If someone uses nicotine again and again, by smoking cigarettes or cigars or chewing tobacco, his or her body develops a tolerance for it. When someone develops tolerance, he or she needs more drugs to get the same effect. Eventually, a person can become addicted. Once a person becomes addicted, it is extremely difficult to quit. People who start smoking before the age of 21 have the hardest time quitting, and fewer than 1 in 10 people who try to quit smoking succeed. Source: “Mind Over Matter”, www.drugabuse.gov
Myths and facts about tobacco smoking:
Myth: Low tar cigarettes are safer than cigarettes without a tar filter.
Truth: Actual doses of nicotine, carcinogens, and toxins depend on the intensity and method of smoking and have little relation to stated tar yields.
Myth: If you smoke cigars or use a pipe, you don’t inhale the same way so they are safer.
Truth: Wrong. They are not safer. In those who do not inhale, nicotine is absorbed through the mucosal membranes and reaches peak blood levels and the brain more slowly but can cause oral cancer. Those who were first cigarette smokers are likely to continue inhaling; given the intensity of the smoke, pipes and cigars can be as dangerous a smoke as cigarettes.
Myth: Bidis are safer to smoke than regular cigarettes.
Truth: Not so. These unfiltered cigarettes from India are reported to have 28 percent higher nicotine concentration than regular cigarettes.
Myth: Smoking through a hookah is safer because the heated water “purifies” the tobacco.
Truth: Not true. Not only is this “junk science” but hookah smoke contains levels of nicotine, carbon monoxide, and tar that are as high or higher than those found in the smoke from many filtered cigarettes. Several types of cancer, as well as gum disease, have been linked to hookah smoking.
Myth: It’s safer to chew or sniff tobacco than smoking it.
Truth: Not true. Sniffing and chewing tobacco has the same dangers as smoking tobacco. Nicotine and toxins are taken in through the mucous on the insides of your mouth and nose into the body.
The Good News is students’ personal disapproval of smoking has risen. In 2005, for example, the percentage of 12th-graders disapproving of smoking one or more packs of cigarettes per day increased significantly, from 76.2 percent in 2004 to 79.8 percent in 2005.
The Bad News is in 2004, 29.2 percent of the U.S. population 12 and older—70.3 million people—used tobacco at least once in the month prior to being interviewed. This figure includes 3.6 million young people age 12 to 17. Young adults aged 18 to 25 reported the highest rate of current use of any tobacco products (44.6 percent) in 2004. Most of them smoked cigarettes.
Did you know? In 1683, Massachusetts passed the nation’s first no-smoking law. It forbids the smoking of tobacco outdoors, because of the fire danger. Soon after, Philadelphia lawmakers approved a ban on “smoking seegars on the street.” Fines were used to buy fire-fighting equipment. (Fact courtesy of Gene Borio, www.tobacco.org)
More recently, a Homeland Security study said “Fires started by lighted tobacco products, principally cigarettes, constitute the leading cause of residential fire deaths. The majority of smoking-material home structure fires and more than two-thirds of associated deaths involve trash, mattresses, bedding, or upholstered furniture as the first ignited item . . . Most fatal victims were asleep when fatally injured but most fatal smoking-material home structure fires did not begin in the bedroom.” Perhaps not, but some tragically do.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Why does anyone begin to smoke?
Most people begin smoking as teens, generally because of peer pressure and curiosity. Also, people with friends and/or parents who smoke are more likely to take up smoking than those who don't.
Anyone who smokes does so because nicotine acts in the brain where it stimulates feelings of pleasure. In other words, nicotine, like cocaine, heroin, and marijuana, increases the level of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which affects the brain pathways that control reward and pleasure.
When tobacco is smoked, nicotine is absorbed by the lungs and quickly moves into the bloodstream, where it is circulated throughout the brain. All of this happens very rapidly. In fact, nicotine reaches the brain within 8 seconds after someone inhales tobacco smoke. Nicotine can also enter the bloodstream through the mucous membranes that line the mouth (if tobacco is chewed) or nose (if snuff is used), and even through the skin.
