-destructive: the long road to recovery taught me that. I have learned to listen to myself; to ask why I was replacing "feeling" with "fat"; to try to work things out in ways other than starting yet another fad diet. Today, I am excited about the prospect of protecting and caring for my baby. I am in wonder at this bump of mine, not in fear of it. I am embracing the changes. Amazing, after so many years of body-hatred.

· Thin by Grace Bowman is published by Penguin at £6.99.

Source: Guardian Unlimited

Anorexic Model On Road To Recovery

2007-10-20T13:36:00.000+01:00

Anorexic Model On Road To Recovery

Isabelle Caro Exposed Herself To World In Campaign Against Eating Disorder

(CBS) Upon meeting Isabelle Caro, the first thing that is apparent is her frailty. She is so tiny that she sways with a gust of wind.

Last month, stripped bare, she was the shocking face of an Italian campaign against anorexia. But the billboard that stunned the world does not even depict Caro at her thinnest. Now she says when she looks in the mirror, she realizes that she is dangerously thin and wants to get better.

"A skeleton. I see a skeleton. But one on the road to recovery," she told CBS News correspondent Sheila MacVicar.

Caro's anorexia began when she was 13. Her mother, she says, was seriously depressed and her father was largely absent. She spent her childhood in isolation, home schooled and kept away from others.

"I had a very complicated childhood, very difficult, very painful," she said. "My mother's big phobia was that I would grow. She spent her time measuring my height. She wouldn't let me go outside because she'd heard that fresh air makes children grow, and that's why I was kept at home. It was completely traumatic."

Her trauma crystallized into illness as she watched her mother struggle with a 70-pound gas canister.

"She said, 'Do you know how heavy this is?' " Caro said. "I weighed 10 pounds more, and I kept thinking 'I'm heavier than that heavy gas cylinder so I am a burden on my mother.' And that's when I thought about wanting to lose weight, to stop my growth. I dropped to about 58 pounds. My meal was reduced to two squares of chocolate and five cornflakes. That's all I ate all day."

Eighteen months ago, at 55 pounds, Caro collapsed into a coma. After that, she finally understood the truth about anorexia. It is a serious mental illness that kills more than 10 percent of sufferers. She decided she wanted to live, and accepted help. She now weighs 70 pounds.

"I know that it will take time, but I would rather go slowly and surely rather than gain weight rapidly and then fall back into losing it again," she said. "I have to get used to how I look with more weight."

To walk with Caro on the street is to begin to understand how others react to her, their shocked looks, even the stares. She has been accused of being a heroin addict.

"I have suffered enormously from the way people look at me," she said. "When I first moved to Marseille, nobody spoke to me, people stared at me. I stopped going out of my house. In cafes and bars they refuse to serve me. And that's why I refused to talk about it for such a long time. I was so afraid of people judging me. People just think you just stop eating but that is not what anorexia is. You don't just decide from one day to the next to stop eating. It's very hard. It's real suffering, and it goes deep."

But with intensive and continuing psychiatric help and good medical care, Caro is making progress. She's beginning to have enough strength to set goals and think about the future.

"I really want to have a child," she said. "And I hope my body will allow me to. My doctor says it's possible. I'm still not having periods -- my body is too weak -- but he says it is possible. Then for a relationship. I don't know yet. I'm with somebody now. I don't want to say very much because it's a bit complicated. At the moment it's more an affair of the heart than a physical relationship because, simply, I'm still very thin and it's still very difficult to enjoy normal physical relations with such a tiny body and a man who is a normal size. I'm still nervous about having sex."

For the first time in a long time, Caro has dreams and goals. The top ranked drama school in France, where she studied, has agreed that she can return to class. She intends to pursue the theater, but she has more pressing concerns.

"First of all, to be able to live," she said. "And to send the message that life is beautiful and it is worth living. You can get better by fighting and believing and by living your passion. And the theatre is my passion and I hope to be able to realize my dream to continue with that passion."

Source: The Early Show

Kate Bosworth goes for a day of pampering in West Hollywood

2007-10-20T13:33:00.000+01:00

Kate Bosworth goes for a day of pampering in West Hollywood on Saturday.The Superman Returns star got another gets another a mani-pedi at Planet Nails, leaving the salon with cotton pads between her toes for the perfect pedicure.Late in the day, Kate, 24, visited the global private members’ club and luxury concierge service, Quintessentially.

Sign of Trouble? 'Shy Eating' May Signal Anorexia, Bulimia

2007-10-20T13:31:00.001+01:00

Sign of Trouble? 'Shy Eating' May Signal Anorexia, Bulimia

Estimated 11 Million Americans Have Eating Disorder

By Denise Dador

Oct. 17, 2007 (KABC-TV) - An estimated 11 million Americans have been diagnosed with an eating disorder -- but sometimes the early signs of anorexia or bulimia are hard to catch. Now experts are warning about a behavior that might signal signs of trouble, and possibly the beginnings of an eating disorder. It's called "shy eating."

Twenty-one-year-old Leslie Lipton loves eating out now, but as a young teenager she was afraid to open a menu.

"I assumed that everyone was watching everything that I put in my mouth, and everything that I ordered," said Leslie. "They must be making judgments about me, that I was too fat, or lazy, or a pig."

Whether at the school cafeteria, dinner at her best friend's house, or family get-togethers, each meal caused anxiety attacks. She was so self-conscious she stopped eating in public.

Leslie's decision to avoid food in public was a precursor to anorexia. She was diagnosed in ninth grade.

"Chances are if they're not eating in front of others, they're also not eating by themselves," said Lynn Grefe of the National Eating Disorders Association.

Grefe says "shy eating" is now recognized as an early warning sign that something worse could be going on.

"It's not about being shy. People with eating disorders are trying to control themselves, because at times they feel they can't control the world around them," said Grefe.

So what triggers this behavior? Dr. Bernardo Carducci, Ph.D., of the Shyness Research Institute at Indiana University Southeast, says it's often times of major change.

"When we talk about adolescence, we're talking about probably one of the most intense period of transition in the life cycle," said Dr. Carducci.

Leslie's mother, Mary, noticed that eating had become almost a competitive sport for her daughter.

"She wanted a hamburger, but everyone else had just salad on their plate, so she couldn't have a hamburger," said Mary, "'If you have two leaves of lettuce on your plate, I'm going to put one.'"
But not all shy eating is a symptom of anorexia or bulimia. If it starts to interfere with life, it might be the start of something more serious.

"If you're going to go to a social function, 'Who's going to be there? What are they going to be serving?' You become preoccupied with that, so that you may think about not going," said Dr. Carducci.

Shy eaters are often very good at coming up with believable excuses, so parents should keep a close eye.

"Like, 'Oh, gee, I've already eaten,' or 'I ate earlier,' or 'I'm not hungry right now,'" said Grefe. "The best idea is to get a person some counseling immediately to find out what's really going on."
"Recovery is definitely worth it. There's so many more important things that you can do with your life if you just sort of realize that food isn't the only thing," said Leslie.
Copyright © 2007 KABC-TV. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Source: ABC7

'I FELT AS IF I HAD TO BE ON THE VERGE OF DEATH BEFORE I COULD GET ANY FUNDING FOR TREATMENT'

2007-10-20T13:25:00.001+01:00

'I FELT AS IF I HAD TO BE ON THE VERGE OF DEATH BEFORE I COULD GET ANY FUNDING FOR TREATMENT'

LIZ PERKINS

HEALTH REPORTER

ELIZABETH.PERKINS@SWWMEDIA.CO.UK

09:00 - 17 October 2007

A Brave Swansea teenager who is battling anorexia has launched a fight to put the condition at the top of the health agenda.

Ali Valenzuela, who has struggled with the eating disorder for the past three years, has told how she felt she wouldn't be granted the necessary treatment until she was "on the verge of death".

Now the 18-year-old from Uplands is calling for anorexia to be taken more seriously and says it is vital more cash is ploughed into improving care in the region.

"I felt as if I had to be practically on the verge of death at a dangerously low weight before I could receive any funding to get my treatment," she said.

Because of a lack of available money, the teenager had to wait almost a year before she could get the care she needed. And that was outside the principality, at The Priory, a private hospital in Bristol.

During that time, her weight fell to a five- stone low.

Assembly health minister Edwina Hart has pledged to tackle the issue and has previously said services were being improved for sufferers across Wales.

But Ali said: "I didn't want to go into hospital but, looking back, it was one of the best things I've ever done. I had to wait 10 months to get the funding I needed to get into hospital, during which time I lost almost three stone.

"There is no eating disorder unit in South Wales - the Government doesn't consider mental illness seriously enough. It is neglect.

"I feel fortunate to have a place in the Bristol hospital, but what about the other people suffering out there?"

Ali has now had her treatment halted due to a lack of available cash - even though experts in Bristol believe she needs more help.

She is still too unwell to drive or take up a university place, and Ali's mum fears her daughter may relapse.

In a series of videos for Channel Five news, Ali revealed she had no idea she was suffering with the problem until her friend raised concerns through a letter. The teenager said she felt much better now, physically and mentally.

She added: "It's just a continuous mental battle. It's about fighting that little voice and saying I am going to get on with my life.

"An Assembly Government spokesman said he was unable to comment on individual cases.

But he continued: "We understand the hurt and distress that eating disorders cause. The health minister has made the issue a priority."

He outlined what was already provided, such as specialist psychiatric inpatient services and those provided by GPs in the community, depending on the severity of the condition.

The spokesman added: "We are also planning to enhance support for youngsters suffering from eating disorders with new units in Abergele and Bridgend, ensuring patients can receive care closer to where they live.

"Independent or private hospitals are only used when the NHS is unable to provide the appropriate care."

If there is an issue you feel strongly about visit the Your News section on the five news website ( www.five.tv)

Source: this is Swansea.co.uk

Italy bans 'No Anorexia' poster

2007-10-20T13:19:00.000+01:00

Italy bans 'No Anorexia' poster

Italy's advertising watchdog has banned an ad campaign for a fashion label showing a naked anorexic woman, saying it breached its code of conduct.

The image "commercially exploited" the illness, the advertising body said.

The image, bearing the words "No Anorexia", was first displayed during Milan Fashion Week in September.

It was shot by controversial Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani, who called the ban "censorship" and said he was considering legal action.

Mr Toscani - who created advertising campaigns for Italian fashion label Benetton from 1982 to 2000 - once photographed a man dying of Aids for a Benetton campaign.

'Human dignity'

The image showing anorexic French actress Isabelle Caro, for Italian fashion label Nolita, was published in newspapers and featured on billboards during fashion week.

Most of the billboards have already been removed, but one remains in Rome.

The Publicity Control Institute (IAP) ruled that the image breached articles one and 10 of its code of conduct.

Article one states that advertising must be "honest, truthful and accurate. It must avoid anything that could discredit it".

Article 10 states that advertising must not offend "moral, civic and religious" beliefs and must "respect human dignity in all its forms and expressions".

"The photo is shocking for everyone, particularly those who are sick, and has been set up for commercial ends," IAP President Giorgio Floridia told AFP news agency.

Last month, France's advertising watchdog, the Advertising Verification Bureau (BVP) also ruled that the image breached its code of conduct.

But during Milan fashion week, Italian health minister Livia Turco backed the billboard, saying it could "promote responsibility towards the problem of anorexia".

The photographer, Mr Toscani, told Reuters news agency he was considering seeking "moral and economic" damages.

"The health minister said the campaign went well," he said.

"Who should I listen to - the health minister or a private justice corporation? It is late when the campaign is already done."

The advertising campaign came amid a debate among fashion circles on the use of "ultra-skinny" models on the catwalk.

Last year, Madrid fashion week organisers banned ultra-skinny models, while Milan has required medical certificates for under-weight models since February.

Source: BBC News

Lancashire mum dies of anorexia

2007-10-13T15:43:00.000+01:00

Lancashire mum dies of anorexia

A mother-of-three from Lancashire has died of anorexia.

Maxine Riley, aged 41, of Kershaw Street in Chorley, weighed just five stones when she died, surrounded by her devoted family.

She had been battling the eating disorder for more than seven years, although her devastated husband Glyn admitted the cause of his wife's anorexia remained a mystery.

He described his wife as a "loving, kind and selfless" mum to twins Christian and Damon, 19, and 15-year-old Charlotte.

Mr Riley, 40, said: "She was a very kind person and she loved her children and was very devoted to them.

"She was very selfless and would go out of her way to help people and do anything for anybody.

"Maxine was a very kind person and had a lot to give to the people around her, but the eating disorder just took a lot out of her and changed her completely.

"Her anorexia has been dominating her life more in the past 18 months, which had been on a downhill slide.

"She was an outgoing person but not so much towards the end because of what she was going through.

"I was by her bedside for the week she was in hospital and her family were there as well, it was heart-breaking.

"I would like to thank all the staff in the accident and emergency department and the intensive care unit who did their best to try and save her.

"Her husband, a systems engineer, said the eating disorder had left her so weak she was unable to continue her job as charity shop worker for Derian House in Chorley.

The pair had returned from a holiday to Las Vegas just days before Maxine was taken into intensive care where she eventually lost her life through a bronchial pneumonia infection.

She had been trying to get help from counsellors at an eating disorder unit in Bury, Greater Manchester, where she spent months as an inpatient.

The pair were both fans of rock music and went to an Ozzy Osbourne concert in Birmingham three months before the tragedy.

Mr Riley said: "I never found out the reason why Maxine was anorexic and I don't think the people who were looking after her in Bury could get to the bottom of it."

"The problem is that we weren't able to get much help for her in Chorley because she was losing so much weight and there was no local eating disorder unit that could help her.

The funeral service will be held at 9.45am on Friday at Charnock Richard Crematorium and a function will be held at East Chorley Conservative Club afterwards.

The family have asked that donations be sent to Derian House via Livesey Funeral Directors in her memory.

A website has been set up in Maxine's memory.

Source: Lancashire Evening Post

Anorexia ad sparks vital dialogue

2007-10-13T15:40:00.000+01:00

Anorexia ad sparks vital dialogue

Most fashion ads show beautiful, stick-thin models wearing flowing dresses and smiling seductively at the camera.
However, a fashion ad created by Italian fashion label Nolita only had one thing in common with other ads displayed during Milan's Fashion Week: The thinness of the young woman posing.The ad pictured Isabelle Caro, a 27-year-old French actress, posing nude next to the words "No Anorexia." In the ad, her skin looks yellow and stretched tight over her bones, giving her an almost skeletal look.
The ad didn't promote a fashion line or a designer. It was created to promote awareness for the growing number of models suffering from eating disorders.
The campaign is backed by the Italian minister for health as well as multiple designers, including Dolce & Gabbana. Some have praised the advertisers for bringing the issue of anorexia in the fashion world out into the open, while others believe it could act as a trigger in some people already suffering from the disease.
Either way, the ad didn't just catch the attention of those at the show in Milan. It got people around the world talking about something besides belts, cardigans and tunics.
Anorexia is not just a problem for models in Milan; it affects people even at Penn State.
According to the Penn State Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) Web site, if the proportion of persons with eating disorders among the American population is applied to Penn State's population, it can be estimated that 1,000 to 2,000 Penn State women and 50 to 200 men have severe eating disorders.
Nolita's ad may not change the face of the modeling industry, but even so it helped open the floodgates to open debate and discussion about anorexia, and opened at least one person's eyes to the severity of her own eating disorder -- Caro's.
After the picture was published, Caro said she wanted to recover from her illness and continue experiencing life.
Further, she hoped that her emaciated body would help dispel any "romantic" ideas young girls might have about the condition, according to The Daily Mail, a newspaper in the United Kingdom.
Sometimes, a picture really is worth more than a thousand words and we hope this ad will spark twice as many.

Source: The Daily Collegian Online

No Anorexia adverts

2007-10-07T17:09:00.000+01:00

Better versions on the No Anorexia advert campaign featuring Isabelle Caro (click to enlarge) and some other pictures of her as well.

Bulimia: Older women falling prey to image trap now

2007-10-07T16:56:00.001+01:00

Bulimia: Older women falling prey to image trap now

New Delhi: The typical image of someone with a body image disorder is of an adolescent girl. But can older women suffer from this disorder too?
The answer is yes. More and more women in their 30s and 40s have begun obsessing about how they look.
“The women want to stay fit to feel good, but this could sometimes become an obsession,” says Lifestyle Management Expert, Dr Rachna Singh.
A huge fall-out of having an image disorder is a higher risk of developing an eating disorder, which can lead to additional problems in older women.
“One gets into a vicious cycle where she tries really hard but the metabolism is not on her side. Therefore she will have no choice but to start obsessing about her weight and a lot of other diseases and disorders develop after that,” says Dr Singh.
Unlike adolescents, the problem is not so easily identified in older women.
One reason is such cases are usually borderline. For example, a woman may have symptoms of anorexia but weigh in the normal range, or they may purge by vomiting or abuse laxatives, but not binge-eat, as in bulimia.
But what is it that triggers off these disorders in women?
There could be deeper reasons than these. The reasons being inability to cope with childhood trauma or abuse, a fear of rejection in relationships, issues of low self-esteem and the need to fit in.
So what is the way out of this dilemma?
“We can put them under therapy, medication and reverse the obsession back,” says Dr Singh.

Source: IBN Live

Andrea’s Voice

2007-10-07T16:40:00.000+01:00

Andrea’s Voice

By JENNIFER HUFFMANRegister Staff Writer

Sunday, October 07, 2007

In 1999, Andrea Smeltzer, a college student from Napa, seemed to have the world at her feet. The 19-year-old enjoyed dancing, was trained in opera, designed her own jewelry and was a whiz with languages. But Smeltzer harbored a secret, a burden that would be too much to bear. Smeltzer was bulimic, and it was a disease that would eventually silence her forever.

Almost 10 years after her daughter’s death, Napa educator Doris Smeltzer has written a moving and pointed account of Andrea’s struggle with the disease, a journey that would take her through her daughter’s journals and her own emotional self-discovery.

Smeltzer said while she knew writing “Andrea’s Voice: Silenced by Bulimia” would be “excruciatingly painful. It was something I knew that I had to do.”

The book begins as the Smeltzers learn of their daughter’s death.

Shortly before Father’s Day 1999, Smeltzer and her husband Tom received a call from a police officer in Southern California.

While house-sitting for a friend, an outwardly healthy Andrea had passed away in her sleep. A mystery at first, eventually it was determined she had died from an electrolyte imbalance in her body, caused by the bulimic purging she’d struggled to overcome during a 13-month period.

Tracing the history of Andrea’s disease, Smeltzer’s book recalls Andrea’s younger years through her daughter’s journal entries and poetry. Smeltzer also takes an unflinching look at her own parenting and body images.

But “Andrea’s Voice” is more than just a series of personal recollections. Smeltzer includes detailed notes and research from the eating disorder field, with an extended appendix of resources including eating disorder warning signs and risk factors.

Together the book is a powerful mix that is both personal and informational and that anyone parenting or working with young women can relate to.

“My daughter Andrea was not alone in her struggle with an eating disorder,” Smeltzer writes in the book.

“In the U.S. as many as 10 million females and 1 million males are fighting a life and death battle with anorexia or bulimia. About 25 million more are struggling with binge eating disorders.”

