Posts

May 17, 2013

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4:13 PM | Transitioning from Adolescent to Adult Eating Disorder Treatment Programs: What Are The Challenges?

Navigating health service systems can seem daunting, to say the least. Making phone calls, getting doctor appointments and referrals, attending intake appointments, and preparing oneself for treatment can be both mentally and physically draining. When children and adolescents develop eating disorders, their parents become the main navigators in this scenario, making decisions and arrangements for their under-18-year-olds. But what happens when these adolescents reach the age of 18, and still […]

May 16, 2013

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4:42 AM | Graduate Student Traps

Can we help avoid parallel repetition of mistakes? Irit Dinur has recently again shown a wonderful skill at re-conceptualizing an area that had seemingly been well worked out. A notable previous instance was her re-casting the proof of the PCP Theorem as a progressive amplification. Now she and David Steurer have posted a new paper […]

May 13, 2013

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1:43 PM | Bingeing and Purging: Keeping the “Positives” and Eliminating The Negatives?

I have been fascinated and perplexed by reports of the seemingly invigorating and anxiety reducing effects of bingeing and purging (purging by self-induced vomiting). Personally, I cringe at the idea of self-induced vomiting and have always wanted to avoid vomiting at all costs, including during food poisoning. The insight from recent blog entries and the subsequent comments has made an impact on me. I see that the motivation to engage in bingeing/purging (b/p-ing) behavior can […]

May 11, 2013

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9:45 PM | Advances on Group Isomorphism

Finally progress on this annoying problem David Rosenbaum is right now the world expert on one of my favorite problems, group isomorphism. He is a third-year PhD student at the University of Washington in Seattle under Paul Beame, and has been visiting MIT this year to work with his other advisor, our familiar friend Aram […]

May 09, 2013

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6:24 PM | Dancing Your Way to Recovery from Anorexia Nervosa

The idea of including dance and movement in interventions for eating disorders may seem somewhat controversial; generally, exercise and physical activity are discouraged for individuals recovering from eating disorders. Including dance in therapeutic interventions might raise a few eyebrows given the links between appearance-oriented athletic endeavors such as ballet and gymnastics and the development of eating disorders. However, some therapists and scholars interested in alternative therapies […]

May 06, 2013

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10:56 PM | A Most Perplexing Mystery

The discrete log and the factoring problem Antoine Joux is a crypto expert at Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University. He is also one of the crypto experts at CryptoExperts, having joined this startup company last November. His work is featured in all three of the company’s current top news items, though the asymptotic breakthrough on the exponent [...]

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7:42 PM | International Conference on Eating Disorders (ICED) 2013: Personal Reflections

The 2013 International Conference on Eating Disorders (ICED) ended on May 4th. I thought I’d reflect on the experience (short version: it was awesome and I’m so glad I went!). Please note, the following is in no way comprehensive, representative, or scientific. There were a lot of overlapping events at the conference, which meant that I could only attend a fraction of the events. I highlighted in yellow the workshops/panels/presentations I attended. There are more details about the […]

May 03, 2013

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12:27 PM | Pills for Bites: The Alarming Link between Drug Abuse and Eating Disorders

The association between drug abuse and eating disorders (EDs) is not new. Since the 1970s, doctors have reported higher incidents of self-medication and drug abuse in a subset of eating disorder patients. Drugs, in this context, cover everything from laxatives and diet pills, to alcohol and street drugs. The association between drug use and EDs is not shocking; however, the extent of the problem is likely overlooked. In a report detailing the most comprehensive review on the topic, the National […]

April 29, 2013

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3:57 AM | Factors Associated with Recovery from Anorexia Nervosa

Why do some people recover anorexia nervosa relatively quickly while others seem to struggle for years or decades? Does it depend on the person’s desire to get better? Their willpower? How much they are willing to fight? Is it just that some try harder than others? Some might say yes, but most will correctly realize that the picture is much, much more complex. We can spend hours talking about barriers to treatment, but in this post I want to talk about something slightly different, […]

April 28, 2013

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9:13 PM | Happy Birthday, Kurt Gödel

Wang on Gödel, and Gödel on Wang source, with more Wang quotes Hao Wang was a logician who made many important contributions to mathematics and especially logic. His creation of the now famous tiling problem was of great importance. He did seminal work on mechanical mathematics, getting in 1983 the first Milestone Prize for Automated [...]

April 26, 2013

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3:18 PM | Patient Perspectives on Anorexia, Treatment, and Therapeutic Alliance

Dear Science of Eating Disorders readers, please welcome Andrea, our newest contributor! Below is her introduction and first post. Hello SEDs readers, my name is Andrea and I’m excited to be contributing to the blog. I have an undergraduate degree in sociology and I am currently a Masters student studying family relations and human development. My research is looking at the experiences of young women in recovery from eating disorders, and uses qualitative methods including narrative […]

April 22, 2013

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7:51 PM | Family-Based Treatment for Adolescents with Anorexia Nervosa: Hype or Hope?