Your brain is made up of billions of nerve cells. They communicate by releasing chemical messengers called neurotransmitters. Each neurotransmitter is like a key that fits into a special "lock," called a receptor, located on the surface of nerve cells. When a neurotransmitter finds its receptor, it activates the receptor's nerve cell.
The nicotine molecule is shaped like a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. Acetylcholine and its receptors are involved in many functions, including muscle movement, breathing, heart rate, learning, and memory. They also cause the release of other neurotransmitters and hormones that affect your mood, appetite, memory, and more. When nicotine gets into the brain, it attaches to acetylcholine receptors and mimics the actions of acetylcholine.
Nicotine also activates areas of the brain that are involved in producing feelings of pleasure and reward. Recently, scientists discovered that nicotine raises the levels of a neurotransmitter called dopamine in the parts of the brain that produce feelings of pleasure and reward. Dopamine, which is sometimes called the pleasure molecule, is the same neurotransmitter that is involved in addictions to other drugs such as cocaine and heroin. Researchers now believe that this change in dopamine may play a key role in all addictions. This may help explain why it is so hard for people to stop smoking.
Another prevalent influence in our society is the tobacco industry's ads and other promotional activities for its products. The tobacco industry spends billions of dollars each year to create and market ads that present smoking as an exciting, glamorous, and healthy adult activity.
Anyone who smokes does so because nicotine acts in the brain where it stimulates feelings of pleasure. In other words, nicotine, like cocaine, heroin, and marijuana, increases the level of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which affects the brain pathways that control reward and pleasure.
When tobacco is smoked, nicotine is absorbed by the lungs and quickly moves into the bloodstream, where it is circulated throughout the brain. All of this happens very rapidly. In fact, nicotine reaches the brain within 8 seconds after someone inhales tobacco smoke. Nicotine can also enter the bloodstream through the mucous membranes that line the mouth (if tobacco is chewed) or nose (if snuff is used), and even through the skin.
Your brain is made up of billions of nerve cells. They communicate by releasing chemical messengers called neurotransmitters. Each neurotransmitter is like a key that fits into a special "lock," called a receptor, located on the surface of nerve cells. When a neurotransmitter finds its receptor, it activates the receptor's nerve cell.
The nicotine molecule is shaped like a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. Acetylcholine and its receptors are involved in many functions, including muscle movement, breathing, heart rate, learning, and memory. They also cause the release of other neurotransmitters and hormones that affect your mood, appetite, memory, and more. When nicotine gets into the brain, it attaches to acetylcholine receptors and mimics the actions of acetylcholine.
Nicotine also activates areas of the brain that are involved in producing feelings of pleasure and reward. Recently, scientists discovered that nicotine raises the levels of a neurotransmitter called dopamine in the parts of the brain that produce feelings of pleasure and reward. Dopamine, which is sometimes called the pleasure molecule, is the same neurotransmitter that is involved in addictions to other drugs such as cocaine and heroin. Researchers now believe that this change in dopamine may play a key role in all addictions. This may help explain why it is so hard for people to stop smoking.
Another prevalent influence in our society is the tobacco industry's ads and other promotional activities for its products. The tobacco industry spends billions of dollars each year to create and market ads that present smoking as an exciting, glamorous, and healthy adult activity.
Monday, July 26, 2010
SMOKING TOBACCO
Tobacco smoking was controversial even as its popularity grew. It has always had its promoters – and its detractors. In the 1600s, saying one lost one’s head over tobacco was not just a quip. It was not unknown for some countries to inflict horrific punishments for smoking tobacco. In the early 1600s, China made using or distributing tobacco a capital offense; punishment was decapitation. A few years earlier, a Turkish Sultan executed smokers as infidels. It’s said that earlier in our world’s history, one Eastern Shah punished smokers by having hot lead poured down their throats. In comparison, American No Smoking signs seem a pretty mild response to smoking and being smoked at and on, and smoke free buildings sweetly Victorian.