Smeltzer said she wrote her book for those dealing with the illness, and for their loved ones.

A tribute to their daughter, she hopes it will provide powerful lessons to help others heal.

The first-time author, who previously worked in education, described how “Andrea’s Voice” came to be.Armed with the first three chapters that “flowed out of her” she submitted her first draft to Gurze Publishing, an eating disorder publishing specialist. In time, she would become one of Gurze Publishing’s first published memoir authors.

Originally thinking it would take six months to write, Smeltzer turned in her first draft of “Andrea’s Voice” three years later.

Another two years passed by the time the book was finally released in 2006. She was paid $2,500 and receives a small royalty per book, all of which goes to the family’s foundation, Andrea’s Voice.

When asked if she’d used a ghostwriter for the book, Smeltzer smiled and said “Andrea.”“There would be times when I would be writing but couldn’t remember something.” She described “opening her mind, to let the memories come out. I truly felt that Andrea was filling in the missing pieces,” said Smeltzer.

“The whole experience of writing the book changed me,” said Smeltzer. “I’m not the same woman.”

Not only has it changed her personally, it’s changed what her family does. Working with her husband and daughter, the family has created Andrea’s Voice, a foundation for eating disorders and related issues. The couple run the foundation from their Napa home.

She felt called to the work even before Andrea faced bulimia.

“I always knew I had a purpose and it would extend to doing something that would help others,” said Smeltzer. “I know Andrea had that strong feeling as well.

“Part of an eating disorder is feeling that you don’t have a voice. Part of the hope is that sufferers see you can suffer (from) an eating disorder and you can still have a powerful voice. It is that voice that can help bring healing. Sadly Andrea died before she could realize that,” said Smeltzer.

“One of the major themes is that perfection is not only unattainable but not desirable,” Smeltzer said.“The journey and process of accepting myself and my flaws has taught me a whole bunch of humility and a tremendous amount of compassion.”

When asked what she wanted readers of Andrea’s Voice to come away with, she said, “First I want them to be affected.”

She’d like readers to evaluate their own self image. “Do I promote unwittingly our culture’s dysfunctional view of self?” asked Smeltzer. “Or do I model the sort of self-acceptance, self-respect and self-compassion that I want my children to feel? That’s what I want people to take away. If there is dissonance between what we desire and what is, then we need to do something.”

“Our culture promotes so many facades. I can’t tell you the number of Andrea’s friends who said ‘everyone wanted to be Andrea.’ She had it all. They thought she was perfect. Look at the agony that maintaining that facade cost my daughter. And the way that facade made others feel.”

“We can transmute our fear, our anger, our jealousy, into compassion, understanding, courage and humility, but only if we are willing to really look inside and see what’s real,” she said. “Where are our facades? How do we hide who really are? How we really feel? It is not easy. Frankly, I’d love to be able to say I would have gotten there without my daughter’s death but I don’t know. Andrea initiated not only the course of my life but who I am.”

“I am forever grateful.”

“Andrea’s Voice: Silenced by Bulimia” can be found at local bookstores and online. The paperback sells for $15.95. For more information on eating disorders visit http://www.andreasvoice.org/

Some warning signs of eating disorders:

•Dieting (promotes binge eating)

•Frequent weight fluctuations

•Calorie counting

•Compulsive or excessive physical activity

•Frequent meal skipping

•Restrictive eating patterns or abnormal eating habits, preference for strange food, withdrawn or ritualized behavior at mealtime

•Substance use

•Recent withdrawal from friends or feelings of isolation, depression or irritability

•Unrealistic weight goals or an intense preoccupation with weight and body image

•Thinness as a valued goal

•Thinning hair

Resources on the Web AndreasVoice.org

Bulimia.com

EatingDisorderInfo.org

EDReferral.com

NationalEatingDisorders.org

An excerpt from From “Andrea’s Voice:

Silenced by Bulimia”In this excerpt Doris Smeltzer must deal with the immediate aftermath of her daughter’s death.

“The heavy weight that had become my heartdropped deeper into my chest. The coroner quickly imparted his condolences once more and handed the phone back to the officer who made a few more queries. His voice was empathetic and yet his need for explanation overrode the agony he must have known his questions caused. I sensed he could not help himself when I heard his final question. ‘Looking at the picture of your daughter’s drivers license, I see she was beautiful, and didn’t look overweight. Is that correct?’”

“I was initially stunned, and then remembered our own ignorance at the start of Andrea’s illness just thirteen months before. Tom and I had come to understand at least this much: Eating disorder are NOT about food and weight. Because they often begin with that focus, many people erroneously assume that is how they continue. These illnesses quickly become coping mechanisms, a way to numb, to avoid overwhelming feelings and acquire a sense of control. My answer to the officer was choked out through sobs. ‘She ... was ... perfect. No, she was not overweight... she was beautiful... in every way.’”

“Andrea had been making herself vomit for thirteen months, an extremely short time in the context of most such disorders. She was in therapy; we all were. The experts had assured us that she would be fine; she would heal. What had gone wrong? Had we failed as parents? What had happened? In those wee hours of that morning of June 1999, we were only guessing.”

“We did not have a clue.”

In Andrea’s own voice

Written by Andrea, age 19

I am tired

And my head pounds with my heartbeat

My body hurts me

A mute reminder of the times I hurt it.

“It”

I think of “it” as separate from me

Somehow

It is an individual entity

Is that how all of this happens?

Easier to harm an “it” than me

I can feel it through a fog

Somewhere it is here

When my head hurts, I hurt

When my stomach hurts, “it” hurts

I make “it” throw upNot me, never me

When I take a bath I am pampering me

When I eat, I am feeding “it”

Maintaining “it” out of necessity

Jekyll and Hyde, Me and my Body

Separate entities endlessly attached

So good and then, evil

Source: Napa Valley Register

Anorexia: is this the cause or the cure?

2007-10-07T16:37:00.001+01:00

Anorexia: is this the cause or the cure?

FIONA MacGREGOR

EACH rib is as sharply defined as any famine victim's, her spine protrudes painfully through broken skin and her haunting green eyes, huge in her hollow face, stare at the camera with a frightened recognition of her piteous state.
Isabelle Caro, 27, knows that her self-starved body "arouses repugnance", but this terribly ill young woman's naked form, captured by controversial photographer Oliviero Toscani, is now being displayed on billboards across Italy, put there by a fashion company which claims it is highlighting the problems of anorexia.

Flash & Partners, the Italian clothing company behind the posters for its label Nolita, says it is running a "campaign" to raise the issue of the fashion industry's responsibility for anorexia, and has received the backing of Italy's health minister.
However, the firm is now facing accusations of cynically exploiting a serious condition for marketing purposes, while eating disorder experts say the pictures of Caro, who weighs just 4st 12lb (31kg), could encourage other anorexia sufferers to try to lose even more weight. Meanwhile, big-name designers, including Giorgio Armani, have added their voices to the debate, protesting that anorexia has nothing to do with the fashion industry.
Whatever the motivation, the images have further fuelled the argument over fashion's role in the apparently increasing number of young women suffering from this cruel illness.
Caro herself does not blame the fashion industry for her disease, from which she began to suffer at the age of 13, owing, she says, to a "difficult childhood". She seems sincere in her hope that allowing her emaciated naked body to go on public display will help dispel any "romantic" ideas young girls might have about the condition.
The young Frenchwoman, who writes a blog about her illness, says: "I've hidden myself and covered myself for too long. Now I want to show myself fearlessly, even though I know my body arouses repugnance. I want to recover because I love life and the riches of the universe. I want to show young people how dangerous this illness is."
Yet, if Caro's motivation is honourable enough, the reasons behind the brand's decision to use her are open to question. Founded in 1998 in Italy, it takes its "street" inspiration from the small Italian community in Manhattan, New York, known as North Little Italy (No.L.Ita). Aimed at young people it has been described as "Marni meets Diesel" and numbers Jessica Simpson among its fans. So why the sudden pang of conscience about thin models?
A statement from Flash & Partners says: "The new Nolita campaign realised by Oliviero Toscani for the fashion brand of Flash & Partners leaves little room for doubt. The subject chosen to convey this message, in particular for young women who follow fashion, is that of a young girl who has fallen victim to the sickness.
"Toscani has literally laid his subject bare, to show the reality of this sickness to all through this naked body, a sickness that in most cases is caused by the stereotypes imposed on women by the fashion world." Perhaps, but is this depiction appropriate?
Fabiola De Clercq, head of the Italian organisation Association for research into Anorexia and Bulimia, says not. Describing the photos as "excessively crude", she adds: "(Young women) could feel envious of the anorexic model photographed in an ad and think that they too can get thinner. Done this way, this campaign has no sense."
It may make "no sense" to an anorexia expert, but in the world of fashion marketing, sensibilities are rather different and Caro would not be the first vulnerable young woman, anorexic or otherwise, "laid bare" by those in the fashion industry to promote their own interests. A relatively unknown brand last week, Nolita is suddenly the talk of Milan Fashion Week, and its name is the focus of much attention in the wider Italian media. Although the picture was published by Italian newspaper La Repubblica, the country's top selling daily Corriere della Sera refused to run it.
From the point of view of Italian health minister, Livia Turco, who has backed the campaign, such publicity is a good thing. "The disturbing image of Isabelle Caro could open an original channel for communication and encourage people to shoulder their responsibilities in the area of anorexia," she said.
However if this was truly the aim of the campaign, it does not appear to be working very well. Responding to the images of Caro yesterday, no-one in the Italian fashion industry seemed prepared to shoulder responsibility for anorexia, and many seemed confused as to the message the billboards were trying to get across. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana said: "Finally someone is saying the truth about anorexia - that it has nothing to do with fashion but is a psychiatric problem. We have always maintained this despite all the political campaigns on the argument. The biggest problem - and the most evident one is that of obesity but certainly anorexia is also a social problem both are linked to psychological problems. Both obesity and anorexia are problems that we should be fighting against but they are not strictly linked to fashion - in fashion women have always been thin even in the 50s and 60s."
Roberto Cavalli also denied fashion had a role to play in encouraging eating disorders: "It's easy to blame fashion for the serious problem of anorexia," he said. "Thinness and avoiding food is linked to the fact that today's youngsters are ill at ease, they are lonelier and they are also denied an adolescence or are at a frenetic pace which makes them unstable."
And while Giorgio Armani said he thought such shocking imagery was "opportune" as a way of making people face up to the dangers of anorexia, he also said the problem was far more complex than the use of this models, adding: "Anorexia has reasons which are not linked to fashion. Even people who take no notice of fashion get anorexic. I would like to meet this girl to understand the motives that made her anorexic, it's a phenomenon which perhaps has not been explored to the bottom."
So, while the Italian press may be disturbed by these stark images, the designers still acknowledge no real connection, despite the fact authorities in Madrid and Milan have recently banned the appearance of ultra-skinny models on catwalks by forcing models to carry certificates proving they are healthy.
Indeed even Toscani himself appears to be taking a fairly neutral stance. The photographer, whose work for Benetton gained him notoriety during the 1980s and 90s has never shied away from showing the body in the most vulnerable conditions. One of his most famous campaigns is that of a man dying of Aids, lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by his grieving relatives.
Speaking of his latest project, Toscani said: "I have been interested in the problem of anorexia for years. Who is responsible? Television? Fashion? It's interesting that finally an actual fashion house has understood the importance of the problem, they have taken it consciously and with courage they are displaying themselves in this campaign." Accepting he was likely to come in for criticism, he added: "There is beauty in tragedy. The paradox is that one is shocked by the image and not by the reality. As always I have done my job as a reporter, I have been a witness to my times."
In Britain, where last week's London Fashion Week saw the publication of a report by the Model Health Inquiry make 14 recommendations, including requiring models to pass medical checks before being allowed on the catwalk and barring appearances from those under 16, the Nolita campaign has been met with cynicism.
Tracey Lea Sayer, the fashion director at fashion website handbag.com, said: "I am deeply shocked by the image in the Nolita ad campaign. Flash & Partners are simply using the controversy that surrounds the fashion industry as a PR tool to gain media coverage. I find this is way below the belt and an unsuitable way for the Nolita label to gain exposure. Why is she naked? Surely she would look just as terrible dressed in their clothes? Though obviously this might have had an adverse affect on sales. What has it to do selling clothing? Nothing.
"I find it ridiculous the blame for an illness such as anorexia is pinned on the fashion industry. Anybody who thinks Isabelle Caro, the girl in the campaign, looks in anyway good obviously has many more issues than being jealous of a few size 8 girls on a catwalk. Blaming this condition on fashion only makes light of a very serious disease."
Gordon Macmillan, editor of the Brand Republic website, said: "To claim this is fighting anorexia is just misleading. We've all seen images in the media of very anorexic people. Showing people who are very thin is not going to make people stop being anorexic. This is shock advertising. It is about grabbing headlines and acres of free publicity."
However, he said, from a marketing point of view: "The thing about shock advertising is that people remember the image but they don't tend to remember much about the brand itself".
Jess McCabe, the editor of UK feminist website thefword.org.uk, said the problem of anorexia and fashion needs to be seen in the wider context of our ideas about women's bodies.
"Ultimately, women would benefit more from messages which stop putting so much pressure on how big or small our bodies are. The way this photo is posed, with the woman arranged like a model and the decision to have her pose naked, means the shock value is connected to the idea that anorexia, and being very thin, is not sexy. It's obviously not enough to have an image showing that it is not healthy. That worries me."

Source: Scotsman.com

Anorexia Stripped Bare

2007-10-07T16:28:00.001+01:00

Anorexia Stripped Bare

Milan Fashion Week Campaign Stirs Debate
MILAN, Sept. 26, 2007

(CBS) In the midst of Milan's all-important Fashion Week, the picture that is turning heads in Italy is a shocking one.

It shows what anorexia looks like stripped bare. And, it is re-igniting the debate in the fashion industry over whether designers should make sure that the models who appear on their catwalks are really healthy.

Sheila MacVicar reported on the controversy for CBS News' The Early Show.

On huge billboards above Italian city streets, the emaciated frame of Isabelle Caro, age 27, is stopping traffic.

She weighs less than 70 pounds.

Caro is not a model, but a French comedienne. She has suffered from anorexia since she was 13 years old.

"When I see myself now, I say, 'what a horror,'" Caro told a French TV interviewer. "I'm trying to get out of it, and I want young women to know that is possible."

The photographer, Oliviero Toscani, is no stranger to controversy. His past work includes highly provocative pictures for advertising campaigns by the Italian chain Benetton, including an image of a dying AIDS victim.

His intention this time, he says, is to focus debate in the fashion industry by showing graphically where the pressure to be thin and thinner is leading some young women; not just young women in the fashion business but those who go on extreme diets in hopes of looking and dressing just like them. "In the end," Toscani says, "that is how you look; if you take off the dress, that is how you look."

In the last two years, at least two models under pressure to get even thinner became anorexic and died. As a result, fashion industry professionals in Madrid and Milan banned super-skinny models from their runways, and are demanding that models hand over doctors' certificates proving their good health.

And earlier this month, during London Fashion Week, at least one model who has acknowledged battling eating disorders was sent home for being too thin to appear on the runway.

British model Charlotte Carter says she thought she was on the verge of recovery from her eating disorder. "However, I wasn't," she acknowledges, "and they basically told me to go home and rest up. They thought I was beautiful but I needed to take care of myself."

Italy's most famous fashion designer, Giorgio Armani, calls the billboard campaign "crude but appropriate."

Armani, who showed his latest collection earlier this week, says "it's not just the fashion world. It's the whole system." He's ready for change. "Skin and bones," he says. "It gives me the creeps, too."

Backstage at her show, another leading designer, Rosita Missoni, argued that the campaign was right. "It's not to be hidden," Missoni says. "We have to talk about it and try to find a way to fight it."

But doctors and specialists who treat anorexics argue these pictures are not improving understanding, and may even damage those who are suffering.

"We need to change the way everybody thinks and talks about an eating disorder," says Susan Ringwood, an expert on eating disorders. "It's not trivial. It's not a fashion accessory. It's a serious mental illness and it's not just about your weight and shape. These images reinforce those stereotypes instead of challenging them."

One last message from Isabelle Caro: She wants people to know that anorexia nearly killed her last year.

The anti-anorexia campaign won approval from Italy's health minister, who reminded people that anorexia is a serious mental illness, and that it's fatal in 20 percent of its sufferers. Health officials here say it's about opening a discussion.

Source: CBS News

(If you click on the link there's a few videos to watch as well, there's Roberto cavalli on anorexia, Keira Knightly on anorexia, eating disorders the truth and anorexia and fashion).

French fashion supremos divided over Italy's anti-anorexia ads

2007-10-07T16:25:00.000+01:00

French fashion supremos divided over Italy's anti-anorexia ads

Sep 27, 2007
PARIS (AFP) — Italy's anti-anorexia ads have divided France's powerful fashion industry -- with the high end couture federation deeming them "scandalous" while its ready-to-wear cousin hails a fresh move to keep skinny models out of fashion.
Asked to comment on photographer Oliviero Toscani's striking image of a nude anorexic woman which was plastered on billboards and in magazines across Italy this week, Didier Grumbach, head of the French Couture Federation, told AFP:
"I'm pleased this is not happening in France. I find this absolutely scandalous.
"Winning notoriety through people's illness is painful. What we're seeing here is sensationalism by a label, to the detriment of an extremely serious social problem," Grumbach said.
Toscani's picture of Frenchwoman Isabelle Caro, who weighs just 32 kilogrammes (70 pounds) for a height of 1.65 metres, is part of a campaign by Italian clothing firm No-l-ita that was launched in the middle of Milan fashion week under the slogan "No to Anorexia."
"I thought this could be a chance to use my suffering to get a message across, and finally put an image on what thinness represents and the danger it leads to -- which is death," Caro told the press this week.
The French fashion industry, gearing up for its own spring-summer ready-to-wear Fashion Week starting Saturday, to date has failed to finalise a proposed charter to keep ultra thin models off catwalks, magazines and advertising posters.
"This young girl is not a model," Grumbach also told AFP. "This is low behaviour ... It is degrading."
But the head of the French Ready-to-Wear Federation, Jean-Pierre Mocho, did not agree.
"If you don't show people (anorexia) it remains nothing more than dinner-table talk," he told AFP. "You must show the disaster."
Mocho said his federation favoured a raft of stiff measures in France to meet growing global concerns over the link between showcasing skinny bodies and anorexia.
"Whatever the size of a company, measures should be imposed," he said.
Mocho bemoaned the fact that France was heading towards drawing up a consensus charter containing guidelines but no legal provisos.
Leaders of both France's powerful couture world and the ready-to-wear industry had joined a working-group set up by the Health Ministry in January amid concern over teenage anorexia following the death of two South American models last year.
But talks to fine-tune an ethics "charter on body image" drafted in May were suspended and will not resume until next month, a ministry official said.
In France, agencies require a government-registered licence and must request special authorisation for models aged under 16, who undergo regular medical check-ups.
Also asked for comment, the head of the National Union of Model Agencies (UNAM), Isabelle Saint-Felix, said she was unaware of the Italian campaign but believed that anorexia and thin models should not be lumped together.
"We have extremely specific legislation in France for model agencies," she said. "We should do more to promote our laws rather than anything else."