When it comes to eating disorder treatment, few (if any) approaches are as divisive as Family-Based Treatment, also known as the Maudsley Method (I’ll use the terms interchangeably) . When I first heard about Maudsley, sometime during my mid-teens, I thought it was scaaary. But, as I’ve learned more about it, I began to realize it is not as scary as I originally thought. As a side-note: I know many people reading this post will know more about Maudsley than I ever […]

April 18, 2013

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2:18 PM | Nonpurging Bulimia Nervosa: Where Does It Fit?

When most people think of bulimia nervosa, they think of binge eating and self-induced vomiting. While that is not incorrect, it is not the full picture either. In the current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV), there are two subtypes of bulimia nervosa: purging (BN-P) and nonpurging (BN-NP). The difference lies in the types of compensation methods: patients with BN-P engage in self-induced vomiting, or the misuse of laxatives, diuretics, or enemas whereas patients with […]

April 15, 2013

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4:27 AM | What’s The Point of Bingeing and Purging? And Why Can’t You Just Stop?

I defended my MSc on Tuesday and I’m not going to lie: I was pretty symptomatic with bulimia in the days prior to my defence. As I was explaining to my boyfriend, the anxiety-reducing effects of purging are so powerful, and the compulsion to binge and purge (when I’m stressed/anxious/”not okay”) is so strong that it is much easier to do it, get it over with, and continue working (in a much calmer state). I’ve mentioned before, for me, purging is very […]

April 10, 2013

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3:37 AM | Diabulimia: A Dangerous Duet

Type 1 diabetes (DMT1, or T1DM) is a lifelong disease often diagnosed in children or adolescents. Though causes of DMT1 are complex and not fully understood, it results from the body’s immune system destroying its own insulin-producing cells. This drastically lowers insulin levels and leads to high blood sugar (insulin is crucial for regulating blood sugar). If not managed properly, DMt1 can wreck havoc on the nerves, heart, and retina. The onset of DMT1 often results in dramatic weight […]

April 06, 2013

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4:16 AM | Zeno Proof Paradox

Another discussion of paradoxes src Zeno of Elea was a Greek philosopher who lived almost 2400 years ago. He is famous for the creation of paradoxes at the juncture of mathematics and the real world. Today Ken and I want to talk about a type of Zeno paradox. The paradoxes are claimed to be due [...]

April 04, 2013

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8:47 PM | Binge Eating: When Should We Call It An “Addiction”?

Hello Science of Eating Disorders readers! This is a guest post by Liz. Liz is a PhD Candidate in Psychology at the University of Toronto. You can read more about her research, interests, and eating disorder history on her “About” page. And the usual “disclaimer”: Please keep in mind that I (Tetyana) give as much freedom as possible to guest writers and contributors to write about their own interests and viewpoints. That means that we don’t all necessary agree; there […]

April 01, 2013

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2:00 PM | Interstellar Quantum Computation

Proof from the Chelyabinsk bolide fragment source Viktor Grokhovsky is a member of the Russian Academy of Science’s Committee on Meteorites. He is on the faculty of Ural Federal University, and specializes in metallurgy. He has been coordinating the recovery of fragments of the bolide that blazed and exploded over the skies of Chelyabinsk in [...]

March 30, 2013

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1:38 PM | Eating Disorders in the Elderly

The first published case of a late-onset eating disorder (at the age of 40) was in 1930 by John M. Berkman. In 1936, John A. Ryle published a case study of an eating disorder in a 59-year-old woman. Just how common are eating disorders in late middle-age or elderly individuals? There aren’t a lot of studies on this topic, but the the above figures illustrate that there’s a significant minority of elderly individuals who struggle with eating disorders or disordered eating. What […]

March 29, 2013

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3:54 AM | Happy 100th Birthday, Paul Erdős

Fixing our own Erdős discrepancy By permission of Fan Chung Graham, artist. Paul Erdős—Erdős Pál in Hungarian—would have been 100 this past Tuesday. He was a force of nature, a world stimulant. He popularized his colleague Alfred Rényi’s dictum that “a mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems,” while supplying much of the [...]

March 25, 2013

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9:23 PM | Win Five Hundred Or A Million Dollars, By Recursion?

The Erdős discrepancy problem and more source — in memoriam Raymond Redheffer was an American mathematician. He worked for his PhD under Norman Levinson, who was famous for his work on the Riemann Hypothesis. Redheffer spent his whole career at UCLA and was a great teacher—see this for more details. Redheffer wrote the mathematical content [...]

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4:08 AM | Are There Any Meaningful Differences Between Subthreshold and Full Syndrome Anorexia Nervosa?