Although tobacco nicotine is contained in a number of products, the way it is ingested differs. It can be inside a paper tube as are most cigarettes. Throughout the decades, tobacco companies’ added filters – small hard paper tubes between the tobacco filled tube and the mouth -- said to lower the “butt’s” tar content.
Some cigarette packs say that “light” cigarettes have lower tar and nicotine. However, people who smoke light cigarettes may inhale more deeply, take more puffs, or smoke extra cigarettes to satisfy their nicotine craving. As a result, they may inhale just as much tar, nicotine, and other chemicals as people who smoke regular cigarettes.
Some folks still create their own cigarettes, rolling tobacco in thin papers.
Commercially made cigarettes may have menthol included in their ingredients. Menthol cigarettes have a minty taste that makes some smokers think they are healthier than regular cigarettes. In fact, menthol cigarettes contain even more chemicals than regular cigarettes. Also, menthol can make it easier for a smoker to inhale deeply, which may allow more chemicals to enter the lungs. As a result, menthol cigarettes may be even more harmful than regular cigarettes.
"Natural" cigarettes include clove cigarettes, also called kreteks ("kree-teks"), and flavored cigarettes, called "bidis" or "beedies." Both cigarette types are imported mainly from Southeast Asian countries. In addition to tobacco, they contain various flavorings. Kreteks contain ground cloves and clove oil. Bidis contain candy-like flavors, such as chocolate, cherry, and mango.
Some folks smoke Bidis, “natural” or herb cigarettes, or they may smoke tobacco through a hookah.
Some young people think that kreteks and bidis are safer than regular cigarettes because of the "natural" flavorings. Also, the packs often do not have warning labels. In fact, both kreteks and bidis deliver more nicotine, tar, and carbon monoxide than regular cigarettes. Like smoking regular cigarettes, smoking kreteks and bidis can cause cancer and other diseases.
Another type of "natural" cigarette is the herbal cigarette. This is made from a blend of herbs, such as passion flower, jasmine, and ginseng. Although herbal cigarettes contain no tobacco or nicotine, the smoke contains tar, carbon monoxide, and other toxins.
And, although women don’t smoke cigars and pipes as much as men, recent data show the number of women smoking cigars is increasing. Many people think that cigars and pipes are safer than cigarettes, but this is not true. Even if you don’t inhale, you’re still at higher risk for oral and throat cancers. Cigar and pipe smokers also have higher rates of lung cancer and heart disease than nonsmokers.
In summary, nicotine is absorbed readily from tobacco smoke into the lungs, and it doesn’t matter whether the tobacco smoke is from cigarettes, cigars, or pipes. Nicotine also is absorbed readily when tobacco is chewed. With regular use of tobacco, levels of nicotine accumulate in the body during the day and persist overnight. Thus, daily smokers or chewers are exposed to the effects of nicotine for 24 hours each day. Adolescents who chew tobacco are more likely than nonusers to eventually become cigarette smokers. Adolescents who smoke tobacco are also more likely to use marijuana than non-smokers.
Research shows that cigarette smoking among youth reduces the rate of lung growth and the level of maximum lung function that can be achieved. Since the lungs ability to send life enhancing and supporting oxygen throughout your blood and body is directly proportionate to the body’s vitality and health, well, you do the math.
Incidentally, even non-smokers can be injured by tobacco nicotine and other toxic chemicals in smoking tobacco products.
Nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke at home or work increase their risk of developing heart disease by 25 to 30 percent and lung cancer by 20 to 30 percent.
In addition, secondhand smoke causes respiratory problems in nonsmokers such as coughing, phlegm, and reduced lung function. Children exposed to secondhand smoke are at an increased risk for sudden infant death syndrome, acute respiratory infections, ear problems, and more severe asthma.
Sources: National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Cancer Institute, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, www.drugabuse.com, the American Lung Association, and others.
Although tobacco nicotine is contained in a number of products, the way it is ingested differs. It can be inside a paper tube as are most cigarettes. Throughout the decades, tobacco companies’ added filters – small hard paper tubes between the tobacco filled tube and the mouth -- said to lower the “butt’s” tar content.