Source: AFP

Taste and anorexia

2007-10-07T16:21:00.001+01:00

Taste and anorexia

Former anorexics show less activity in the part of the brain that regulates taste in a study.

By Janet Cromley, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer October 1, 2007

Apart of the brain that helps regulate taste may play a role in anorexia nervosa.

Using functional MRIs, researchers at UC San Diego and the University of Pittsburgh measured activity in the brains of 32 women, while the women tasted sugar and distilled water. Half of the women had recovered from anorexia; the other half had never had the eating disorder. The researchers found that the former anorexics had significantly less activity in the insular cortex and surrounding areas of the brain when tasting sugar than did the control group.

"We get hunger signals to go ahead and eat, and food is rewarding," says lead author Dr. Walter Kaye, a professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego and the University of Pittsburgh. "It appears that people with anorexia may be getting different signals.

"We're beginning to understand that there are good biologic reasons why people may be vulnerable to developing anorexia and bulimia," Kaye says.

The study, available online in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, was publicized in advance of this week's conference of the National Eating Disorders Assn. in San Diego.

janet.c romley@latimes.com

Source: LA Times

Sickly thin is still 'in'

2007-10-07T16:18:00.001+01:00

Sickly thin is still 'in'

By LYN COCKBURN

Here's the skinny out of Montreal. The organizers of Montreal Fashion Week have announced they want to ban overly thin girls from the show.
Bon. Except that almost exactly a year ago, the organizers of the Milan and Madrid fashion weeks said almost exactly the same thing.
In the meantime, the runways and fashion magazines continue to highlight models who appear anorexic. Their arms look like twigs and their legs are concave.
For all of the born-again concern about the health of its models, the fashion industry still promotes skinny. Thin is still in and gaunt is still good.
Kelly Cutrone, owner of People's Revolution, a company that produces fashion shows worldwide, is proof that it's the skinny model who gets to work.

"If we get a girl who is bigger than a (size) 4, she is not going to fit the clothes. Clothes look better on thin people. The fabric hangs better," she says.
Size 4 might work nicely on someone who's small boned and stands five-foot-two.
Most models are tall, five-foot-10 or so, and if they can easily fit into a size 4, they need medical attention.
Yet the mixed messages from the fashion industry, the media, Hollywood and society in general are enough to confuse or even brainwash young girls into thinking they've got to lose weight. It makes them think there is some ideal weight out there just waiting for them to under-eat their way to.
How many times do we pick up a magazine or supermarket tab that screams, Is Paris Hilton too thin? This is balanced, of course, by the snotty comments about Britney Spears's abdomen during her ill-fated appearance at MTV music video awards.
In other words, there is indeed some magical weight for women and it appears to be one ounce on the correct side of anorexia.
Nothing highlights this controversy better than the billboards that were posted all across Italy last month to raise awareness about anorexia - and to promote the fashion label Nolita, that is directed towards young women.
Featuring naked and emaciated actress Isabelle Caro, 27, who weighs just over 68 pounds, the billboards have aroused a storm of protest. To find the pic, do a Google search for "Nolita + ad."
Photographer Oliviero Toscani took the photo as part of his campaign against anorexia and Cara herself said: "I've hidden myself and covered myself for too long."
On the other hand, health experts are outraged and voiced fears that teenage girls might be encouraged to "compete for extreme thinness."
Nolita funded the posters, it said, "to use the naked body to show everyone the reality of this illness ...''
A Milan city council official called the Toscani poster "pornographic."
In this ongoing debate over how thin is too thin, nobody seems to notice that somehow, the blame has been placed on the skinny shoulders of the victim.
She's either too plump or too thin and if the latter, there are cries to ban her. According to some, she has to be no larger than a size 4, according to others she ought to be regularly examined by a doctor.
In Madrid, at least one person recognizes that a good deal of the blame lies at the feet of the fashion industry. "If they don't go along with it [new rules] the next step is to seek legislation, just like with tobacco," said Carmen Gonzales of Spain's Anorexia and Bulimia Association.
But this column didn't start in Madrid; it began in Montreal and that's where it's going to end.
Yves Jean Lacasse, a Montreal designer said recently: "The majority of designers in Montreal or Toronto take natural bodies. When I say natural, I mean sizes 6, 7, 8, not 2, 3, 4."
Give that man a lettuce leaf. Every four hours. For six months.

Source: Edmonton Sun

TOSCANI: CAMPAIGN AGAINST TV AFTER THAT AGAINST ANOREXIA

2007-10-07T16:12:00.000+01:00

TOSCANI: CAMPAIGN AGAINST TV AFTER THAT AGAINST ANOREXIA

(AGI) - Rome, Oct.2 - Oliviero Toscani isn't stopping: after the controversy arisen over his shocking campaign against anorexia, with large street posters showing a skeleton-thin model, the next campaign the artist wishes to lead is "against television". He said so himself at Palazzo Chigi, at the presentation of his campaign, for the Health Ministry. As for the criticisms Milan mayor Letizia Moratti made to his anti-anorexia image, Toscani said "I'm sorry for Milan, because it has such a mayor...censorship is never intelligent".

Source: AGI

Milan's mayor orders anorexia ad taken down from its billboards

2007-10-07T14:48:00.000+01:00

Milan's mayor orders anorexia ad taken down from its billboards

4 days ago
MILAN, Italy (AFP) — Milan's mayor has ordered that an advertisement showing a naked anorexic young woman be taken down from billboards controlled by the city, a city spokesman said Tuesday.
"The mayor has called for this campaign to be withdrawn from the city's network of advertising billboards," said a spokesman told AFP.
The adverts will nevertheless remain on privately owned billboards.
The controversial advert was shot by Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani, the man behind hard-hitting and equally controversial campaigns by the Benetton group.
"What a shame that the city of Milan has a mayor like Moratti," said Toscani.
Milan is the second city in Italy to display the ads for Italian clothing firm "No-l-ita", which feature the slogan "No" to anorexia underneath.
The campaign against anorexia has stirred a fierce debate in Italy.
In France, the advertising self-regulatory body (BVP) strongly advised billboard owners against displaying the ads.

Source: AFP

Schools warned about values and anorexia

2007-10-07T14:38:00.000+01:00

Schools warned about values and anorexia

October 3, 2007 - 9:54AM

Secondary schools are promoting values that could inadvertently encourage some teenage girls to become anorexic, an Australian researcher says.
University of Western Sydney Associate Professor Christine Halse said schools encouraged self-discipline, high achievement, a drive for perfection and body awareness - all key indicators of anorexia.
The characteristics were highly regarded in society, but problems arose when vulnerable girls took on such values and over-applied them, becoming, for example, overly disciplined about food.
"The important point is we are not saying schools cause anorexia, but they create a particular culture that can encourage it in susceptible individuals," Prof Halse said.
Prof Halse conducted in-depth interviews with 24 girls aged between 14 and 20, who were receiving treatment for anorexia nervosa at two major Sydney hospitals, and their parents.
She found schools had played a critical role in development of the girls' self-image and self-esteem, and many cited particular experiences at school that had been defining moments of their anorexia.
"It was things like being at swimming carnivals and everyone is in swimsuits, and the girl suddenly realises she is much bigger than anybody else," Prof Halse said.
"Or she is trying out for a sports team and there is an ideal weight you have to meet to get into the team."
Prof Halse said schools had to find a difficult balance between battling the obesity crisis and stemming the tide of eating disorders.
"No one would argue it's desirable to be unhealthy and we have school curriculum designed to beat the obesity epidemic, but with particular sub-groups within the community, the messages they pick up can be quite destructive," she said.
"How adults intend them to be viewed is not always how young people interpret them."
As the levels of obesity in the community rise, eating disorders are also increasing.
About 1.6 per cent of people in the western world, including Australia, are thought to suffer a moderate to severe eating disorder.
Prof Halse said the impact of external factors such as the media on eating disorders was well known, but the impact of school could not be discounted as young people spent most of their time at school or with school friends.
The findings of the four-year study, funded by an Australian Research Council linkage grant, were recently published in the international journal Gender and Education.
© 2007 AAP

Source: theage.com.au

Anorexia is like ecstasy for sufferers

2007-10-07T14:36:00.000+01:00

Anorexia is like ecstasy for sufferers

Last Updated: 5:01pm BST 03/10/2007
An addictive pathway has emerged that offers new hope for treatments, says Roger Highfield
Evidence that anorexia can be regarded as a kind of addiction is raised by a study that shows that starvation has similar effects on the brain to those caused by ecstasy.

The possibility of new treatments for the eating disorder are raised by the discovery that both anorexia and ecstasy abnormally suppress appetite as a result of the same foul up of signals in the brain, according to Valérie Compan of University de Nimes and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Montpellier, and colleagues.
Thus, said Dr Compan, anorexia can be thought of as a kind of addiction, so sufferers become "hooked".
Ecstasy appears to mimic the appetite loss that is characteristic of anorexia and the team reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that both affect the nucleus accumbens, one of the brain's reward centres, where the messenger chemical serotonin acts on a type of protein, a receptor called 5-HT4R.
Mice that lacked this receptor better resist anorexia-like behaviour induced by ecstasy, said Dr Compan. To reinforce its role, they found that blocking this receptor in the nucleus accumbens increased food intake in studies of other mice.

"Our studies over seven years now open the possibility that 5-HT4 receptor would represent an important therapeutic target to treat patient suffering from these disorders," said Dr Compan. However, she emphasised that much more work must be done to translate these findings to patients.
Susan Ringwood, chief executive of the eating disorder charity Beat, commented: "Eating disorders are a complex and challenging condition. We are learning so much more about what the causes are, and particularly the role of the brain's chemistry.
"It does help us to understand that eating disorders are not just a fad or a phase, but a serious illness. The sooner someone gets the help and treatment they need, the better- because eating disorders can be beaten."

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

'Don't blame me for anorexia' says Rachel Zoe, the world's most sought-after stylist

2007-10-07T14:34:00.001+01:00

'Don't blame me for anorexia' says Rachel Zoe, the world's most sought-after stylist

By LINA DAS

Last updated at 19:30pm on 6th October 2007

She's the most sought-after stylist in the world, but Rachel Zoe is most famous for the size-zero measurements of her celebrity clients – and has even been blamed for making anorexia fashionable. However, as she launches her definitive guide to looking glamorous, she says: "I've never told anyone to lose weight."
It's only 10am, but Rachel Zoe has already been up for four hours, on the phone to Europe from her office in her LA home. She's had to respond to around 300 e-mails and will probably have to answer a few more before she catches a flight to New York later in the day.
It's a typical day for Rachel, "in so far as any day is typical. It's crazy," she says, pausing briefly to let her gardener in, "but my life is crazy".

Rachel Zoe (her second name rhymes with 'low') is without question the most sought-after and influential stylist in the world.
The actresses she dresses – including Lindsay Lohan, Mischa Barton and, during the awards season, Keira Knightley, Kate Beckinsale and Cameron Diaz – are so widely photographed for magazines that what they wear subconsciously influences the clothes-buying habits of the women who read them.
She's in such demand that she reportedly charges $6,000 a day, and designers are so eager to have her clients in their frocks that they even offer her bribes (none of which, she claims, she accepts).
But while it is the job of any stylist to ensure that their clients are camera-ready, Rachel is also credited with turning around the careers of certain stars by transforming their look.
When Nicole Richie employed Rachel in 2004, she was virtually unknown and not noted for her stylishness (she turned up at the airport to meet Rachel wearing a tracksuit and an 'I Love LA' baseball cap).
But as Rachel worked her magic, Richie became a staple of the gossip and fashion magazines, with young women quick to emulate the Zoe look – tousled hair, perpetual tan, oversized sunglasses, vintage dresses, huge handbags and layered accessories.
"So many women get their fashion information by looking at paparazzi pictures, and she has found a way of making those girls look fabulous when they're running out for a Starbucks," said designer Michael Kors of Rachel's influence.
"She's very influential. She has editorial pages all over the world without editing a magazine."
But Rachel's fame has brought with it some bad press. Stories about her abound: she has been accused of obtaining diet pills from Mexico and distributing them to her friends, and, worse still, of bringing anorexia back into fashion.
Last October events came to a very public head when the increasingly skinny Nicole Richie dropped Rachel, claiming that she 'wanted to surround herself with positive people and influences'. One can't help but wonder who this woman really is that she can wield such power.
So it comes as a nice surprise to find that Rachel is very down-to-earth. The pin-slim 36-year-old is calm and measured, displaying a vulnerability and warmth that is surprising given all the sniping that surrounds her.
Such is her status in the fashion industry, that Rachel has written a book about her style and how to achieve it, Style A to Zoe: the Art of Fashion, Beauty, & Everything Glamour.
"I wrote it because I want people to understand and be less intimidated by fashion," she says.
"I look at it as a lifestyle, not just as something you do for a day or an event. There is a lot of fantasy in fashion and my goal is to make that fantasy a reality.
"I've always been obsessed with style and glamour and if I want anyone to get anything out of my book, it's how we can all have them in our lives," she says.
"Usually with style books, it's all about the dress or the shoes, but I think jewellery is instrumental in defining one's own style, so I've put the section on accessories at the front," she continues.
"If you see a woman in pearls, you know immediately what she's all about, and similarly if you see someone wearing turquoise jewellery, you assume that she's slightly bohemian."
Rachel's own look is largely influenced by her mother, Leslie, who was, she says, "very tanned and would always wear amazing oversized jewellery. I think a lot of my style comes from my mother's in the 1970s".
Rachel Zoe Rosenzweig, whose parents were wealthy art collectors, was born in New York and grew up in Short Hills, New Jersey.
As a child, she was obsessed with clothes: "I had my first styling job when I was eight. I didn't like the way Douglas – the son of a family friend – dressed for school, so I said to his mum, 'I really believe Douglas can do better.'
"She let me rifle through his wardrobe and I sorted out outfits for Monday to Friday, right down to shoes and socks. He wasn't very pleased," she laughs.
Then, when she was 13, her mother took her to Paris, "and after saving every dime, I walked into Louis Vuitton and bought a messenger bag. My parents thought I was out of my mind spending all that money, but I still have it to this day".
"I never wanted for anything growing up, but despite that, my parents instilled great values in me. I didn't want things handed to me, I wanted to earn them myself."
Even as a child, Rachel was "always the one who was overdressed. My goal was to be different from my friends. My tragedy as a teenager was to grow up during the 1980s, which was one of the worst fashion moments in history – even in my work today, I've referenced every era except that one!"
Rachel went on to study psychology and sociology at George Washington University in Washington DC, "because I've always been fascinated by people.
"As it turned out, it's been incredibly helpful in my career as a stylist because understanding people gives you a level of patience that you definitely need in this job," she chuckles.
"And it makes you realise that for all their stardom, actresses are people too, with their own hang-ups. I'm quite sisterly and gentle by nature, and I bring that to my work."
After university, Rachel moved to New York, becoming the fashion editor of YM magazine, and then switched to celebrity styling, working with clients such as Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson.
She moved to LA in 2003, dropping her last name on the advice of an agent, and the following year landed the job styling Nicole Richie. Crueller critics suggested that Richie was going through a "chunky" phase at this point, but with Rachel at the helm, Richie's style rapidly evolved – and her body, noticeably, dissolved.
And it wasn't just the case with Richie either. As Rachel worked and partied with celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan and Keira Knightley (unlike other stylists, Rachel has never shied away from being photographed with "her girls"), they became noticeably slimmer.
Indeed the resemblance of Lohan and Richie to Rachel prompted the New York Post to dub them 'Zoebots', leading to the anorexia claims.
"The accusation that I'm somehow responsible for causing anorexia is beyond hurtful," she says.
"I've never told anyone to lose weight. I've worked with all sizes of women from slim to full-figured – some of my clients are a size 12 [UK size 16]."
"I've also had clients who I've taken through pregnancy and have gained 60lb, so to suggest that I'm fostering anorexia is ridiculous."
With the styles that have become part of her trademark look, namely skinny jeans and floaty dresses, does Rachel not think that even if she doesn't tell clients to lose weight that they might feel pressured into doing so in order to look good in the clothes she has selected for them?
She tenses slightly.
"Well, I don't know about that.
"The thing is, we've had thin people in fashion since fashion began, and blaming one person for that gives me way too much power. I don't have the power to cause anorexia any more than I have the power to cause obesity or addiction. If a parent has a child with a problem, they look to blame anything or anyone they can, and I think it's the parents who have to say, 'We should try to fix this'."
Rachel says that she protects the people around her "like a pitbull", and that to date she has had "only one falling out" - albeit a rather public one - with Nicole Richie.
Richie went on to post a rather nasty item on her MySpace page, which read, "What 35-year-old raisin-face whispers her order of three pieces of asparagus for dinner at Chateau every night, and hides her deathly disorder by pointing the finger at me, and used her last paycheck I wrote her to pay for a publicist instead of a nutritionist? HINT: her nickname is Lettucecup."
No name was mentioned, but everyone got the reference.
"That whole episode was devastating on another level entirely," says Rachel softly.
"There was a point around November last year when I didn't leave the house much at all, except to work, and there were tears on my part, too. I compare it to the feeling you get when your parents say, 'We're so disappointed in you,' and you turn into a six-year-old on the spot because you feel so small."
Did the comments hurt more because Richie and Rachel had been like sisters?
"Yes, we were," she says.
"It takes a lot to shock me, but that did. I wish nothing but the best for Nicole, and I'm happy for her pregnancy, but no, I haven't called her to congratulate her. I'm over that whole thing now."
"Has it changed me?
"I've learnt not to trust people as much and realise that in the past I may have been naive. I do put my heart into things and that leaves you open to hurt, so now I'm going through life with my guard slightly up, which I didn't do before. It's sad, but it's a reality."
She credits her husband Rodger Berman (whose company, Recognition Media, buys awards shows) with "keeping me sane' and appears to be besotted with him, despite the fact that they have been together for 15 years and married for ten.
"People constantly ask how we've managed to stay together," she says, "and the answer is that it's really not that hard. Marriage should be your joy, not hard work, and we've got to the stage now where we're finishing each other's sentences."
"We met working in a restaurant when I was a student. The very first day he alluded to the fact that he would be very happy to make me his wife, and we've never broken up. I was petrified going down the aisle because I've always been really independent, but being with Rodger is just right."
And are babies on the horizon?
"Well, babies I'm not sure about, but baby, singular, yes, I am planning on that. People have been saying I'd make an amazing mother ever since I was ten!"
One wonders how Rodger copes with the frantic nature of his wife's job, and Rachel admits that, "during the Oscar period, he occasionally threatens to walk out".
"I have five closets in our house - one huge walk-in, three others and then a second bedroom that has now become a closet, which he's not happy about. But the stress and adrenalin of the job, they are the things that keep me slim."
Her flight to New York pending, Rachel prepares to take her leave.
"People say they're amazed by the fact that someone in my job has become so well-known, but no one's more shocked than me," she insists.
"I try to disregard the fame, though, and just concentrate on doing my job, which I love. Glamour is never going to change the world, but if it makes people happy, then it can't be a bad thing."
• Style A to Zoe: the Art of Fashion, Beauty, & Everything Glamour by Rachel Zoe with Rose Apodaca is published by Little Brown at £16.99.
Tor order a copy for £15.30 with free p&p, call the YOU Bookshop on 0845 606 4204

Source: You

Anorexia may represent an addiction

2007-10-07T14:31:00.000+01:00

Anorexia may represent an addiction

By Megan Rauscher
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Scientists from France have found that anorexia and the highly addicting club-drug ecstasy activate some of the same brain pathways, a finding that may help explain the addictive nature of anorexia and other eating disorders and lead to new treatments.
In a paper published this week, Dr. Valerie Compan of Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Montpellier, and colleagues report that both anorexia and ecstasy reduce the drive to eat by stimulating the same subset of receptors for the neurotransmitter serotonin.
These so-called 5-HT4 receptors are located in a brain structure associated with feelings of reward called the nucleus accumbens.
In mice, Compan and colleagues stimulated these receptors, which are known to play a role in addictive behavior, and found that this led to anorexic-like behavior -- food-fed mice ate less and food-deprived mice showed a reduced drive to eat.
Stimulating these receptors in mice also boosted production of the same enzymes stimulated in response to cocaine and amphetamine use.
Blocking the receptors increased food intake in the animals and mice missing these receptors were less sensitive to the appetite-suppressant effects of ecstasy.
"Our data may converge to open the possibility that anorexia can be a reward-relating problem involving neuronal mechanisms," Compan told Reuters Health.
This research, she added, may have implications for the development of drug treatments for eating disorders. "Our studies over seven years now open the possibility that 5-HT4 receptor could represent an important therapeutic target to treat patients suffering from these disorders," Compan said

SOURCE: PNAS Early Edition, October 1, 2007.