I see this on an daily basis: patients with subtreshold eating disorders feeling invalidated and “not sick enough.” They are struggling so much, but maybe they still have their periods, or maybe their weight isn’t quite low enough, and so they often (but not always, thankfully) get dismissed by doctors, other healthcare professionals, and insurance companies. Do you think you really need this treatment, maybe you can just focus on eating healthier? You know you are not fat, […]

March 21, 2013

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8:36 PM | Your Body’s Response to Chewing and Spitting: The Role of Insulin

In my previous post, I looked at two hormones released during the cephalic phase (gastric secretion that occurs before food is eaten), ghrelin and obestatin, and how they may contribute to runaway eating behavior. Today I’m going to be looking at insulin release during chew and spit (CHSP), a fairly common symptom in eating disorders where the food is tasted, chewed and spit out. Insulin is a small peptide hormone that acts as a key regulator of metabolism; deregulation of […]

March 18, 2013

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7:30 PM | Demystifying the Genetics of Eating Disorders – Part II

In my last post I talked about some methods that scientists use to study the genetics of eating disorders. I focused on a subfield of genetics called behavioural genetics (which you can think of as a field that attempts to understand, in part, the interplay of genetics and environment in behaviour). In this post I’ll shift gears and focus on molecular genetics. I’ll be working of the same review paper by Drs. Zerwas and Bulik (2011). Molecular geneticists study the structure […]

March 17, 2013

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5:26 AM | Happy St. Patrick’s Day—Again and Again and Again and Again

Leprechauns are tricky even when they’re not Neil L. is a Leprechaun. Today I wish to share my experience with him this morning of St. Patrick’s Day. Neil L. has visited me the last four years, so I was obviously expecting him to visit again this year. I stayed up late Saturday night, and as [...]

March 16, 2013

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1:50 AM | Demystifying the Genetics of Eating Disorders – Part I

Today I thought I’d take the time to do an overview of what researchers know about the genetics of eating disorders and try to clear up some common misconceptions. The bulk of the content in this blog post comes from a very nice review paper published in 2011 by Drs. Stephanie Zerwas and Cynthia Bulik on the genetics and epigenetics of eating disorders. In an effort to keep blog posts short, this will be a multi-part mini-series. When it comes to the genetics of eating disorders, there […]

March 13, 2013

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4:04 AM | Avoiding Refeeding Syndrome in Anorexia Nervosa

Refeeding syndrome (RS) is a rare but potentially fatal condition that can occur during refeeding of severely malnourished individuals (such as anorexia nervosa patients). After prolonged starvation, the body begins to use fat and protein to produce energy because there are not enough carbohydrates. Upon refeeding, there’s a surge of insulin (because of the ingested carbohydrates) and a sudden shift from fat to carbohydrate metabolism. This sudden shift can lead to a whole set of […]

March 08, 2013

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4:49 PM | Deep Brain Stimulation for Severe Anorexia Nervosa

This week, a team of researchers from the University of Toronto published a paper in The Lancet describing the results of a small study using deep brain stimulation (DBS) to treatment severe/chronic anorexia nervosa. Major news outlets, including the BBC, reported on the findings. A few people emailed and messaged me asking me to do a post about it (which is cool! I love it!). So here it is. DBS is a surgical procedure that involves implanting an electrode that delivers […]

Lipsman, N., Woodside, D., Giacobbe, P., Hamani, C., Carter, J., Norwood, S., Sutandar, K., Staab, R., Elias, G., Lyman, C. & Smith, G. (2013). Subcallosal cingulate deep brain stimulation for treatment-refractory anorexia nervosa: a phase 1 pilot trial, The Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(12)62188-6

Citation

March 06, 2013

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6:20 PM | Your Body’s Response to Chewing & Spitting: The Role of Ghrelin and Obestatin

Shelly’s follow-up post on chewing and spitting, an often overlooked symptom in eating disorders. In her first post, Shelly discussed the prevalence of chewing and spitting among eating disorder patients. In this post, Shelly discusses some of the physiological effects of chewing and spitting. Enjoy! – Tetyana Your body responds to food long before it reaches your stomach. The taste, smell, even the mere sight of food all act to trigger a physiological response, “priming” the […]

Monteleone, P., Serritella, C., Martiadis, V. & Maj, M. (2008). Deranged Secretion of Ghrelin and Obestatin in the Cephalic Phase of Vagal Stimulation in Women with Anorexia Nervosa, Biological Psychiatry, 64 (11) 1005-1008. DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2008.04.006

Méquinion, M., Langlet, F., Zgheib, S., Dickson, S., Dehouck, B., Chauveau, C. & Viltart, O. (2013). Ghrelin: Central and Peripheral Implications in Anorexia Nervosa, Frontiers in Endocrinology, 4 DOI: 10.3389/fendo.2013.00015