Some cigarette packs say that “light” cigarettes have lower tar and nicotine. However, people who smoke light cigarettes may inhale more deeply, take more puffs, or smoke extra cigarettes to satisfy their nicotine craving. As a result, they may inhale just as much tar, nicotine, and other chemicals as people who smoke regular cigarettes.
Some folks still create their own cigarettes, rolling tobacco in thin papers.
Commercially made cigarettes may have menthol included in their ingredients. Menthol cigarettes have a minty taste that makes some smokers think they are healthier than regular cigarettes. In fact, menthol cigarettes contain even more chemicals than regular cigarettes. Also, menthol can make it easier for a smoker to inhale deeply, which may allow more chemicals to enter the lungs. As a result, menthol cigarettes may be even more harmful than regular cigarettes.
"Natural" cigarettes include clove cigarettes, also called kreteks ("kree-teks"), and flavored cigarettes, called "bidis" or "beedies." Both cigarette types are imported mainly from Southeast Asian countries. In addition to tobacco, they contain various flavorings. Kreteks contain ground cloves and clove oil. Bidis contain candy-like flavors, such as chocolate, cherry, and mango.
Some folks smoke Bidis, “natural” or herb cigarettes, or they may smoke tobacco through a hookah.
Some young people think that kreteks and bidis are safer than regular cigarettes because of the "natural" flavorings. Also, the packs often do not have warning labels. In fact, both kreteks and bidis deliver more nicotine, tar, and carbon monoxide than regular cigarettes. Like smoking regular cigarettes, smoking kreteks and bidis can cause cancer and other diseases.
Another type of "natural" cigarette is the herbal cigarette. This is made from a blend of herbs, such as passion flower, jasmine, and ginseng. Although herbal cigarettes contain no tobacco or nicotine, the smoke contains tar, carbon monoxide, and other toxins.
And, although women don’t smoke cigars and pipes as much as men, recent data show the number of women smoking cigars is increasing. Many people think that cigars and pipes are safer than cigarettes, but this is not true. Even if you don’t inhale, you’re still at higher risk for oral and throat cancers. Cigar and pipe smokers also have higher rates of lung cancer and heart disease than nonsmokers.
In summary, nicotine is absorbed readily from tobacco smoke into the lungs, and it doesn’t matter whether the tobacco smoke is from cigarettes, cigars, or pipes. Nicotine also is absorbed readily when tobacco is chewed. With regular use of tobacco, levels of nicotine accumulate in the body during the day and persist overnight. Thus, daily smokers or chewers are exposed to the effects of nicotine for 24 hours each day. Adolescents who chew tobacco are more likely than nonusers to eventually become cigarette smokers. Adolescents who smoke tobacco are also more likely to use marijuana than non-smokers.
Research shows that cigarette smoking among youth reduces the rate of lung growth and the level of maximum lung function that can be achieved. Since the lungs ability to send life enhancing and supporting oxygen throughout your blood and body is directly proportionate to the body’s vitality and health, well, you do the math.
Incidentally, even non-smokers can be injured by tobacco nicotine and other toxic chemicals in smoking tobacco products.
Nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke at home or work increase their risk of developing heart disease by 25 to 30 percent and lung cancer by 20 to 30 percent.
In addition, secondhand smoke causes respiratory problems in nonsmokers such as coughing, phlegm, and reduced lung function. Children exposed to secondhand smoke are at an increased risk for sudden infant death syndrome, acute respiratory infections, ear problems, and more severe asthma.
Sources: National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Cancer Institute, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, www.drugabuse.com, the American Lung Association, and others.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
A Personal Story: Great nicotine highs; fading eyesight
A Personal Story: Great nicotine highs; fading eyesight - Mary Weston
I was a student in New York City, happy as a clam, and truly enjoying my life there. I was studying acting at the Herbert Berghof Studio in Greenwich Village while living in a tiny basement apartment complete with a white cat and several trap-wise mice. I had started smoking while in the military. But I had stopped since. That is, I thought I had stopped. Instead, I stopped then started then stopped then started . . . If you’ve been there, you recognize me. Worse, the yo-yoing convinced me that I could easily stop smoking whenever I want to stop. Of course I could. Nothing to it. Duck Soup.