Students far from home binge eat to ease stress

2007-10-07T14:29:00.000+01:00

Students far from home binge eat to ease stress

TRALEE PEARCE
From Friday's Globe and Mail
October 5, 2007 at 9:17 AM EDT

Over Thanksgiving weekend, as many families welcome university undergrads home for the first time since the school year started, university students may be grappling with health problems their parents don't know about.
Female students living away from home are three times more likely to report symptoms of binge eating than those who continue to live at home in their first year of university, according to a new study from the University of Alberta published today in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.
Binge eating, or solo sessions of overeating, can progress into bulimia, an eating disorder that involves bingeing and purging - and is more common than anorexia, which often develops in younger teens.
But binge eating is increasingly being considered an eating disorder and a contributor to obesity, says Erin Barker, lead author and developmental psychologist.
"It often happens after a period of restricting [food intake]for a week or two," she says. "Then, maybe something stressful or negative happens. It's a coping mechanism."
The research, which did not look at bulimia or anorexia, suggests there could be something in the act of going to university that affects the prevalence of binge eating.
"There could be bumps in the road and for some people it might not be great," says Dr. Barker of going to school away from home. "It's not just about choosing your classes and adjusting to academics."
Previous research has identified a high rate of bulimia and anorexia among the university student population, with a focus on the risk factors of poor body image and low self-esteem.
Dr. Barker surveyed 101 first-year female students, some of whom were living at home and some away from home, about both their eating habits and how they felt they were fitting in to their new environments.
Students who had a pre-existing dissatisfaction with their bodies were three times as likely to report symptoms of binge eating than those without.
And if they were having trouble building social networks, students were 50 per cent more likely to show symptoms.
Even women who didn't have eating problems in high school were at an increased risk when faced with a stressful transition to university.
"In high school they may have had better social networks and coping skills that helped them avoid eating problems. Maybe they had body dissatisfaction then, which is likely, but it wasn't contributing to eating problems before."
Add in a new relationship with food - such as a dorm cafeteria instead of the family dinner table - and you have a recipe for self-destructive behaviour, Dr. Barker says.
Kim Maertz, training director of Student Counselling Services at the University of Alberta, says he is treating several patients dealing with the underlying problems that lead to binge eating.
Change is stressful, he says, and feeds into any negative cycle such as eating disorders and alcoholism.
"It's related to an inability to deal with their emotions," he says.
"And their emotions are particularly more volatile at these transition periods."
For parents, knowing this is a risk period can be a boon. "The sooner you can deal with an eating disorder, the better, because these become habitual and hard to change," Dr. Maertz says.
The implications of wolfing down an extra-large pizza alone can go beyond the so-called freshman-15 weight gain long associated with first-year university.
Binge eaters risk becoming bulimic if they start to compensate for overeating by forcing themselves to vomit, taking laxatives or exercising excessively.
But Dr. Barker cautions that overeating on occasion is not necessarily a red flag.
"Eating a lot at Thanksgiving isn't binge eating," says Dr. Barker, who did the research as part of her PhD at the University of Alberta and who is now at Beloit College in Wisconsin.
"Binge eating isn't social - it's something people do alone because they're embarrassed."

Source: Globe Life

Fakes

2007-09-22T18:17:00.000+01:00

I've seen a lot of fake pictures used on thinspiration pages where photos have been doctored to make it look like models/celebrities have bones sticking out and are generally much thinner than they really are so here's an example of one of the doctored photos:

Fake

Real

Shy Eating: I'll Pass, Thanks

2007-09-22T18:08:00.000+01:00

Shy Eating: I'll Pass, Thanks

Fear of Eating in Front of Others Is a Reality for an Increasing Number of Girls

Something many people take great joy in, going to dinner with friends, induces an incredible fear in others.

It's been called "shy eating," a fear of eating in public, and increasingly, doctors think it can serve as a warning sign of more serious eating disorders.
Leslie Lipton said during her teen years it wasn't boys or public speaking that made her self conscious -- it was food.
"It's this panic, this tightness that would come over my chest I didn't know what to do with myself," Lipton said. "I just assumed that no matter what I put in front of me people were going to be watching me and judging me."
Lipton believes it was an early warning sign of a far worse problem. At 14, her fear of food transitioned into anorexia, and she dropped below 100 pounds.
"It can be a sign of future things -- more so because it speaks of such an anxiety of one's self and a self consciousness," Lipton said. "That's the link between the shy eating and the eating disorder."
Eating disorder specialist Dr. Renee Zweig said it's a real problem among young girls that often falls through the cracks.
"Parents often don't have a clue in the very beginning that there is some form of a precursor to an eating disorder going on, because the restriction is happening outside of the home with peers," Zweig said.
"What parents will see," Zweig added, "is that girls will start to get more obsessive about their bodies."

Some experts say the stereotypes about beauty and eating in public go back to the early 1900's.

Source: ABC News

Slim hopes for sanity

2007-09-21T20:01:00.001+01:00

Slim hopes for sanity

Skinny models send out the wrong message to women, particularly teens
JANET BAGNALL, The GazettePublished: 11 hours ago
Fashion week in London wrapped up yesterday. Aside from establishing trends - more colour, more structure - the event was noteworthy for what if failed to do. London, like Madrid before it, had intended to tackle the problem of undersized, undernourished models. The deaths of two emaciated models last year meant the fashion industry was forced to acknowledge what has been painfully obvious to outsiders for years: Fashion models increasingly look like they've stepped out of a concentration camp.
The British Fashion Council set up an inquiry into the issue of too thin models last March, appointing the grandly named Baroness Kingsmill to head it. Nothing if not prompt, the Model Health Inquiry reported back to the British Fashion Council in time for London Fashion Week.
Its findings? As many as 40 per cent of models might have an eating disorder. Baroness Kingsmill wrote: "Evidence of the vulnerability of women in the modelling profession was startling and models are at high risk of eating disorders."

That sounds like a call to action. If Madrid issued orders that no model under a body mass index of 18 could work its runways, surely London, faced with a possible four in 10 models suffering eating disorders, would do no less.
Wrong. It is doing much less. The inquiry recommended that models provide, at their own expense, "good health certificates proving they are fit to work." A model suffering a mild form of eating disorder could still work, Baroness Kingsmill believes, if her doctor agreed.
The baroness evidently wants to think the best of the people involved with her client, the British Fashion Council. "There is a deep lack of knowledge about eating disorders in the fashion industry," she wrote, "and a widespread desire among many of its constituents to radically improve the current situation by banning the under-16s, introducing health certification and ensuring professional standards of education and research."
Speaking of lack of knowledge, one hopes the Model Health Inquiry didn't positively ignore these facts before making its recommendations:
At any time, 70 per cent of women and 35 per cent of men are dieting. (In 1993, Statistics Canada reported that in women between the ages of 15 and 25, one per cent to two per cent have anorexia and three per cent to five per cent have bulimia.)
Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses, with 10 per cent to 20 per cent dying from complications.
Eating disorders are now the third most common chronic illness in adolescent girls.
Among female athletes, the prevalence of eating disorders is reported to be between 15 per cent and 62 per cent.
The annual death rate for women with anorexia was found in 1999 to be more than 12 times higher than the annual death rate among young women in the general population.
Experts say despite their name, eating disorders are not about food but rather have to do with identity and self-esteem. Treating these almost intractable disorders is made even more difficult by how hard it has become to detect them in a world where extreme thinness and constant dieting are becoming the norm. The fashion world's obsession with ultra-thin models glamourizes a waif-like look that a tiny percentage of the world's women would come by naturally.

There is correlation between culture and the existence of eating disorders, according to experts quoted in the Los Angeles Times. The newspaper cited the 1999 findings of Dr. Anne Becker of Harvard Medical School.
In 1995, television was introduced to the island of Fiji, followed three years later by a jump in eating disorders. Becker found 74 per cent of Fijian girls said they felt "too big or too fat" at least occasionally. In pre-television Fiji, it was a compliment to tell someone they had gained weight.
In Australia, a women's group, Women's Forum Australia, carried out research on the impact of advertising on girls' and women's feelings of self-worth. Forum spokesperson Melinda Tankard Reist said "thin, sexualized and unattainable images of women were having a major damaging impact on body dissatisfaction and contributing to unhealthy eating behaviours."

London Fashion Week could have been more helpful. And just who do they think is going to be wearing all those bright colours - as opposed to slimming black?
jbagnall@thegazette.canwest.com
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2007

Source: Canada.com

Light therapy

2007-09-21T19:58:00.001+01:00

Light therapy

How light therapy heals a spectrum of conditions, from depression to eating disorders.
By Astrid Van Den Broek

When Kristin Tokarsky first set her bright light box on her desk at work, her colleagues thought it a bit strange. But puzzlement over the box, which Kristin, 31, would switch on twice a day to take in the light's white glow, soon gave way to believing in its effects. "Before bright light therapy, I'd constantly have to remind myself to focus. It would take me twice as long as anyone else to do tasks at work," says Kristin, who was suffering from the side-effects of antidepressant medications. Now she can concentrate better, and the light also helps boost her overall energy.

Light therapy for sleep, seasonal, and nonseasonal depressionWhat might surprise you is that Kristin is using light therapy for something other than seasonal affective disorder (SAD), the condition most commonly associated with light therapy, in which depression is triggered by the lack of daylight during the winter months. Kristin's story is just one example of how light therapy can help treat a number of conditions, such as sleep disorders, nonseasonal depression, premenstrual syndrome and even bulimia. How light therapy helpsIn sleep disorders, for instance, studies found that in early morning awakening insomnia, bright light therapy helped people wake later and increase total sleep time. One American study found that in patients with depression, the combination of light therapy and antidepressants sped up improvements over taking medications alone (and lowered the chance of side-effects). A SAD study showed light therapy was actually an equal form of treatment to antidepressants. In a small study of people with bulimia, light therapy (along with medication and psychotherapy) lowered the number of binges per week by 10 per cent, and it also significantly improved mood.The lowdown on light"We don't know exactly how light therapy works," says Dr. Raymond Lam, a professor of psychiatry and head of the division of clinical neuroscience at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. "But there are a couple of major theories." The leading one is the role of the hormone melatonin on our circadian cycles. Melatonin helps trigger the sleep cycle once darkness sets in, and it helps our system slow our body's functions down as we snooze. If your body is short of melatonin, you won't log the deep sleep your body needs, which can lead to depression and irritability. Light is a factor because exposure to it slows down the production of melatonin. Scientists figure by using light to put the brakes on melatonin in the morning, your body clock will be reset so you have proper levels of it at night. "So the theory is that people with winter depression, for example, don't synchronize their internal clock properly with the changing levels of light from summer to winter," says Lam. "The other theory," he adds, "is that light switches our brain's neurotransmitters, which control mood, sleep and appetite, on and off." Depression, poor appetite, low energy and insomnia can also be related to those neurotransmitter levels.

Source: Homemakers.com

Fighting the 'Freshman 15'

2007-09-21T19:16:00.000+01:00

Fighting the 'Freshman 15'

Unhealthy eating habits can mean weight gain for some college students

September 21, 2007
BY KENDRICK MARSHALL kmarshall@scn1.com
A first-year college student's objective is to receive a quality education -- not a double chin or beer belly. However, some students bring home a little extra girth after their inaugural collegiate campaign has been complete.
According to many health officials and students alike, it is not unusual for most freshmen to become members of the "Freshman 15."

Studies by dietitians and health care professionals over the years have demonstrated that the average freshman gains at least four to five pounds during each of the first two semesters of college.
The unlimited helpings in student cafeterias, late night study breaks, fast foods and vending machine snacks have been cited as factors for the increases in waist size.
While gaining a few pounds for some students might not seem like such as big deal, other students who struggle with eating disorders might find that the added weight could lead to serious mental and physical issues down the road.
Michelle Lampi, a senior at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, said weight gain is a fact of life for students.
"A college freshman is often confronted with cafeteria stocked with fried foods, pasta and sugary desserts," Lampi said. "It's not too hard to find yourself eating three large meals every day, and that does not include snack foods or dining out."
Lampi said she put on 15 pounds her first semester away from the home-cooked meals she enjoyed while living in Mundelein.
Some of the meals Lampi and other students were subjected to included foods saturated with sugars, fats and starches. Add in the fact that she felt compelled to pile up her plate with food because she was only on a three meal a day meal plan, the weight gain was almost inevitable.
"When I was not eating in the dining hall I was basically living off Ramen noodles and junk food," she said. "It was not good at all."
While Lampi never dealt with a serious eating disorder herself, she was aware that her body image was becoming more of an issue to her than when she was a student at Mundelein High School.
Feelings of trying to have the perfect body, along with self-doubt, began creeping into her mind after the initial weight gain began.
"I was conscious of how I looked when going out to places," she said. "I never really thought that way before, but I guess I wanted to look like everyone else."
Moreover, that has been a major issue for Highland Park-based National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders clinic that specializes in treating men and women who suffer from various eating disorders.
"The media and advertisers paint a misleading picture of what people are supposed to look like, when the majority of the time those people are vastly underweight," said ANAD spokesperson Darcy Gans.
Catherine Cotter, a certified social worker and clinical psychologists who practices in Deerfield, said many college students fall into the trap of overeating due to the trauma of leaving home for the first time and having to live a completely different lifestyle than the comforts of high school provided.
"The weight is not even about food, it involves how people deal with stress and how they feel about themselves," Cotter said. "Food is used by some people to express how they might feel at the current time."

Source: Lake County News

Brave fight to the finish

2007-09-21T19:14:00.001+01:00

Brave fight to the finish

By Gary Bills-Geddes

THE mother of a young woman who died following a long battle with anorexia has paid a warm tribute to a daughter who touched so many lives and never gave in.
Hundreds of cards have flowed into the Putley home of Ray and Elizabeth Hunter following the death of their daughter Susanna on August 15, aged just 37.
Colleagues and friends packed Ledbury Parish Church for the funeral, saying a final farewell to a young woman who was elegant, selfless and full of a good humour and hope.
To the end, she was an inspiration to others with her condition but could not understand why she could not win her battle with an eating disorder that took hold as a teenager.
The night before she died in Manchester, she had wandered round her hospital ward urging other anor-exia patients not to give in.
Mrs Hunter said: "It is important to remember that people do recover for anorexia. They can go on to have splendid lives.

"Susie didn't get the illness. The illness got her. But it is not all doom and gloom because she was a lovely person and would really light up a room. Her life was not wasted, despite the case that it was not a life fulfilled."
Mrs Hunter said Susie often asked herself what am I doing to myself?'.
At times, 5ft 10 inch Susie would weigh as little as four-and-a-half stone. She had five spells in hospital in what became a weight gain and weight loss rollercoaster.
Mrs Hunter said the problem, which started while Susie was working in America, was not about body image. She added: "People did notice her, whether she was ill or well. She was a good lacrosse player and she was tall and elegant."
Mrs Hunter continued: "Anorexia, which is a mental illness, was her way of controlling her life."
In her working life, she displayed great organisational skills and held down various jobs, including as a PA in London and later at a Christian centre near Stratford, Red Hill Farm, where her ashes have been laid.
A tribute paid at the funeral by Lord Shuttle-worth, her uncle, sums up how Susie is now recalled by so many friends and family members.
He said: "Just occasionally, I have been privileged to see, out of the corner of my eye, the flash of a kingfisher. I never knew quite where she came from or where she was going but invariably a glimpse of her lifted me up and enhanced my day."

Source: Ledbury Reporter

A sinister web of sex and perfection

2007-09-21T19:10:00.000+01:00

A sinister web of sex and perfection

The yearning to look flawless is fuelled by celebrity television and glossy magazines, but the internet now poses an even greater danger, warns Judith Woods

Your 13-year-old daughter is up in her bedroom with her best friend, trying on clothes. They are alternately shrieking with laughter and groaning in horror as they pose in front of the mirror.

