Meri Pekkanen: Occupational therapy, nutrition and other hot health stuff

Eating Disorders NOT psychiatric problems

This video made me really happy. I’ve been suspecting for years that eating disorders aren’t psychiatric problems but more physical than we realize. I’ve been thinking that a lot of the anxiety and psychiatric symptoms related to eating disorders are due to the lack of essential fatty acids. Which is of course not the whole truth but it seems I’ve been on the right track.

In Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, they’ve now tried and tested a new kind of method in treating eating disorders: the method is based on the behavioral changes, teaching the patients how to eat again, not the assumption that there’s something EVIL lying behind the disorder and that something must have gotten wrong in their families. Patients with eating disorder suffer from psychiatric symptoms such as anxiety and panic attacks due to lack of food and too much exercise. So the patient isn’t exercising and eating too little because she/he is anxious but the other way around.

Same goes with obesity. A person does not gain weight because she/he eats too much. She/he eats more because she/he is gaining weight. Similar to a child growing up: she/he doesn’t grow bigger because she/he eats more. She/he eats more because she/he is growing. Also applies to pregnant women: they get bigger, hence they need more energy. Regarding obesity the cause usually lies in distorted metabolism which may be caused by a nutritionally poor diet, excess insulin et cetera.

We are living in an interesting world and there’s yet so much to discover! Wishing you all the best year 2011, thank you for reading me. 🙂

Meri

January 2, 2011 at 10:45 Leave a comment