Then I began to notice that my eyesight would suddenly blur so badly I couldn’t read. Then, just as suddenly, I could see clearly again. But I never knew when my sight would blur. And it started to do so during auditions. Bottom line unacceptable.
I obviously needed glasses. So, I hiked off to the best ophthalmologist I knew. I was mentally planning the style of frames that would look most glamorous when the doctor gave me his verdict.
“There’s nothing wrong with your eyes. They’re fine.”
“But I can’t see,” I whined.
“You say you only get blurring off and on, right?”
“Hm. Right,” I said as I wondered what that had to do with what I was now terrified was oncoming glaucoma.
“Mary, do you smoke?” the good doctor asked. Then, “How often?” And, “Are you smoking the same days you’ve noticed your eyes blurring?”
“Yes, yes, and yes.”
“I believe you’re allergic to tobacco smoke; if you stop smoking, the blurring will go away,” was his surprising diagnosis.
“But how could that be? I don’t have allergies,” I blurted out.
“Well, you may have one to tobacco smoke now. I’ve seen it before. Sometimes you’re allergic to chemicals in tobacco smoke. That can affect you in different ways. Most of the time, when you stop smoking, the blurring goes away. You can help it along by using some eye wash for a couple of days. And you must stop smoking.”
On the way home, I thought, “Now, that’s one I never heard before.”
Then, “But I do feel nauseous when I smoke or even when Tom (my fiancé) smokes around me. And I get really bad headaches when he smokes a lot. ” Though I loved Tom dearly, he had an annoying habit of sitting cross-legged on my living room floor, an ash tray on his knees, while he talked about each minute detail of his work -- he was a composer--ad infinitum – chain smoking all the while. I sometimes felt like a prisoner in a smoke tunnel. But I loved him passionately. So, instead of complaining about his smoking, I smoked right along with him. Now how dumb is that?
For several years after that diagnosis, though, I stopped smoking. My eyes were fine; I stopped feeling nauseated; my head ached only when I was sucking in someone else’s smoke.
Another year passed and one day, I accepted a cigarette from a smoking buddy. I had moved on to denial and the interesting but completely false concept that if I didn’t buy cigarettes, I didn’t really smoke. I think I also believed that I could tap dance on a wet dime during those delusional days. It took me at least five other attempts and a truly surprising way to finally “kick” the habit.
However, during those “good” days, I could breathe deeply and my eyesight was so keen I could read the lowest line on the doctor’s chart. It was a great feeling. I felt great. And then, in one supposedly companionable moment, I started smoking again. Later, as my tobacco/nicotine/toxin chemicals allergy/sensitivity became more pronounced, my symptoms became more varied.
Later I learned that smoking can cause or worsen several eye disorders, particularly cataract and age-related macular degeneration and smoking may speed up or worsen diabetic retinopathy, an eye complication of diabetes. This disease can lead to blindness. (See www.ash.org.uk/
Did you know that in 1986 and 1987, Patrick Reynolds, heir to the RJR tobacco fortune testified before Congress speaking out against tobacco? Mr. Reynolds advocated a complete ban of tobacco advertising, and described his memories of watching his father, RJ Reynolds, Jr., die from emphysema. (Source: Gene Borio www.tobacco.org)
I was a student in New York City, happy as a clam, and truly enjoying my life there. I was studying acting at the Herbert Berghof Studio in Greenwich Village while living in a tiny basement apartment complete with a white cat and several trap-wise mice. I had started smoking while in the military. But I had stopped since. That is, I thought I had stopped. Instead, I stopped then started then stopped then started . . . If you’ve been there, you recognize me. Worse, the yo-yoing convinced me that I could easily stop smoking whenever I want to stop. Of course I could. Nothing to it. Duck Soup.