As you pass the door, you overhear them rating each other on a sliding scale of "beautiful" to "ewww". You smile at their adolescent high spirits and potter off to make a cup of tea.
Now imagine your daughter posting her picture on to a website and assessing her thighs, breasts and tummy under the headline "How sexy am I?".
Imagine that the website invited other readers, complete strangers, to rate her, too – and her reaction if the results didn't quite match up with her expectations.
Unthinkable? If only.
Up until Wednesday, this interactive page was up and running on the website of young girls' magazine Bliss, and was mysteriously removed after a report by Women In Journalism (WIJ) criticised the way in which young girls were being encouraged to feel ashamed of their developing bodies.
Other online publications for children drew criticism, too; Sugar, for using a picture of a 13-year-old boy, submitted by his girlfriend, "because I think he's buff", and Mizz (target readership: 10 to 14) for inviting users to "rate our hotties" and give marks out of 10 to pictures of boys.
Few right-thinking parents would disagree that such web content is an utterly inappropriate sexualisation of children.
But in many respects, it's simply another sign of our rather tawdry times, the continuum of a culture in which lads' mags like Nuts are inundated with women eager to post photos of themselves on the "Assess My Breasts" web page, and the average TV makeover is more likely to involve intimate close-ups of rhinoplasty and buttock implants than a touch of sparkly mascara and a new hairdo.
If publicity-hungry adults have no qualms about being filmed during colonic irrigation or liposuction surgery, and the term "sexy" is routinely applied to everything from cars to Daz washing powder – which has also been rapped over the knuckles for showing its suggestive adverts during children's progammes – how on earth are our youngsters supposed to know where the boundaries lie?
"Bliss had always been on the edge of challenging what parents think their daughters should be reading, and that's partly why daughters like it – my own included, when she was in her early teens," says Professor Jane Wardle, head of clinical psychology at the University of London.
"My instinct would be that it's the more confident girls who would send in their pictures for rating, but if they receive a poor response it could affect their body image, and adolescence is the worst possible time to have their confidence undermined by something like this.
"Nothing about this sort of reductive approach, where girls are judged solely on their appearance, sounds good to me. The question is whether these girls regard it all as a bit of nonsense, and shrug it off as they would do a horoscope, or take it seriously and feel upset about it."
But these days, even for pre-teens, image is all. Reared on a diet of celebrity television and bombarded with showbiz-obsessed magazines, where the camera lenses dwell lovingly on the apparent perfection of airbrushed beauty, the pressure to look flawless is greater than ever before.
According to photo specialists Snappy Snaps, the explosion of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace has prompted a 550 per cent increase in requests for their digital touch-up service. Skin blemishes can be removed, teeth straightened and lips made poutier with a few clicks of a computer mouse.
The fact that almost half of all 10- to 15-year-old girls apparently want to appear on a reality television show suggests we are turning out a generation of paranoid narcissistic exhibitionists, whose preoccupation with their appearance is not only unhealthy, but reflects their assumption, even at 14, that beauty equals success.
After all, what kind of loser would want to dream of being an engineer when you could be on Big Brother, wearing a different bikini every day, with a covershoot in Heat for afters?
But girls who fixate on their swimwear are liable to be left high and dry in later life. A famous study carried out in the US in 1998 saw researchers ask college-age girls to try on either a swimsuit or a sweater, assess their appearance and then perform mathematical tests. Those asked to wear swimsuits performed significantly worse, suggesting that self-conscious girls have less mental energy to devote to problem-solving.
But how to turn back the tide of peer-promoted body fascism? When it comes to body image, women – and girls – are their own worst enemies.
Just look at the competitive dieting that appears to have been triggered in LA with the arrival of Victoria Beckham; her new best friend, actress Katie Holmes, who was scarcely hefty to begin with, is a shadow of her former self.
But reality rarely plays a part once girls become convinced they are overweight. A study by the Schools Health Education Unit this summer found that among girls aged from 12-15, their biggest worry was their appearance. Half of 14- to 15-year-olds believed they needed to slim, although only 12 per cent were overweight according to their bodymass index.
At the Priory Hospital in Roehampton, where the gilded myths of celebrityhood are laid bare and the clinical roll-call reads like a night at the Baftas, consultant psychiatrist Dr Natasha Bijlani says children need parents and teachers to build their self-confidence so they can feel good about themselves, regardless of what their peers – or anonymous internet users – say.
"There's so much pressure on young girls nowadays that many of them aspire to an ideal that it's impossible for most of us to attain, and feel a failure if they don't achieve it," says Dr Bijlani.
"They want to be famous and some are so preoccupied by their looks that they miss out on academic opportunities, normal relationships and veer dangerously towards eating disorders, by dieting, starving themselves and storing up enormous health and psychological problems.
"When girls go online asking others to rate their looks and seeking approval from people they've never met, the root cause is low self-esteem."
On a positive note, a cheer has gone up among parents at the news that London Fashion Week banned under-16s, and the realistic possibility that in future years, size zeros may be relegated to the sale rack in Gap, rather than haunting the runways like trussed-up, walking cadavers.
Let's hope such moves have not come too late. Even girls too young to spell anorexia are suffering from it and bulimia is, worryingly, on the increase among pre-teens.
"We know of a girl as young as eight with anorexia," says Susan Ringwood, chief executive of the eating disorders charity Beat. "We know that girls' magazines and the wider media don't cause eating disorders, that it's more complex than that, but they are a factor that influences girls and women."
In the good old days, it was a brave parent who looked in their teenage daughter's diary, for fear of what they might find – or of being caught. These days cyberspace is a far, far scarier place.
So next time your daughter and her friends are up in her room, prancing about in their latest Top Shop ensembles, don't bother checking up or listening at the keyhole. Just quietly go to the phone socket and disconnect the internet.

Source: Telegraph

Research Defines New Eating Disorder

2007-09-21T19:07:00.000+01:00

Research Defines New Eating Disorder

(CBS) Researchers in the field of eating disorders have defined a new disorder: purging disorder. People, most of whom are women, have suffered from it for years, but doctors are just starting to recognize the disorder. University of Iowa professor Pamela Keel led a new study on it and appeared on The Early Show to explain her research. How is purging disorder different from anorexia or bulimia? "With anorexia nervosa, it's a self-starvation syndrome so women are under weight. Whereas women with purging disorder have a normal weight. Women (with) bulimia have large eating episodes for which they compensate. Women with purging disorder are vomiting even after a small amount of food," Keel said. And because the amounts are small, the disorder is difficult to detect. "Yes, because the outward signs of the illness are not obvious," said Keel. "They're not obviously underweight and there's no obvious problem in their eating patterns." Who has purging disorder? We asked Keel to describe the average purger. "Like any eating disorder, they are concerned with weight and shape," she said. "They're concerned with rules about what they should eat and when she should eat. They become very concerned when they eat something they think is going to make them gain weight. However, unlike women without eating disorders and unlike women with bulimia nervosa, they report feeling very, very full after eating an amount of food that other people find acceptable." Keel said that when word first spread about her research, she got a ton of e-mail. "A lot of the e-mails were along the lines of 'That's me' and 'Thank you for doing this work, please continue doing this work.' Also, a lot of e-mails expressing having experienced this for years of their lives, having sought help, but never really finding a treatment that seemed to fit the condition they actually had," she said. The disorder is dangerous, said Keel. "It's associated with electrolyte imbalances that can influence heart and kidney function, dehydration. It can also cause incredible problems with dental decay." Though there is no "cure" for the disorder, Keel said that in the future "the main thing we need to do is really start focusing on what is contributing to the propensity to purge among these women. "Most of the research that we've done on bulimia nervosa, we understand that the immediate trigger is binge-eating episodes. Women who have purging disorder, we don't have any clues what contributes to the eating disorder."
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Source: CBS News (click on the link, there's a video to watch).

Too much is never enough

2007-09-20T22:12:00.000+01:00

Famous, infamous or well known people who have died from an eating disorder:

Karen Carpenter March 2, 1950 – February 4, 1983 (singer and drummer with the band The Carpenters and solo artist) - went on a water diet to lose weight and, as she put it, to appear more attractive. She continued to diet even after losing 20 lbs, until her death at the age of 32. She died of cardiac arrest weighing only 80 lbs on the day she was due to fanalise her divorce papers. Her autopsy revealed that her death was the result of emetine cardiotoxicity due to anorexia nervosa which implies that she used ipecac. The auopsy also found cachexia, which is extremely low weight and weakness and general bodily decline associated with chronic disease.

Ana Carolina Reston June 4, 1985 – November 15, 2006 (Brazilian model) - at 5'8 and weighing only 88 lb she had a BMI of 13.4 (below 16 in considered to be starvation by the World Health Organisation) and had been hospitalized since October 25 for kidney malfunction due to anorexia and bulimia nervosa, after living on a diet of apples and tomatoes. Her condition deteriorated into generalized infection which led to her death at the age of 21.

Theresa Marie "Terri" Schiavo December 3, 1963 – March 31, 2005 (recieved a lot of media coverage after her husband and guardian, petitioned the Pinellas County Circuit Court to remove her feeding tube while she was in a persistent vegetative state) - during her senior year in high school Terri's physician suggested that she lose some weight, at only 5'3 she weighed around 2oolb. By 1989, weighing 121lb, she was diagnosed with amenorrhea. In 1990 she collapsed and suffered a cardiac arrest at her home and was found face down, unconscious and not breathing by paramedics, a sustained period without oxygen led to severe brain damage. The cause for her collapse was never determined but on arrival at the hospital it was noted that there was an imbalance of electrolytes in her blood which can be caused by losing fluids and her potassium levels were very low. Terri was trying to lose weight by restricting her diet and drinking a lot of fluids, mainly iced tea which is a mild diuretic and causes fluid loss. Her husband filed and won a malpractice suit against the doctor she visited for her amenorrhea on the basis that he failed to recognize and diagnose bulimia nervosa. However, according to her autopsy there is no evidence that she had an eating disorder, the low levels of potassium could have been caused by emergancy treatment at the time of her collapse and she had never confessed to having a problem with eating nor had anyone witnessed her binging, purging or taking diet pills.

Margaux Hemingway February 16, 1955 – July 1, 1996 (actress and model, grandaughter of Ernest Hemingway) - suffered with bulimia as well as acoholism, epilepsy and dyslexia. She was found dead at her appartment the day before the 35th annivsery of her grandfather's suicide, she had overdosed on phenobarbital.

Christina Renee "Christy" Henrich July 18, 1972 - July 26, 1994 (gymnast) - she represented the United States at the 1989 World Championships in Stuttgart, placing fourth and just missing out on a medal in the uneven bars final. In 1988, Christy was told by a judge that she needed to lose weight in order to make the Olympic team, it has also been alleged that her coaches made insulting comments about her weight and body type. Her drive to lose weight was spurred on further by the culture on elite gymnastics which was dominated by small, underweight prepubescent girls. Eventually, Christy's battle with anorexia took such a toll on her health that she was asked to leave the gym. Her weight dropped dangerously low and her family intervened and compelled her to enter hospital treatment. Despite numerous treatments and periods of recovery she died of multiple organ failure at the age of 22 as a result of anorexia. She weighed just 60 lbs. Christy's death highlighted the problem of eating disorders in women's gymnastics. Other prominent gymnasts such as Kathy Johnson and Cathy Rigby confessed to struggling with their own bouts of anorexia and bulimia. American television channels, such as ABC and NBC, broadcasting gymnastics competitions stopped commenting on and displaying on screen the weight of gymnasts in the mid-1990s. Television stations from other nations have since adopted similar policies. The book Little Girls In Pretty Boxes discusses Christy's career and death.

Heidi Guenther 1975 - June 30 1997 (ballet dancer with the Boston ballet) - healthy and active at age 22 Heidi died of a sudden heart attack at 5'3 in height and 96 lbs in weight due to complications brought on by bulimia nervosa. Heidi's friends from the ballet company have since confessed to knowing that she had been vomiting in order to lose weight since March 1997. The NBC TV movie Dancing to Death was based on Heidi's life and death.

Leila Pahlavi March 27, 1970 – June 10, 2001 (Princess of Iran) - the youngest daughter of the late Shah of Iran was once a model who worked for Valentino and suffered from anorexia nervosa, chronic low self-esteem and severe depression. She stole prescriptions from the desk of her doctor to feed her fatal addiction to barbiturates and typically took around 40 quinalbarbitone pills, a barbiturate which is used to treat insomnia, instead of the recommended two. She died alone, aged 31, in her suite at the Leonard Hotel in London and was found in bed, her body emaciated from years of anorexia and bulimia, after taking more than five times the lethal dose of quinalbarbitone as well as a nonlethal dose of cocaine.

Anne Sexton nee Anne Gray Harvey November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974 ( an American poet and writer) - she was sexually abused during her childhood and suffered from anorexia and bipolar disorder. She locked herself in her garage, started the engine of her car and committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning at the age of 46 after returning home from having lunch with Maxine Kumin to review her most recent book, The Awful Rowing Toward God.

Rudine - December 1995 (guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show) - Rudine died weighing only 38lb after a 20 year long battle with anorexia nervosa. She appeared on Oprah's show on several occasions to highlight the plite of people suffering with eating disorders and during some of her appearances she seemed to be on the road to recovery but equally as often she appeared to be on the verge of death. She died a year after making her final appearance on the show.

Laura - November 1995 (Maury Povich guest) - died of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa after making an appearance on The Maury Povich Show.

Michaela and Samantha Kendall (Maury Povich guests) - twin sisters who also appeared on The Maury Povich Show. They were bullied at school for being overweight and at age 14 decided to go on a diet to lose some weight, but the dieting soon got out of control. Michaela died in April 1994 from complications arising from anorexia nervosa. After the death of her sister Samantha, weighing just 4stone, moved to Canada to be treated for her anorexia and responded well to treatment but she died three years after Micheala in October of 1997 at age 30 due to liver failure caused by anorexia nervosa.

Helga Brathen (Norwegian gymnast, Nordic Champion 1969) - suffered with anorexia nervosa for many years and died at age 29.

Bahne Rabe -August 2nd 2001 (German rower and 1988 Seoul Olympic eight times gold medallist) - he retired form rowing before the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 when he saw that he was unlikely to qualify. After ten years under a strict training regime, with yearly goals to achieve, Bahne found it hard to manage everyday life on his own. He had always been very aware of his body but in the year before his death he had started to lose weight dramatically and visited a clinic in March 2001 for the first time. He virtually starved himself to death and when he was struck down by a lung infection his weakened body was unable to fight it off.

Lena Zavaroni November 4, 1963 - October 1, 1999 (Scottish child star) - Lena suffered with anorexia from the age of 13, she blamed her illness on the pressure of having to wear tiny costumes while she was developing, while at stage school her weight plummetted to 4stone while at stage school. She underwent a number of unsuccessful drug treatments and received electroconvulsive therapy in an attempt to beat her anorexia. In September 1999 she was admitted to the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff for treatment and is believed to have undergone a leukotomy. After the operation, she appeared to be in a satisfactory condition and a week later she was "making telephone calls, cheerful and engaging in conversation," she even asked her doctor if he thought there was any chance that she would get back on stage. But, just three weeks after the operation, she developed a chest infection and died from pneumonia weighing less than 5stone.

Luisel Ramos 1984 – August 2, 2006 (model) - at the age of 22 she died of heart failure caused by anorexia nervosa while participating in a fashion show during Fashion Week in Montevideo, Uruguay. She had felt ill after walking down the runway and subsequently fainted on her way back to the dressing room. At the time of her death she was 5'9, weighed little more than 7 stone and had a BMI of around 14.5. She was reported to have adopted a diet of lettuce leaves and Diet Coke for the three months before her death and her father told police that she would go "several days" without eating.

Eliana "Elle" Ramos 1988 – February 13, 2007 (model) - she was Luisel Ramos's younger sister like her sister suffered a heart attack and died due to complication caused by malnutrition, she was found dead at her grandparents' home in Montevideo, Uruguay aged just 18.

Christopher "Chris" Crosby Farley February 15, 1964 – December 18, 1997 (actor and comedian who appeared on Saturday Night Live) - obesity and substance abuse contributed to Chris’s death at age 33. His younger brother John found Chris dead in his apartment on the 60th floor of the John Hancock Center in Chicago. An autopsy revealed that he had overdosed on a dangerous combination of cocaine and morphine (often referred to as a “Speedball”) with coronary atherosclerosis as a contributing factor.

Does Britney Spears have an eating disorder?

2007-09-20T21:55:00.000+01:00

Does Britney Spears have an eating disorder?

Source alleges singer is starving herself, is addicted to diet pills

Access Hollywood
Updated: 7:09 p.m. ET Sept. 18, 2007
LOS ANGELES - Three years ago today, September 18, they surprised us all with a wedding. Now, the battle between Britney Spears and Kevin Federline takes a stunning turn.
One new claim, made in OK! magazine, is that Britney is battling an eating disorder.
A source told the magazine that Spears will do anything to lose weight, including starving herself as well as binging and purging.

A pal reportedly told OK! that Spears said, “I’ll starve myself because I’m fat.”
OK! magazine’s source also alleges Britney is addicted to diet pills and combines them with large amounts of coffee and RedBull.
Bodyguard drama

Then, there’s the big guy — Britney’s former bodyguard Tony Baretto.
“He became very concerned about the children and their safety,” Baretto’s lawyer, Gloria Allred said at a press conference Monday.
Greeted by a media mob, Baretto, showed up for a child custody hearing in LA between Spears and Federline, accompanied by Allred and ready to testify against Britney.
“Our client was prepared to testify on issues of nudity by Ms. Spears, drug use and safety issues involving the children,” Allred said.
These serious allegations could lead to Britney losing custody of her children sources have speculated.
Baretto remained mum while Allred spoke to the press. Baretto, who held hands with his wife during the press conference, worked for Britney earlier this year.
“He was terminated because he did not hear her when she asked him to pick up her hat,” Allred claimed.
When a reporter asked why it has taken so long for Baretto to come forward if he was concerned about the children, Allred said issues of safety were involved.

“Privacy,” she answered. “We have been concerned about his privacy and safety. We didn’t want people coming to his home and you know, disturbing his young children.”
Laura Wasser, Brit’s lawyer at the time, attended the hearing and branded Baretto, “not a reliable witness.”
On Monday both Wasser and management company – The Firm, parted ways with the star.
Meanwhile, the kids were spending time with Grandma, Britney’s mother Lynn. Paparazzi captured her taking a stroll with them, near Kevin Federline’s home.
Monday night, Britney’s sister Jamie Lynn Spears attended a concert by Britney’s ex – Justin Timberlake with her dad. She had no comment on Baretto’s allegations.
Copyright 2007 by NBC. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: MSNBC

Eating habits and moms to be

2007-09-20T21:51:00.001+01:00

Eating habits and moms to be

Created: Thursday, September 20, 2007
While pregnancy can prompt some women with eating disorders to get better, it may make others vulnerable to developing eating disorders for the first time, research shows.
The findings contradict the conventional wisdom that all women with eating disorders can take advantage of pregnancy as a time to recover, Dr Cynthia M. Bulik of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health. "Basically it's important to know that it's not an automatic recovery mode. It doesn't mean that the minute you get pregnant, your eating disorder is going to go away."

The findings also underscore the importance of screening pregnant women for symptoms of eating disorders, which can lead to worse pregnancy outcomes for both mother and child, Bulik and her colleagues point out. "More often than not women don't disclose this to their obstetricians and their midwives," she noted.
Screen for eating disorders

Bulik and her team looked at 41 157 pregnant women participating in the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study.
Before pregnancy, 0.1 percent of women had anorexia nervosa, 0.7 percent had bulimia nervosa, 3.5 percent had binge eating disorder, and 0.1 percent purged without binging.
Binge eating disorder is defined as eating an unusually large amount of food and feeling out of control, and should be distinguished from the normal increase in appetite that occurs in pregnancy, Bulik explained. People with the condition do not make themselves vomit or engage in other purging behaviors.
Among women who purged without binging before pregnancy, 78 percent stopped doing so while pregnant, the researchers found. Thirty-nine percent of women with binge eating disorder recovered during pregnancy, as did 34 percent of those with bulimia nervosa.
Pregnancy can spur binge eating

While it was rare for women to develop a purging disorder or bulimia nervosa for the first time while pregnant, 711 women in the study did develop binge eating disorder for the first time. Women with a higher body weight, less education and lower income were more likely to begin binging, as were those who smoked cigarettes, had more previous pregnancies, and had had at least one previous abortion.
"Pregnancy is a stressful time both biologically and psychologically," Bulik said. "It's possible that these women just didn't have the same kind of support systems and resources and for that reason pregnancy was more of a trigger for binge eating. Other people who might have a more 'padded' support system might be less prone to stress-induced symptoms," she added. - (Anne Harding/Reuters Health)
SOURCE: Psychological Medicine, August 2007.