Then I began to notice that my eyesight would suddenly blur so badly I couldn’t read. Then, just as suddenly, I could see clearly again. But I never knew when my sight would blur. And it started to do so during auditions. Bottom line unacceptable.
I obviously needed glasses. So, I hiked off to the best ophthalmologist I knew. I was mentally planning the style of frames that would look most glamorous when the doctor gave me his verdict.
“There’s nothing wrong with your eyes. They’re fine.”
“But I can’t see,” I whined.
“You say you only get blurring off and on, right?”
“Hm. Right,” I said as I wondered what that had to do with what I was now terrified was oncoming glaucoma.
“Mary, do you smoke?” the good doctor asked. Then, “How often?” And, “Are you smoking the same days you’ve noticed your eyes blurring?”
“Yes, yes, and yes.”
“I believe you’re allergic to tobacco smoke; if you stop smoking, the blurring will go away,” was his surprising diagnosis.
“But how could that be? I don’t have allergies,” I blurted out.
“Well, you may have one to tobacco smoke now. I’ve seen it before. Sometimes you’re allergic to chemicals in tobacco smoke. That can affect you in different ways. Most of the time, when you stop smoking, the blurring goes away. You can help it along by using some eye wash for a couple of days. And you must stop smoking.”
On the way home, I thought, “Now, that’s one I never heard before.”
Then, “But I do feel nauseous when I smoke or even when Tom (my fiancé) smokes around me. And I get really bad headaches when he smokes a lot. ” Though I loved Tom dearly, he had an annoying habit of sitting cross-legged on my living room floor, an ash tray on his knees, while he talked about each minute detail of his work -- he was a composer--ad infinitum – chain smoking all the while. I sometimes felt like a prisoner in a smoke tunnel. But I loved him passionately. So, instead of complaining about his smoking, I smoked right along with him. Now how dumb is that?
For several years after that diagnosis, though, I stopped smoking. My eyes were fine; I stopped feeling nauseated; my head ached only when I was sucking in someone else’s smoke.
Another year passed and one day, I accepted a cigarette from a smoking buddy. I had moved on to denial and the interesting but completely false concept that if I didn’t buy cigarettes, I didn’t really smoke. I think I also believed that I could tap dance on a wet dime during those delusional days. It took me at least five other attempts and a truly surprising way to finally “kick” the habit.
However, during those “good” days, I could breathe deeply and my eyesight was so keen I could read the lowest line on the doctor’s chart. It was a great feeling. I felt great. And then, in one supposedly companionable moment, I started smoking again. Later, as my tobacco/nicotine/toxin chemicals allergy/sensitivity became more pronounced, my symptoms became more varied.
Later I learned that smoking can cause or worsen several eye disorders, particularly cataract and age-related macular degeneration and smoking may speed up or worsen diabetic retinopathy, an eye complication of diabetes. This disease can lead to blindness. (See www.ash.org.uk/
Did you know that in 1986 and 1987, Patrick Reynolds, heir to the RJR tobacco fortune testified before Congress speaking out against tobacco? Mr. Reynolds advocated a complete ban of tobacco advertising, and described his memories of watching his father, RJ Reynolds, Jr., die from emphysema. (Source: Gene Borio www.tobacco.org)
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Why should we care?
“Why” is easy to answer. The answer is Love. We love our families; we love our children; we love our neighbors; we love our colleagues in school and at work. And those we love give us a reason for wanting to live. Even if it’s our precious four-footed, winged or fin-fitted “best friend,” our natural impulse is to want to stay with those we love. In fact, our brains are hot-wired to connect with others. They are hot-wired to WANT to love. We also want to have a comfortable, pleasant, affordable quality of life – for ourselves and for those we love.
Secondly, all these clever, deep pocket tobacco companies with their Joe Camels, flashy “in” movie, TV and music personalities stars touting smoking and all those tobacco company giveaways to tempt kids are tough acts for parents to follow.
Parents need to be involved; need to know the facts; and need to get mad. We worry about measles; about mumps; about broken arms and legs; and we worry about schoolyard drug pushers but maybe we don’t pay enough attention to legal drug pushers. We need to talk to our kids, not only about street drugs but about tobacco, the devious legal drug.
How many deaths or disabilities are caused by nicotine annually? Every day, across this country, more than 3,000 youths will begin to smoke, placing themselves at increased risk for a host of cancers – lung, mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, pancreas, cervix, kidney, and bladder – as well as heart disease and a range of other conditions.
Of those who continue to smoke, approximately one half will die prematurely, losing an average of 20 to 25 years of their life expectancy. An estimated 450,000 people in the U.S. will die this year alone from tobacco-related diseases – the most preventable and costly cause of death in our Nation.
And here’s an eye-opener for those who may shrug off the deaths of those who choose to use nicotine-drenched products as their own problem. In the last decade, more than 30,000 nonsmokers died of lung cancer caused by breathing smoke from others’ cigarettes. (Source: Environmental Protection Agency)
Exposure to tobacco smoke in the home is a risk factor for new cases and increased severity of childhood asthma and has been associated with sudden infant death syndrome.
Further, lit cigarettes are the leading cause of residential fire fatalities, leading to more than 1,000 deaths every year. Sources: National Cancer Institute, Center for disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institute of Drug Abuse, www.tobacco.org
I gave you the bad news first because anyone using tobacco products needs to sit up and take some notice. But now for the good news.
Evidence demonstrates strongly that people who stop smoking – regardless of age – live longer than those who continue to smoke, although their risk for lung cancer remains somewhat higher than if they never had smoked.
The good news is that lungs can rejuvenate themselves when smoking is ended. And they can start doing that within months. In short, that means that all that black charred crisp lung tissue (yes, I’ve seen a smoker’s lung preserved in formaldehyde) can turn pink and spongy again. So please, take a deep breath, walk around the block, and gaze at all the beauty out there that you don’t want to lose. The bark of a tree. A butterfly sitting on a flower. A tomato getting fat in your garden. City children playing in a park or the sound of their laughter as they use the park’s kiddy swings. The faces of those you love.
Then come back ready to learn how you can stop smoking . . . or never start.
Secondly, all these clever, deep pocket tobacco companies with their Joe Camels, flashy “in” movie, TV and music personalities stars touting smoking and all those tobacco company giveaways to tempt kids are tough acts for parents to follow.
Parents need to be involved; need to know the facts; and need to get mad. We worry about measles; about mumps; about broken arms and legs; and we worry about schoolyard drug pushers but maybe we don’t pay enough attention to legal drug pushers. We need to talk to our kids, not only about street drugs but about tobacco, the devious legal drug.
How many deaths or disabilities are caused by nicotine annually? Every day, across this country, more than 3,000 youths will begin to smoke, placing themselves at increased risk for a host of cancers – lung, mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, pancreas, cervix, kidney, and bladder – as well as heart disease and a range of other conditions.
Of those who continue to smoke, approximately one half will die prematurely, losing an average of 20 to 25 years of their life expectancy. An estimated 450,000 people in the U.S. will die this year alone from tobacco-related diseases – the most preventable and costly cause of death in our Nation.
And here’s an eye-opener for those who may shrug off the deaths of those who choose to use nicotine-drenched products as their own problem. In the last decade, more than 30,000 nonsmokers died of lung cancer caused by breathing smoke from others’ cigarettes. (Source: Environmental Protection Agency)
Exposure to tobacco smoke in the home is a risk factor for new cases and increased severity of childhood asthma and has been associated with sudden infant death syndrome.
Further, lit cigarettes are the leading cause of residential fire fatalities, leading to more than 1,000 deaths every year. Sources: National Cancer Institute, Center for disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institute of Drug Abuse, www.tobacco.org
I gave you the bad news first because anyone using tobacco products needs to sit up and take some notice. But now for the good news.
Evidence demonstrates strongly that people who stop smoking – regardless of age – live longer than those who continue to smoke, although their risk for lung cancer remains somewhat higher than if they never had smoked.