Researchers Examine 'Purging Disorder'

2007-09-20T21:48:00.000+01:00

Researchers Examine 'Purging Disorder'

By AMY LORENTZEN – 17 hours ago
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa researcher is studying a little-known eating disorder that some doctors may miss: purging disorder. Though similar to women with bulimia, patients who fit this description don't binge-eat. Yet they feel compelled to purge, usually by vomiting, even after eating only a small or normal amount of food, said Pamela Keel, the University of Iowa researcher who led a study on the subject.
Keel, a psychology professor, and colleagues from Iowa and the Harvard Medical School describe their research in this month's issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.
"Purging disorder is new in the sense that it has not been officially recognized as a unique condition in the classification of eating disorders. But it's not a new problem," Keel said. "Women were struggling with purging disorder long before we began studying it."
If further study supports that it is a distinct disorder, Keel said the American Psychiatric Association could revise its criteria for diagnosing eating disorders. That's important because doctors could then better screen these patients and identify treatments for them. Otherwise, they might be missed because they are normal weight and don't report binge-eating, she said.
"The bottom line is there are women out there right now who have this condition, and very little is being done to figure out why they have this problem or how to help them with it," Keel said.
The study focused on women because they are about 10 times more likely than men to suffer from bulimia, in which people compulsively overeat and then force themselves to vomit, fast, take laxatives or exercise excessively to burn calories.
The dangers of purging disorder are similar to those of bulimia: psychological problems, dehydration, electrolyte imbalances that can affect the heart and kidneys, and potential dental problems because of self-induced vomiting.
Keel's research, conducted from 2001-05, was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. The study looked at 90 women: 20 women had symptoms of purging disorder, 37 had bulimia and purged after binge-eating, and 33 had no eating disorders. Each woman was interviewed about her eating habits, drank a liquid meal and had blood drawn before and after the meal.
Keel said there were significant differences in the groups when it came to satiety, or feeling full.
In response to the liquid meal, women with purging disorder and those who had no eating disorder had similar levels of a chemical called cholecystokinin. It is released from the upper tract of the small intestine and appears to signal people to stop eating.
"That makes sense, because in terms of eating patterns, women with purging disorder are not actually eating more" than the women who had no eating disorder, Keel said. The bulimic women had lower levels of the chemical.
The women with purging disorder said they felt much more full after the test meal, and they reported more stomach discomfort than the bulimic women and the women with no eating disorders.
"It kind of begins to provide a clue for why these women may feel a need to purge after eating an amount of food that most people would be fine with. They are actually responding to it differently," Keel said.
The women with purging disorder and the bulimics shared emotional and psychological characteristics, including body image problems, anxiety and depression. Both groups also had strict rules about what they could eat and when, Keel said.
Keel "has helped put purging disorder on the map" as something that should be studied, said Dr. Tim Walsh, professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center.
Many people with eating disorders don't meet all of the criteria for anorexia or bulimia, "so it suggests that we need additional descriptions to help patients," he said. Walsh heads a work group with the American Psychiatric Association that is charged with revising criteria for diagnosing such disorders.
Leslie Sim, a psychology professor and consultant with the Mayo Clinic's eating disorders program, called Keel a "great researcher" in the field and said her findings were new and interesting.
Sim said current criteria "are kind of limiting for diagnosis and treatment and also for reimbursement by insurance companies."
Keel is recruiting subjects for another study, which she said will look more closely into factors that give rise to the unique response to eating by women who have purging disorder.

Source: Associated Press

Alternative Medicines - What Are The Treatments For Anorexia Nervosa?

2007-09-20T21:42:00.000+01:00

Alternative Medicines - What Are The Treatments For Anorexia Nervosa?

Mike Hussey
September 18, 2007
Anorexia Nervosa is a life threatening condition that can put a serious strain on many of the body's organs and physiological resources. Anorexics have an intense fear of becoming fat. Their dieting habits develop from this fear. Anorexia mainly affects adolescent girls. Anorexia may be a serious disease for old men. Anorexia nervosa" is frequently shortened to "anorexia" in both the popular media and scientific literature. There are two types of anorexia. Classic Anorexia (Restricting Anorexia) â€“ The person eats very little and loses weight through self-starvation or excessive exercise. Binge-Eating/Purging Anorexia â€“ In addition to cutting the intake of calories, this person also binges and purges. Anorexia nervosa often starts between the ages of 15 and 25, but it can develop in children as young as 10 and in older people. Although 90% of those who develop anorexia are women, the condition also affects men. Anorexia nervosa is found in all social groups and almost all cultural groups.
One percent of teenage girls in the U.S. develop anorexia nervosa and up to 10% of those may die as a result. Anorexia can cause severe medical problems and even lead to death. Anorexia may be used as a way to express control when the rest of one's life seems out of control. There are many signs that someone may have anorexia nervosa. The most frequently noticed is the extreme thinness that characterizes someone with this eating disorder. Common warning signs of anorexia incliding is a person suffering from anorexia is thin and keeps getting thinner. A person with anorexia may end up losing 15% or more of her ideal body weight. Anorexia creates a distorted body imageâ€”a person with anorexia feels fat even when she is thin or underweight. Anorexia may cause a person to complain about feeling bloated or nauseated even when she eats normalâ€”or less than normalâ€”amounts of food. A person suffering from anorexia may feel cold even though the temperature is normal or only slightly cool. Support groups are also invaluable in treating anorexia.
Anorexia can be treated with psychotherapy and diet advice but these are only effective if the person is ready to get better. Cognitive techniques which recognize the importance of addressing distorted self-body images and perfectionist thinking are frequently used, and should be part of the initial focus of treatment. Psychoeducational materials are sometimes used to instruct patients on how to recognize the appropriate body weight and body fat proportions of a normal body. Oftentimes additional psychiatric concerns must be addressed such as specific traumatic events or memories which may underlie the negative self-image associated with anorexia. Effective inpatient anorexia treatment sometimes uses behaviorally-oriented token economies which reward patients for eating regular meals. Self-help groups may also be helpful. It is often comforting to talk to other people who have been through the same thing. Therapy involving the family may also be helpful, especially when a younger child has anorexia.

Anorexia Treatment Tips
1. Antidepressants (such as amitriptyline) are the usual drug treatment and may speed up the recovery process.

2. Chlorpromazine may be beneficial for those individuals suffering from severe obsessions and increased anxiety and agitation.
3. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is never an appropriate treatment option for a person suffering from an uncomplicated eating disorder.
4. Self-help methods for the treatment of this disorder are often overlooked by the medical profession.
5. Oftentimes additional psychiatric concerns must be addressed such as specific traumatic events.
6. Self-help groups may also be helpful. It is often comforting to talk to other people who have been through the same thing.

Source: American Chronicle

Shy about public eating: A precursor to anorexia?

2007-09-20T21:37:00.000+01:00

Shy about public eating: A precursor to anorexia?

By Robin Hilmantel, USA TODAY
Whenever Leslie Lipton was handed a menu, she'd freeze. She suddenly would feel that all eyes were upon her, noticing and judging her eating habits. This was something she couldn't quite swallow when she was a teenager.
"I'd sit there, and I'd wait, and I'd see what everyone else was ordering before I ordered," says Lipton, now 21 and a student at Barnard College in New York City.
Lunch in the high school cafeteria felt like a competition. "Everyone would be looking at everyone else's tray to see what everyone else was eating," says Lipton. "If you eat less, at least the comparisons are good."
Lipton says this reluctance to eat in public was the prologue to her anorexia, the starvation eating disorder from which she has since recovered. But, she says, many girls across the country avoid food in public even if they eat normally at home.
This self-conscious group is convinced that without the classical symptoms of an eating disorder, such as extreme weight loss, there's no problem.

But parents and friends are often left wondering at what point such behavior indicates that an eating disorder is brewing.
Lipton, who now speaks to girls across the country about eating disorders and her recovery, says the phenomenon is "rampant." The author of Unwell: A Novel, which was published last year, Lipton blames society's emphasis on thinness. "People don't seem to look at girls as needing food," she says.

A lesser-known disorder
"Anecdotally, that's a pretty common sort of scenario: not wanting to be appearing to eat or competing either implicitly or explicitly to eat less," says Doug Bunnell, a clinical psychologist and eating disorder treatment specialist in Connecticut and a former president of the National Eating Disorders Association.
Not eating in public is one of several behaviors known in the eating disorder community as EDNOS, or eating disorders not otherwise specified. Purging occasionally, chewing a large amount of food but spitting it out, and obsessively dieting also fall into this category.
"That is where people fall in the cracks," says Lynn Grefe, chief executive of the National Eating Disorder Association, which will hold its annual conference in San Diego next month to help families, treatment providers and educators. "They're not getting treatment, and they think, 'I don't really have a problem, do I?' "
Bernardo Carducci, director of Indiana University Southeast's Shyness Research Institute, calls it the Scarlett O'Hara syndrome. In a famous scene in Gone With the Wind, Scarlett's maid tells her not to eat at a barbecue if she wants to uphold her reputation.
"She's pulling her in that corset, and then she's saying, 'We want you to eat a little bit now so you won't eat when you go to the party,' " says Carducci, adding that the message reinforces stereotypes about feminine appearance and social behavior.
He says that when adolescents think like that, they're vulnerable to eating disorders. "They control their eating as a way to sort of control all this change that's occurring in their life, but they also use this as a way to control what other people think about them," he says.
James Mitchell, president of the Neuropsychiatric Research Institute in Fargo, N.D., focuses on eating disorders in his research. He says the large number of girls who don't eat in public is under the radar because weight concerns are so prevalent in this country.
While this behavior is a phase for some, the consequences could be serious for others, experts say, including malnutrition and the progression to a full-blown eating disorder. Bunnell says those are real risks for young women when body image and weight have become the dominant measure of self worth.
Grefe has even talked to grown women who gave up eating in public for life after being teased in elementary school.
"They're not seeing it as a joyful time to interact with family and friends and breaking bread," she says. "They're seeing it as a test or it says something about them."

Early treatment recommended
Lipton urges girls to seek treatment early.
"I don't think there's really that much of a difference between convincing yourself it's OK to be anorexic and convincing yourself it's OK not to eat in public," says Lipton. "Even if you're not classically anorexic and 50 pounds, that doesn't mean that you don't have a problem. That doesn't mean that there isn't help out there to be had."
Experts give this advice to girls struggling with this issue:
•Learn about eating disorders. Treatment and information resources are available at myneda.org (National Eating Disorders Association) or by calling its hotline at 800-931-2237.
•Befriend girls who have healthful eating habits and are comfortable with eating in public.
•Volunteer or get a job that involves serving others. Such activities build confidence and forge connections with people who evaluate each other based on willingness to help, not weight.
•Talk to a trusted adult or a guidance counselor. Cognitive therapy or other forms of professional counseling can provide an awareness of negative thought processes.

Source: USA Today

Understanding anorexia: A thin excuse

2007-09-20T21:35:00.001+01:00

Understanding anorexia: A thin excuse

Naomi Hooke has delved deep into the causes of the anorexia that nearly killed her. But of one thing she's sure – it had nothing to do with 'size 0' models

Published: 18 September 2007
It was two days before Christmas, and for the third time in my 20-year-long existence I found myself having my blood pressure monitored, my blood taken for biochemical analysis and my mental state being assessed for risk of self-harm and suicide. Once again, I'd been admitted to an eating disorder unit, rescued from my own little world of self-destruction. The day before, I had filled my every hour with food (or rather the avoiding of it), exercise, my ongoing obsession with academic work, and fantasies about a future where I wouldn't be there to spoil everything.
My parents came to visit, my younger sister excited in anticipation of present-opening. It hurt to sit up, and hurt to lie down, yet I refused to believe that this was due to starvation and muscle wastage. My family brought me a stocking, but I couldn't understand how they would ever think I deserved nice things. I left the presents unopened for over a month.
I'd suffered from anorexia to varying degrees since I was 11, hiding food and concealing my body under layer upon layer of clothing, and once again it had caught up with me.
As London Fashion Week continues, the controversy surrounding "size zero" models is once again up for discussion. Prompted by the Madrid ban on models with a BMI below 18.5, fashion capitals around the world have undertaken enquiries into the links between eating disorders and the catwalk. Although any measure to protect models at risk of eating disorders is to be applauded, to believe that the fashion industry causes eating disorders is to completely misunderstand this most complex of illnesses.
At 11, I was showing early signs of puberty, and the prospect of an adult life ahead terrified me. I was afraid of responsibility, of a time when I would have to face the world without my parents' hands to hold. But most of all I was scared of men and sex.
Throughout my illness, even when I was motivated, I was convinced that recovery was impossible. But miracles do happen. I was in the grip of anorexia nervosa for more than eight years, but with a lot of help from family, friends and professionals I was able to turn my life around.
Anorexia has often been perceived as a quest for model-like beauty, as a teenage fad or as a diet gone wrong. It has even been described as a lifestyle choice. Seldom is anorexia acknowledged as the life-threatening medical condition that it is. Many anorexics detest their bodies, refusing even to pose for family holiday snaps. I, like many of the eating disorder patients I have met, never sought beauty; instead, I spent years trying to make myself look as ill as possible in order to avoid male attention.
As far back as I can remember, my self-esteem was low and I lacked confidence. Children can be cruel, and although they weren't the "cause" of my eating problems, the bullying I endured throughout my schooldays only added to my feelings of self-hatred.
It is often assumed that the distress in anorexia revolves solely around food and weight. However, the vast majority of eating disorder patients have numerous other difficulties, including low self-esteem or confidence, lack of self-care, and social difficulties. Sufferers are often presumed to pour over the pages of glossy magazines and starve themselves in their aspiration to become glamorous, thinner-than-thin sex goddesses. From my own experiences and from those of numerous other eating disorder patients I have met, I can say unequivocally that nothing could be further from the truth. Beauty has very little to do with eating disorders, and the desire to be thin is merely one of many symptoms. Rarely can a single "cause" be identified.
On the ward, Christmas had been and gone, and it was beginning to dawn on me that I would not be well enough to return to university. I was convinced that, once again, I had failed. During those weeks, I hit rock bottom. After years of pretending, I finally opened up to staff at the hospital, and began speaking about some of my troubling innermost thoughts.
I had never felt so ill; the pain was excruciating. My memories of this hellish period are sketchy, but I have since been told that my kidneys were failing and that I was at risk of cardiac arrest. I had many meetings with the doctors, and eventually I agreed to be fed via nasal gastric tube. It was horrible when they passed the tube, though deep down I know it probably saved my life.
It was at this point that something flicked inside my head. It was as though I'd "swapped sides": I stopped fighting everyone who was trying to help me. As the weeks went on, my stomach ached as it was stretched to accommodate food again. It still took me hours to eat a bowl of soup, and I still had a tube up my nose, but nevertheless, things were getting better.
I wasn't an easy patient. I cried and screamed and threatened to run away. But in spite of everything, staff at the hospital never gave up on me, and I'll remain eternally grateful for every hug and kind word.
Although my first trip home was challenging, it did open my eyes. At last I began to see how much anorexia was holding me back. I was getting stronger, thinking more logically, and perhaps most importantly my sense of ambition was returning. I started to dream about getting back to university and one day being able to help people with mental illness myself.
I spent seven months as an in-patient and two more as a day patient. I regained a healthy body weight, spent numerous hours discussing my underlying fears and was slowly beginning to develop a sense of self-worth.
My fall into the dark world of anorexia was never influenced by fashion or waif-like celebrities, though I knew others whose recovery from life-threatening illness was indeed hindered by the Western world's culture of thinness. I believe that the British Fashion Council's guidelines will go some way to protect the models themselves (of whom 40 per cent are said to suffer from eating disorders). However, I see problems both with the approach taken in Madrid of banning models with a BMI under 18.5, and the recent health certification scheme proposed in Britain.
Although BMI can offer a crude measure of physical health, it can never quantify psychological distress. Despite popular belief, low weight is not the only danger of eating disorders. There have been times in my life in which my BMI has been in the healthy range and yet my eating behaviours and mental state were far from healthy. I would starve myself for days on end before my body gave in to the pains of hunger and I would binge, after which I would feel so disgusted with myself that I would make myself vomit and/or cut myself with razor blades.
As for doctors' certificates, it takes considerable time and skill to assess whether an individual has an eating disorder, not least because sufferers often go to great lengths to hide their illness. I've been there, told the lies and tricked the scales.
It is a fact that a higher proportion of models suffer from eating disorders than do the general population. The "grooming" and competitive atmosphere undoubtedly perpetuate eating disorders within the modelling profession, but I am personally of the opinion that young girls with existing eating disorders are selected by modelling agencies because of their tiny figures. But, although the fashion industry may be rife with anorexia, the majority of eating disorder patients have not become ill through catwalk influences. And nor are they models.

Source: The Independent

Newton-John's Daughter in New Anorexia Battle?

2007-09-20T21:33:00.001+01:00

Newton-John's Daughter in New Anorexia Battle?

Olivia Newton-John's daughter Chloe Lattanzi has sparked reports she's losing her eating disorder battle after appearing "emaciated" at a post-Emmy Awards party in Hollywood.
The skinny singer, 21, was photographed at an "Entertainment Tonight" party on Sunday and left many onlookers asking if she was struggling with her anorexia fight.
Lattanzi revealed she was anorexic late last year and has spent much of 2007 trying to overcome her struggles.
But Jack Strom, who represents both Lattanzi and her mother, tells the Sydney Daily Telegraph that the singer is "fine."
He says, "The last time I spoke to her and her mom was just a few weeks ago and she was fine.
"She's focusing on launching her music in the States at the moment.
"In the past (she) has always addressed this problem very openly. It's not something she's trying to hide and is dealing with in her own way in the media."

Source: The Daily Dish

Of course it's hard. If it was easy then everybody would do it. Its the hard that makes it great.

2007-09-20T21:05:00.000+01:00

I think I might get one of the Fashion Targets Breast Cancer t shirts, they're cute and they're for charity. I like the white one best I think.

Negative calorie foods

2007-09-20T20:15:00.000+01:00

These foods, mainly fruits and vegetables, burn off more calories when they are being digested than you gain from eating them:

Apples

Apricots

Artichokes

Asparagus

Beets

Blackberries

Blueberries

Brocoli

Brussel sprouts

Buffalo fish

Cabbage

Cantaloupe

Carrots

Cauliflower

Celeraic

Celery

Cherries

Chervil

Chicory Chinese Cabbage

Chives

Clams

Cod

Corn

Crab

Cranberries

Cucumbers

Currants

Damson

Dandelion

Eggplant

Endive

Flounder

Frog's legs

Garlic

Grapefruit

Grapes

Green beans

Honeydew melon Huckleberries

Kale

Kiwi

Kohlrabi

Kumquats

Leeks

Lemons

Lettuce

Limes

Lobster

Loganberries

Mangoes

Mushrooms

Muskmelons

Mussels

Mustard greens

Nectarine

Okra

Onions

Orange

Oysters

Papaya

Parley leaves Parsnips

Peach

Pear

Peas

Peppers

Pineapple

Plum

Pomegranates

Prunes

Pumpkin

Quince

Radishes

Raspberries

Red cabbage

Rhubarb

Rutabagas

Salsify

Sauerkraut

Scallions

Sea bass

Shrimp

Sorrel

Spinach

Squash

Strawberries

String beans

Tangerines

Tomatoes

Turnips

Watercress

Watermelon

If it takes dying to get there, so be it.

2007-09-20T19:56:00.000+01:00

HBO documentary Thin: this user has uploaded the entire thing on to YouTube. It's in 11 parts each of around roughly 9minutes in length and well worth the watch. It follows a group of anorexics at a treatment centre in Florida called the Renfrew Centre. There's also a book that accompanies the documentary which you can buy from Amazon and various other places. The dvd is available from Amazon too but unfortunately I think it's only available in Region 1 (USA). Thin is also available with Spanish(?) subtitles at UEN. I really don't like Polly, it seems mean to say but she just seems to be all about attention, when Shelly's crying and everyone's fussing over he Polly has to drink a whole drink all in one go to detract the attention from Shelly and later on she rings her mum demanding a plane ticket even though she knows full well her stay has been extended and the whole tattoo thing just seems to be about attention.

Fashion Targets Breast Cancer

2007-09-20T18:09:00.000+01:00

Fashion Targets Breast Cancer, the charitable initiative from the Council of Fashion Designers of America/CFDA Foundation, has joined forces with online retailer Net-a-porter to expand the initiative on a global scale.

In addition, FTBC Worldwide is shifting its focus from one month to an entire year. To raise money for the cause, limited edition FTBC-branded items will be sold throughout the year, beginning with a Ralph Lauren-designed polo shirt that will be available for purchase on Net-a-porter.com, exclusively. The shirt costs $75 and more products will be unveiled in the coming months from designers including Rachel Roy, Diane von Furstenberg and Oscar de la Renta. The net proceeds from all items purchased, whether in the U.S. or abroad, will stay in the customer's country. The goal, according to a spokesman, is to raise more than $2 million after one year.

Starting today, Style.com will unveil a behind-the-scenes look at the photo shoot for the Ralph Lauren polo shirt, worn by models such as Daria Werbowy, Lily Cole and Lily Donaldson, all of whom donated their time for the cause. Patrick Demarchelier shot the ad campaign and David Lipman served as creative director. The Web site also will feature an FTBC ad that will lead readers to a microsite, hosted by Net-a-porter. The site will include information on breast cancer survivors and resources to become more educated on the issue.

Style.com executive editor Nicole Phelps said, "We liked the idea of presenting to our audience an exclusive behind-the-scenes view of an exciting photo shoot, especially one whose mission was to raise global awareness for an important cause. What's especially compelling is to hear how the disease has touched the lives of everyone in the video."

Virtually every publishing house was approached to provide pro bono ad space, according to the spokesman, and "just about every fashion and lifestyle magazine has committed." Examples include Vogue, In Style and Harper's Bazaar. The pro bono ad space so far totals approximately more than $3 million.

Video

Source: The Fashion Spot

Reverse

2007-09-20T17:49:00.000+01:00

“I’m a size 10 with a size eight top and made to feel fat next to someone like Kate Moss. What makes me angry is I let it happen. I’m not super-skinny, so in ‘Fameland’ I’m fat Lily Allen. It’s now my ambition to get all those skinny-arsed bitches off the covers of magazines and get normal people on them.”

Source: The Rad Report

Eugh.

Paris Hilton shopping on Melrose

2007-09-20T17:45:00.001+01:00

Her hair reminds me of Agyness Deyn's.

16/09/07 Posh & Becks at Nobu

2007-09-20T16:02:00.001+01:00

Mary-Kate Olsen at an art show in LA

2007-09-20T15:58:00.000+01:00

Mary-Kate Olsen leaving Mystic Tan

2007-09-20T15:45:00.000+01:00

Source: AOF

Fit Day

2007-09-19T17:15:00.000+01:00

I found a really good website today where you can log all the foods you eat and it calculates all the calories, fat, carbs etc and totals it up for you and you can also keep track of how many calories you've burned doing all the activities you do throughout the day from getting dressed to going for a hike! It's called Fit Day and I'm going to add it to the tools as well.

So cold!

2007-09-19T17:00:00.000+01:00

It's so cold today! I've spent the whole day sitting under a blanket. It's sunny outside so it's pretending to be warm but it's actually not, I went to the Post Office to get some stamps and I had to wear Uggs (yeah they've had their day but they're so comfy and warm, I bought a new pair the other day in the 'chocolate' colour, they're a little more understated than the light coloured ones and I hate the black, so tacky) and a coat over my hoodie and it's still only September. Good thing I have my fleecy blue blankie with snowmen on it to keep me warm, it's technically a Christmas blanket that came free when we ordered a load of stuff out of my mum's Gratton catalogue last November but it's so soft and cozy and not too heavy that I use it all year round. I think I need to wear gloves when I'm on the computer though cus my fingers are freezing and really blue. I can't wait for mum to get home from work and light the fire.

Thin looks good in anything

2007-09-19T16:56:00.000+01:00

I've added a Tagboard to the right side bar.

Size Zero

2007-09-19T13:43:00.000+01:00

I've added a list of helplines to the left side bar.

Strong

2007-09-19T13:26:00.000+01:00

I've added a list of acronyms and definitions that are regularly used on a lot of sites.

A moment on the lips, forever on the hips.

2007-09-19T13:04:00.000+01:00

I've added a section of eating disorder related statistics to the left side bar. I've looked at a lot of sites and a lot of them display statistics without quoting the source of the statistics, the study from which they came or the person, persons or body that conducted the study whereas I've posted the source as well. I'll probably post more at a later date, as and when I come across them.

Yesturday

2007-09-18T17:20:00.000+01:00

I had to go visit my mum at work yesturday, she's a manager at a local shopping complex and I needed to buy a new quilt and bedding for uni and I like using her discount and my mum packed my lunch because she won't trust me to do it myself and so I had to eat a bag of Quavers (87 calories per bag, the lowest I've found so far), a Dairy Milk Bar (255 calories!!) and a cheese sandwich which I only ate half of and a bottle of water.

2 boiled eggs

A glass of smoothie

3x cup of tea

Walked 1mile

Weight = 98lb

Pain is weakness leaving the body

2007-09-17T21:34:00.000+01:00

Caffeine can reduce cellulite when applied directly to the skin.

Three servings of low fat milk a day are supposed to make you thinner especially around the waist.

Am I hungry, or just bored?

2007-09-17T21:29:00.000+01:00

Grapefruit and grapefruit juice are said to burn fat.

Green tea burns calories (in large quantities).

If you drink ice cold water it can burn up to 200 extra calories a day.

Sacrifice is giving something up to have something better

2007-09-17T21:24:00.000+01:00

Things that boost metabolism:

Green tea (in large quantities)

Lemon water

Spicy food (for a short period of time)

Good girls don't swollow

2007-09-17T21:11:00.000+01:00

I won't ever take diet pills cus I have this thing against medicine and I hate swallowing tablets, eugh but there are other things out there that suppress appetite:

Drink two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar in the morning (or take two apple cider vinegar tablets...).

The scent of green apples.

Chew really minty gum.

Brush your teeth with strong toothpaste (this puts me off eating anyway cus I hate the taste of food mixed with mint, the same applies to the gum obviously).

Korean Pine Nuts

Craving is a state of mind

2007-09-17T21:06:00.000+01:00

I've added the list of eating disorder to the left side bar.

Types of eating disorders continued

2007-09-17T18:14:00.000+01:00

Orthorexia Nervosa - like bigorexia, this condition will not be diagnosed by a physician. It is an obsession with a "pure" diet that interferes with a person's life. It becomes a way of life filled with chronic concern about the quality of food being consumed. If they deviate from their "perfect" diet, they may resort to extreme acts of further self-disipline including even strictor regimens and fasting.

Night Eating Disorder - "Night Eating Syndrome consists of morning anorexia, evening hyperphagia (abnormally increased appetite for consumption of food frequently associated with injury to the hypothalamus) and insomnia. Attempts at weight reduction in these 2 conditions, (referring to bulimia as well), are usually unsuccessful and may cause the patient unnecessary distress." Merck Manual (1982 ed.) p.917

Pica - a compulsive craving for eating, chewing or licking non-food items or foods with no nutritional value. These items can include chalk, plaster, paint crisps, baking soda, starch, glue, rust, ice, coffee grounds and cigarette ashes. It is fairly common in pregnant women and symptoms usually disappear following the birth of the child.

Compulsive Over-exercise (COE) or Anorexia Athletica - episodes of repeatedly exercising beyond the requirements of what is considered safe, and will find time at any cost to do the exercise, the main gola of all the exercise is to burn calories to relieve guilt experienced from eating a normal meal or binging.

Types of eating disorder

2007-09-17T17:44:00.000+01:00

There are lots of different types of eating disorders besides the most common or most well known:
Anorexia Nervosa - refusal to maintain a normal weight for one’s height, body type, age, and activity level, intense fear of gaining weight or becoming ”fat”; extreme concern with body weight and shape, body image misperception; for example, feeling ”fat” despite being underweight, loss of menstrual periods (females).
Bulimia Nervosa - preoccupation with food and weight, binging (the consumption of a very large amount of food in a short period of time), compensation for binges with one or more of the following unhealthy measures known as purging such as self-induced vomiting, misuse of laxatives, water pills, or diet pills or by excessive exercise or fasting, secretiveness and shamefulness about the binging and purging.
Binge Eating Disorder - periods of uncontrolled, impulsive, or continuous eating to the point of being uncomfortably full (binges), feelings of shame and self-hatred about the binging but no compensatory behavior (such as purging) after binging .
Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified (EDNOS) - there are a range of other disordered eating patterns that don’t fit into the other eating disorder categories. These eating patterns are still serious and intervention and attention are necessary. EDNOS includes: Eating problems with some, but not all the characteristics of a full-fledged eating disorder; for example, people who severely restrict food intake but don't meet the full criteria for anorexia nervosa Chewing food and spitting it out without swallowing any ( comm0nly called 'chewing and spitting')Binging and purging irregularly, such as at times of increased stress.
Body Dismorphic Disorder (BDD) - a preoccupation or obsession with a defect in physical appearance, whether it be an actual imperfection or an imagined one. For example, obsessing to the point of severe depression (sometimes including thoughts about or attempts at suicide) over physical attributes such as freckles, a large nose, blotchy skin, wrinkles, acne or scarring. Though the preoccupation can include any part of the body, specifically the skin, hair and nose, are the most common.
Sleep Eating Disorder - usually falls into the category of Sleep Disorders, though it is a combined sleep-eating problem. Sufferers tend to be overweight and have episodes of recurrent sleep walking during which they binge on usually large quantities of food, often high in sugar or fat. Sufferers rarelyremember these episodes which puts them at great risk of unintentional self-injury.
Prader-Willi Syndrome - an insatiable appetite that can lead to obesity, stealing, and eating pet foods and items that are spoiled. It is a congenital condition (present at birth) and is believed to be caused by an abnormality in the genes, though statistically it does not appear to run in families. Children born with Prader-Willi Syndrome may have early feeding difficulties that lead to tube feeding, and often have a degree of behavioral and/or mental problems.
Bigorexia - this is not a condition that a physician will ever diagnose because as yet there is no clinical guideline. It is a condition that has recently been observed by several psychiatrists as being the "opposite of anorexia". Usually found in body-building circles and known as muscle dysmorphia or reverse anorexia, bigorexia is a condition where the sufferer is constantly worried that they are too small.

Winehouse's bulimia troubles

2007-09-17T17:34:00.001+01:00

Winehouse's bulimia troubles

12/09/2007 - 08:10:44

Amy Winehouse's eating disorder is becoming more of a worry than her alleged drug problem, the star's friends have claimed.

Winehouse has been taking time out from her career after her recent high-profile spells in hospital and much tabloid coverage of her reported drug problems.

But pals of the Rehab hitmaker are now terrified the 23-year-old will never recover from the bulimia that she has struggled with since her teens.

Hairdresser friend Alex Foden claims the skeletal soul star is still battling the eating disorder - and husband Blake Fielder-Civil is at a loss as to how to help.

He tells British magazine Closer: "They've been rowing a lot over the bulimia - not the drugs. They wanted to leave London for some peace and quiet."

And Foden blames the pressure of fame for Winehouse's crippling illness.

He adds: "When Amy shot to fame she was a size 10 and people called her fat.

"Celebs say they don't read their own press, but they do. She's managed to put on a little weight recently, but it's an ongoing battle."

Source: IOL

Pro-Anorexic Web Sites Make Even Thin Women Feel Bad, Study Finds

2007-09-17T17:26:00.000+01:00

Pro-Anorexic Web Sites Make Even Thin Women Feel Bad, Study Finds

Monday, September 17, 2007

Even healthy young women feel worse about themselves and their appearance after viewing pro-anorexic Web sites, according to a new study reported by Reuters.
So-called "pro-ana" Web sites have long been a problem and have been the subject of more than one television shows. The sites encourage and offer tips to women on how to become "ultra-thin" and anorexic.
Dr. Anna M. Bardone-Cone of the University of Missouri in Columbia and her colleague Kamila M. Cass conducted the study and, based on their findings, suggested that parents take steps to prevent their children from viewing such sites, by blocking access to them and by keeping any household computers in open areas so they can supervise their use.
Click here to read the Reuters story
For the study, Bardone-Cone and Cass created a "prototypic" pro-ana website, and randomly assigned 235 female college students to view that site, a fashion Web site featuring normal-weight models, or a site on home decor.
After looking at the anorexia-promoting site, young women had worse moods, worse social self-esteem, and felt worse about their appearance regardless of whether they were thin, over-weight or identified themselves as having an eating disorder.
Source: FOXNews.com

Five disorders that make sleep scary

2007-09-17T17:22:00.001+01:00

Five disorders that make sleep scary

By Ken Carter, Ph.D.

We spend a third of our lives asleep. And if the number of times you slap the snooze button every morning is any measure, those are some darn good times.

Of course, sleeping isn't always a pleasant experience.
According to the National Sleep Foundation, up to 72 percent of us experience some symptoms of a sleep disorder at least a few nights a week.
For most, it's insomnia.
For others, the problem is much more unique.
1. Sleep eating
Nocturnal Sleep-Related Eating Disorder, or Sleep Eating, is a condition similar to sleepwalking in which affected people will engage in nightly noshing while partially or totally asleep.
The most common Sleep Eating episodes entail a person sleepwalking to the refrigerator and munching on a midnight snack that they'll probably never remember.
Other times, the episodes are more elaborate, and the fully asleep sufferers head to the kitchen to chop, stir-fry, bake or bust out the George Foreman. In fact, reports indicate that up to one-third of Sleep Eaters have hurt themselves while preparing or eating food (which is actually really low when you think about grillin' up food Emeril-style while unconscious -- bam!).

The disorder is fairly rare, occurring in only about one and a half percent of the population. Two out of three people with Sleep Eating are women, and three out of four eat nightly (some up to eight times a night).
Most of them (84 percent) are completely unaware of their nighttime snacks. And ironically, in almost all cases, the behavior doesn't appear to be hunger-related.
To make things even more strange, the food choices of Sleep Eaters can be, at times, very peculiar. Case studies have revealed nighttime meals that include cat food, raw chicken, coffee grounds and milk, sandwiches made with fistfuls of salt, and even inedibles such as ammonia or buttered soda cans.
2. Sleep paralysis
During normal sleep, your brain sends a signal to your body to inhibit your movement while you're dreaming. This keeps you from thrashing around and possibly hurting yourself.
But when Sleep Paralysis occurs, the brain either switches on your muscle inhibition feature too soon or doesn't switch it off when you wake up, which can lead to very creepy experiences. In addition to being unable to move, many people will dream while they're awake -- basically hallucinating.
The most common hallucinations that occur with Sleep Paralysis include sensing or seeing another person in the room, being touched, hearing footsteps, floating, or even hearing someone call your name. And for some people, the sensation is so strong they think they've had a stroke and are really paralyzed. Episodes of Sleep Paralysis can last anywhere from 10 seconds to a terrifying 70 minutes.
But it could never happen to you, right? Wrong.
Studies suggest that about half of us have experienced at least one episode of hypnagogic Sleep Paralysis, the kind that occurs soon after we fall asleep.
Chronic Sleep Paralysis, however, only affects about six percent of adults. Generally, the disorder is related to jet lag, sleep deprivation, stress or even your sleeping position. It's believed that supine sleep (sleeping on your back) can make a person five times more likely to have an episode of Sleep Paralysis than any other position.
If you do happen to wake one morning and find yourself paralyzed, try wiggling your toes. The paralysis seems to affect larger muscles more than smaller ones, so a good way to get out of it is to try to make small movements.
If that doesn't work, check for a crazed Kathy Bates lurching around your room à la "Misery," and make sure your ankles are still intact.
3. Sexsomnia
It's embarrassing enough to be told that you snore or mumble in your sleep, but imagine being told that you take off all your clothes, moan in ecstasy, and sometimes even pleasure yourself -- all without any memory of doing so. This is what happens with Sexsomnia.
Researchers at the Sleep Disorder Center at Stanford University have classified the sexual behaviors that occur during sleep into three categories.
The first involves actions that the researchers describe as "annoying," though not harmful. Cases in this category include sexual moaning loud enough to be heard in adjoining rooms, attempts to remove clothing, and mumbling sexually inappropriate phrases.
The second category includes behaviors that are also considered annoying but are, at times, harmful to the person suffering from Sexsomnia. Often, this involves violent masturbation that can cause bruising and soreness the next morning.
The last, and most severe, category is for actions that are harmful to others. These cases involve inappropriate and violent sexual behavior.
When confronted, people with Sexsomnia have no memory of their actions and become confused and embarrassed. One case study described a man who was so ashamed of his uncontrollable sexual behavior that he refused to share a bed with his wife and would restrain himself during the night to prevent any inappropriate conduct.
But even that didn't work. According to the researchers, on one particular evening his Sexsomnia desires were so forceful that he not only broke his restraints, but also two fingers.
Most bed partners of those with Sexsomnia find the behavior disquieting and unwelcome. There have even been cases of arrest for sexual battery. Other cases aren't quite as severe, and the episodes of Sexsomnia may be indistinguishable from sex when awake.
One woman didn't realize that her husband was suffering from Sexsomnia for months. Finally one night, she clued in when she noticed something different about her husband while they were having sex: he was snoring.
Some people think that the diagnosis of Sexsomnia is used to justify inappropriate sexual advances. However, in nearly every case, doctors were able to document abnormal patterns of REM (rapid eye movement) or non-REM sleep, something impossible to fake. The majority of cases also had other psychiatric diagnoses. Fortunately, most patients with Sexsomnia can be successfully treated with psychotropic medications.
4. Pseudoinsomnia
We've all had nights where we just couldn't seem to get to sleep. We toss and turn, punch our pillows, count sheep, and wonder what shirt will go best with the dark circles under our eyes the next morning. This is classic insomnia, a condition that an estimated 20 million people experience on a nightly or nearly nightly basis.
Strangely, roughly five percent of these insomnia sufferers actually sleep much better than they realize. Why? They don't have insomnia, but instead a condition known as Sleep State Misperception, or Pseudoinsomnia.
People with this disorder have vivid dreams about not being able to sleep: tossing and turning and counting those sheep. Consequently, they wake the next morning feeling exhausted and believing they spent the entire night wide awake.
Often a bed partner discovers the disorder by assuring their mate that he or she is actually sleeping through the night. Other times, it's diagnosed by a physician, but usually only after prescriptions for typical sleep inducers seem to fail.
Luckily, the simple diagnosis of Pseudoinsomnia is usually enough to do the trick in curing the disorder.
For more mental_floss articles, visit www.mentalfloss.com.
Entire contents of this article copyright, Mental Floss LLC. All rights reserved.

Source: CNN.com

La Maison Tailgate Golf Event

2007-09-17T17:14:00.000+01:00

La Maison Tailgate Golf Event

Date: 2007-09-17

Time: 12:00 PM

2nd Annual LaMaison Tailgate Scrambe held Monday September 17 at Dakota Dunes Golf Course. Registration will be at noon and the shotgun start at 1pm. All proceeds from the event will be dedicated to facility costs, as well as planned endowments for needing women.La Maison Tailgate is an annual event intended to increase awareness of eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, compulsive overeating, and obesity.

yma1977@longlines.com

Source: KTIV TV: Sioux City, IA

The sweet ‘Taste of Freedom’

2007-09-17T11:30:00.000+01:00

The sweet ‘Taste of Freedom’

Bianca Caruana

Friday saw the foundations being laid for a new campaign in Malta to raise awareness of the growing problem of eating disorders on the island. Nineteen-year-old Louisa Bartolo started “Taste Freedom” as a result of suffering from anorexia, which had set in before starting sixth form. Still recovering from the disorder, Louisa spoke of never being taught about nutrition whilst at school, and how she only realised her misconception of “healthy eating” after speaking to a nutritionist and psychologist during her recovery period. “Children are not educated on proper nutrition and I doubt if many teachers in secondary schools really know much about the subject. Teenagers should be made aware of the implications and long lasting effects of not eating properly.”Dr Dorothy Scicluna, a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist, gave people present a break down of various eating disorders, the requirements needed to offer better services to sufferers, the challenges regarding treatment, and also pointed out the fact that Malta does not have an Eating Disorders Unit. This means research into this growing problem is not being done specifically in Malta. “We know that these disorders present the highest mortality rate among psychiatric sufferers. The absence of an Eating Disorders Unit discourages many people from being able to come forward and admit they have a problem. Another problem is the lack of psychiatric help readily available to many sufferers.” Unless people can afford the costs of private treatment or hospitalisation, one has to wait for a vacant place within the Psychiatric Unit. The most common form of eating disorder in Malta seems to be binge-eating, which may possibly be related to the high obesity levels present in Malta. There is no specific section of the unit for people suffering from Eating Disorders and so patients are made to share wards with people suffering from various other problems. This can obviously be very daunting to anyone and can result in not seeking any help.Elaine Dutton from the Health Promotion Department spoke not only of the difficulties experience by the people suffering from eating disorders but also the problems of their loved ones. “Many GPs are not always able to recognise eating disorders at an early enough stage, since symptoms are usually more psychological than physical. Parents are usually clueless, find themselves helpless and feel guilty about what is happening to their children.”Dutton agreed the possibility of these disorders being a continuum of the obesity levels in Malta and also mentioned the problem of underlying issues, which may have triggered the disorder to begin with. Catherine Gonzi, the chairperson of HSBC Cares for Children Fund, urged other organisations to play a part in providing help for Taste Freedom to raise awareness. “Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa cause serious physical and psychological problems whilst suffering, but has long-term effects on the body which can not be completely cured.”Along the same lines, the chairperson of the Vodafone Malta Foundation, Gemma Mifsud Bonnici said, “Everyone has something to give in their own way.” She also emphasised the need to educate family and friends on the seriousness of this growing problem. Minister for Family and Social Solidarity, Dolores Christina, said that not only is this action a ‘Taste of Freedom’ but also a ‘Taste of Courage’. She admired Louisa and her colleagues for what they are doing and said that there was a need for pressure groups. “My niece also suffered from an eating disorder some years ago and the frustration of the family is overwhelming. I do not mean to sound cruel but Louisa and her colleagues should now take responsibility and push to improve the situation in Malta.”Emma Helene Hogg and Chantelle Camilleri were two teenagers who along with Lousia briefly shared their experiences of battling food disorders and finding themselves lucky to have had the support and funds needed to get themselves through the tough period. Hogg said, “I have been lucky but some are not in the same position as myself. They need therapy but have nowhere to go and private treatment is too expensive.”Both Hogg and Camilleri felt proud to have reached a stage of recovery and through it all have finally managed to feel comfortable with the way they look and feel.Prof. Bob Palmer, a senior lecturer and honorary consultant psychiatrist from Leicester, was the guest and final speaker of the meeting. Palmer gave a more holistic view of eating disorders including statistics, the historical context with records reaching as far back as 1870, and also mentioned the possibility of a larger number people suffering from eating disorders than stipulated.“Anorexia and Bulimia Nervosa are the most ‘popular’ eating disorders we hear about but there is a large number of the population, not just in Malta but also in the UK and possibly the world, who suffer from Atypical Eating Disorders which are harder to identify.“Eating disorders have been glamorised because of the hype built up by the media on the celebrities. But there is nothing glamorous about sticking your head down the toilet and purging or struggling, as an 80-year-old would, when getting out of bed. It is a serious problem which needs to be tackled and should not be taken lightly.”This campaign may finally be a step forward for people suffering from eating disorders but there is still a long way to go. Government and private funding is required to make more services available to the people, educating the population from a young age is a must, and an Eating Disorders Unit has to be set up for research and facilities to help sufferers. Louisa Bartolo, along with friends and colleagues, has taken the first brave step, however it definitely cannot stop there. As Dolores Christina stated, they are now responsible for this campaign and the message which has to be heard.

Source: MaltaToday

Yesturday

2007-09-17T11:22:00.000+01:00

Small bowl of fruit and fibre
Banana and apple smoothie
No added sugar summer fruits juice
1/3 of my tea
A slice of toast
4x cup of tea

Weight = 98lb

Pro-anorexia websites hurt viewers' self-esteem

2007-09-16T19:58:00.000+01:00

Pro-anorexia websites hurt viewers' self-esteem

Fri Sep 14, 2007 7:54pm BST

By Anne Harding
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - No matter what their weight or their eating habits, young women feel worse about themselves and their appearance after viewing pro-anorexia websites, which explicitly encourage extreme thinness, a new study shows.
"It works on a couple of levels, it works on mood, it works on your body image," said Dr. Anna M. Bardone-Cone of the University of Missouri in Columbia, one of the study's authors. "Everyone's affected."
Bardone-Cone and her colleague Kamila M. Cass suggest that parents may want to take steps to prevent their children from viewing such sites, by blocking access to them and by keeping any household computers in open areas so they can supervise their use, for example.
So-called "pro-ana" websites have been in the media spotlight recently, the two investigators note in their report in the International Journal of Eating Disorders. Health professionals have expressed concerns that the sites, which include "thinspiration" photos of skeletal models and "Tips and Tricks" for losing weight, may be harmful to viewers.
To investigate, Bardone-Cone and Cass created a "prototypic" pro-ana website, and randomly assigned 235 female college students to view it, or a fashion website featuring normal-weight models, or a site on home decor. Fourteen percent of the study participants met criteria for having a possible eating disorder, while about 17 percent were overweight.
After looking at the anorexia-promoting Web site, young women had worse moods, worse social self-esteem, and a worse sense of their ability to cope with their appearance than those who viewed one of the other two websites. They also thought of themselves as heavier and said they were more likely to exercise and think about their weight in the near future.
The effect was the same whether or not women were actually overweight, and whether or not they reported possibly disordered eating behavior.
Many women who view pro-ana websites may not have active eating disorders, but are instead looking for weight loss tips or are simply curious, Bardone-Cone noted. "If I were the parent of a daughter, I'd definitely have concerns about that." She added that the findings confirm "there's stuff on the Internet that really kids shouldn't be seeing."
Source: International Journal of Eating Disorders, September 2007.

ANOREXIA: MY BATTLE BACK FROM THE BRINK

2007-09-16T19:43:00.001+01:00

ANOREXIA: MY BATTLE BACK FROM THE BRINK

10:02 - 13 September 2007
A Woman who almost died of anorexia just six months ago has backed calls for better treatment to help others with the condition.

Rowena Henderson starved herself for seven years. In March, the 20-year-old weighed just five-and-a-half stone - and was still refusing to eat.

But since going to a specialist eating disorder unit in Northamptonshire, her condition has improved greatly.

She spoke about her treatment after the death of 17-year-old Emma Carpenter last Christmas.

Emma's family believe she would still be alive if she had received specialist treatment.

Notts' mental health trust is to investigate Emma's care later this month.

And it will consult on how to improve its in-patient services for eating disorders.

Rowena said: "They didn't know how to deal with it properly. I really don't think there is any hope unless you can get into a specialised unit."

Source: this is nottingham

Triumph over anorexia

2007-09-16T19:40:00.001+01:00

Triumph over anorexia

By Sharon Roznik The Reporter sroznik@fdlreporter.com
Gary Grahl was terrified to talk about his condition because of the stigma attached.

At 5 feet 9 inches tall, he had starved and exercised himself down to 102 pounds.

Despite his skeletal frame, when he looked in the mirror, he saw a fat, flabby body and a person who didn't deserve to be loved.

In his new autobiography titled "Skinny Boy: A Young Man's Battle and Triumph Over Anorexia," Grahl, 39, said of his struggle 17 years ago with anorexia nervosa, depression and thoughts of suicide: "It was like a hidden secret."

A 1987 graduate of Campbellsport High School, Grahl grew up in the rural community of Eden, the hometown of former Milwaukee Brewers player Jim Gantner.

He was an athlete, a good student and a well-liked teenager who had a dark secret while attending high school, one he didn't understand but yet drove him to torture himself with grueling exercise.

"I'd wake up at 3:30 a.m. to get in an eight-hour workout each day. I did that seven days a week," Grahl said.

"Skinny Boy," Grahl said, is the first book that emphasizes the disease and subsequent recovery from a male perspective. Many males, he said, feel ashamed to go public with a female-dominated illness.

"Eating disorders are a private, daunting illness," Grahl said. "It's difficult for anyone to admit struggling with one and be held accountable for recovery, let alone do it with a national audience."

Inner dialogue
The 240-page book, written in the first person, focuses on the inner dialogue Grahl dealt with along with deep feelings of shame, self-hatred and irrational thought patterns. He pretended to be other people, athletes and movie stars he idolized.

"Pretty soon, I didn't know who I was anymore," Grahl said.

He recalls laying his head down one day, exhausted, in high school study hall and then feeling a tap on the shoulder.

His chemistry teacher, Don Seefeld, who later tutored him the psychiatric ward of an east central Wisconsin hospital, called him into his office and said: "What's wrong with you? Let's talk."

Now retired, Seefeld, of Campbellsport, remembers the shock he felt when he learned his student was suffering from the effects of an eating disorder.

"He was a good baseball player, a good student," Seefeld said. "When I went up to talk to him at the hospital, he told me, 'You don't understand what I am going through. When I look at myself, I can't see myself as skinny.' You couldn't talk to him about food."

His popularity as a high school athlete brought uninvited attention, Grahl said, and a fear of not being able to please people. He began to dread emotions and feelings and withdrew from social activities.

"I was elected to prom court my junior year in high school, and I was hospitalized at the time," he recalled. "All of a sudden, the people on prom court showed up to visit, gave me a flower and a program. I was terrified."

Hospitalized six times
Grahl dabbled in self-harm, cut himself with a knife, and from 1984 to 1989, was hospitalized six times. Through family therapy, he started to understand some of the reasons for his illness.

"It's not attributed to one thing," he said. "I grew up in a family very supportive and loving, but we didn't show or talk about feelings very much."

At one point, Jim Gantner visited the teen in the hospital, bringing along his pastor, Ike Mason, from Milwaukee. They prayed with him, Grahl said, and taught him that God was not a policeman but a source of strength.

When Grahl told his parents about writing the book, he received their blessings.

His mother, Florence Grahl of Eden, said she knew her son struggled a long time with anorexia but was still sad and shocked when she read "Skinny Boy."

"Little did I know the extreme feelings and thoughts he endured during that time," she said. "This wasn't the Gary I knew, and I thank God for giving him the strength and willpower to overcome the illness."

She relates the pride she has for her son for going on to live the happy life she and her husband Marvin always hoped he'd have.

"He has helped others struggling with the illness and continues to do so," Florence Grahl said.

Seefeld also expressed pride in Grahl's decision to share his story in book form and help other people.

"It's a problem," Seefeld said. "Even today, on television, the skinny look is what everyone thrives for."

Now a school counselor in Sturgeon Bay and weighing a healthy 165 pounds, Grahl said he still struggles with feelings of shame.

"It's a way I perceived things," he said. "Everything that came into me was filtered through my shame grid. Now, I know how to deal with it."
Source: FDLReporter.com

Her killer is her friend

2007-09-16T19:30:00.001+01:00

Her killer is her friend

PHIL KITCHIN - The Dominion Post Saturday, 15 September 2007
A sexually abused woman is being treated for anorexia in a psychiatric unit.

Tracie Nichols is dying. Dying of a disease she calls her "friend". Ms Nichols knows she suffers from anorexia, but doesn't believe doctors' warnings that it is killing her. Experts say it is a typical symptom of a complicated disease that prompts sufferers to starve themselves. Without intervention their organs eventually fail.
Ms Nichols, 33, shrugs off the death warnings. Her "friend", the disease, tells her to. She, instead, has her own theory on her tragic life; she believes sexual abuse is like a silent killer. "When I was very young I had control of my body taken away from me. I was sexually abused. Anorexia is my friend. It gave me back control of my body. Some people use drugs to get high. Anorexia is my high."
Doctors and family members were so alarmed at Ms Nichols' pathetic weight four months ago - she weighed 24 kilograms - that she was admitted to hospital.
Her weight increased and she was discharged. But when it plummeted again, authorities committed her, under the Mental Health Act, to Waikato Hospital's secure mental health unit. The authorities believed Ms Nichols could die without forcible intervention.
Ms Nichols hates the psych unit. In the past three months she has escaped twice. Her aunt, Lisa Kenny, has become her de facto spokeswoman. Her story has awful parallels to that of Ms Nichols. Born as a result of a pack rape, Ms Kenny was sexually abused by two men before she reached the age of seven. One of the molesters was the serial paedophile who molested Ms Nichols. The man admitted to "fiddling" with other children too.
"I discovered drugs, aged nine or 10, started sniffing, smoking dope and alcohol, drank heavily, popped pills till I was 20," Ms Kenny says.
"The drugs were a cushion. When I got wasted, I forgot about all that. It helped me block it out. I couldn't deal with it. I didn't deal with it till I got clean."
Ms Kenny also knows what it's like inside secure mental health units, because she has been in them as part of her healing from a range of mental health labels she has been given.
"I've been through years and years of abuse. Of course it's going to affect you mentally. You cope any way you can."
She says it is a disgrace for authorities to be treating Ms Nichols' anorexia in a psychiatric unit in this day and age.
"She's had 30 years of a hell life. This has harmed her in every way ... she's really got nothing to live for.
"But she's not crazy and she's in a place with people suffering from serious psychiatric illnesses ... they're limiting her having showers.
"When you've been sexually abused you might shower five times a day and that's okay. You might want to lie in a hot tub; it's nourishing, it is healing.
"She can't do any of that. She's just in a cell up there. You'd have more fun in a prison than in that place.
"If she eats her meals she gets to smoke cigarettes as a reward and is allowed to see visitors, when they come. Apart from that there's only books or puzzles.
"If she passes away due to organ failure her death certificate will say she died of natural causes. None of this will come out. Nobody will learn anything from it."
Auckland eating disorder expert Charles Fishman has not met Ms Nichols, so is prepared to speak in only general terms about anorexia.
He says sexual abuse is one of a range of reasons why some people can develop anorexia.
Dr Fishman says anorexia is the most fatal of psychiatric diseases per capita and there has to be outside intervention to help sufferers stay alive.
He would not be drawn on whether a secure psychiatric unit was an appropriate place for Ms Nichols to be treated in, but said "there needs to be different ways of treating anorexia" than are currently available.
LIFE OF ABUSE
1976: Tracie Nichols is sexually abused at age 3. Her aunt, Lisa Kenny, sees the abuse.
1985, Oct 18: Tracie, 12, complains to a teacher who tells CYF. CYF takes her to the abuser who admits molesting her. Tracie runs away but is found. She says she is beaten and molested again.
1985, Oct 19: Tracie is interviewed by police but "the matter was not proceeded with". A social worker says the abuser again admits he has abused Tracie and other young girls.
1985, Dec: CYF files say Tracie has been molested on "many occasions over many years". She is made a state ward.
1986, Jan and Feb: CYF files show Tracie, 13, complains of more abuse after being put into foster care where the paedophile gets to her.
1986, Jan 21: Tracie writes to a teacher saying the paedophile is "still doing the same thing ... I can't live with what's happening to me".
1986, Feb 19: CYF file says the sexual abuse in a foster home that CYF has put Tracie in is "regrettable".
1986, March: The abuser admits for a third time to molesting Tracie. He goes to counselling.
1986, June 12: CYF says its goal is to return Tracie to a home, despite knowing the molester would have access to her.
1987: Lisa Kenny writes to CYF saying she has witnessed abuse of her niece.
1987, March 3: CYF agrees to put Tracie back where she would be close to the abuser. She protests and the plan is dumped.
1987, April 8: A social worker says Tracie must be sent away from Hamilton because the paedophile is a constant threat.
1987, July: Tracie swallows pills in a botched suicide attempt seen by CYF staff.
1987, Aug 13: CYF says if Tracie continues to run from foster homes it will have "no alternative" but to consider putting her back where the molester could get to her.
1987, Nov 16: CYF puts Tracie into Hamilton Girls Home in Dey St because of her running away.
1988, Jan: CYF says Tracie may have anorexia and that she has mutilated herself after seeing the abuser.
1988, July 1: CYF says it "will quietly step up contact between Tracie and (the paedophile). Tracie is not aware that this will be happening."
1988, July 15: CYF obtains a confidential report on treatment of the paedophile which says putting Tracie anywhere near him is "not realistic in the near future".
1989, April 3: CYF psychologist says the paedophile is no longer a threat.
1989, May 5: Tracie admits using drugs and complains of being abused. Police believe it is a false complaint.
1989, June: Tracie is discagain taking interest in children.
1992, Dec: A report to CYF says Tracie's anorexia is due to sexual abuse.
1992: Tracie is discharged as a state ward.
1994: Tracie complains to police about the molester but does not pursue the complaint.
1997: Tracie again complains to police. The abuser is convicted of molesting Tracie and Ms Kenny and given periodic detention and a suspended sentence.
2001: Tracie complains to CYF of abuse by a former CYF manager.
2004: CYF offers $8000 full and final settlement. The offer is rejected by Tracie.
2005: CYF offers $25,000 in a confidential settlement. Tracie accepts.

Source: The Dominion Post