The good news is that lungs can rejuvenate themselves when smoking is ended. And they can start doing that within months. In short, that means that all that black charred crisp lung tissue (yes, I’ve seen a smoker’s lung preserved in formaldehyde) can turn pink and spongy again. So please, take a deep breath, walk around the block, and gaze at all the beauty out there that you don’t want to lose. The bark of a tree. A butterfly sitting on a flower. A tomato getting fat in your garden. City children playing in a park or the sound of their laughter as they use the park’s kiddy swings. The faces of those you love.
Then come back ready to learn how you can stop smoking . . . or never start.
Monday, July 19, 2010
NICOTINE: THE DEVIOUS DRUG
When Columbus arrived in the Americas in the 1400s, Native Americans offered him a gift of tobacco; later, he learned how to smoke it from them. We haven’t stopped puffing, sniffing and spitting tobacco since then.
Throughout following decades, from Colonial times to today, tobacco became an incredible money-maker and known as a controversial harmful drug -- both at the same time. Even as Surgeon Generals and medical communities warned it could and would kill, its praises were sung in flashy commercials and touted by expensive talents. Nicotine was quickly embraced by the famous and not so famous. Until the 1980s, nicotine’s been so commonly used that smoking, sniffing, chewing and spitting tobacco was accepted as “innocent” and “normal” behavior.
Before I continue to tell you the history of tobacco product use in America, let’s take a quick look at the chemicals in Cigarette Smoke
Did you know that cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, many of which are poisonous? If you smoke, these are just some of the substances you're putting into your body:
• Tar. See those yellow stains on a smoker's teeth? It's caused by tar, a sticky brown substance that contains many toxic chemicals. If the tar from cigarette smoke can stain your teeth, imagine what it does to your lungs! In fact, tar is the main cause of lung and throat cancers in smokers.
• Cyanide is used to make rat poison.
• Formaldehyde is used to preserve dead bodies. Yuck!
• Benzene is found in gasoline.
• Acetone is the main ingredient in nail polish remover.
• Ammonia is found in many disinfectants that you use to clean your house. Ammonia is also an ingredient in fertilizer.
• Nicotine is the drug in cigarette smoke that makes it hard to quit smoking. Nicotine is at least as addictive as heroin. It is also a deadly poison that was once used as an insecticide.
Of course, in early Colonial days, the growers and users of tobacco products did not know this since most of these things were added by companies along the way from those days to ours.
New York City’s Greenwich Village and Christopher Streets, later two of my student addresses, are said to have been tobacco fields in the early Colony days. According to Gene Borio, a foremost American tobacco historian, Christopher Street was lined with tobacco fields. In early Virginia, tobacco growing was the gold that made Virginia the Colony’s Golden State.
Tobacco’s history is alternately layered with great financial tobacco fortunes being made, along with alarms about nicotine’s high level of addictiveness and life-threatening dangers to our health. As early as 1761, scientists and physicians warned that snuff – now referred to as “dipping” -- could cause cancer of the nose. The alarm about chewing tobacco came later. By the 1800s, tobacco was called “a fashionable poison.”
Since 1964 – over 200 years later, 28 Surgeon General’s reports concluded that tobacco use is the single most avoidable cause of disease, disability, and death in the United States.
However, during the 50s and 60s, television’s golden days of growth, most people surveyed were not even aware of the surgeon generals’ tobacco reports. Further, America had a wealth of TV stars happy to put in a good word for tobacco.
Lucile Ball and Desi Arnaz, Jack Benny, Joey Bishop, the cast of “The Dick Van Dyke Show”, the “Beverly Hillbillies”, and Jack Webb who smoked Chesterfields for his “Dragnet” sponsor; and “The Phil Silvers Show” all unwittingly pitched tobacco smoking to American families.
In 1952, actor John Wayne spoke up for Camel cigarettes, when he said he’d been smoking Camels for 20 years. 27 years later, the Duke died of lung cancer. The last commercials he made asked audiences to stop smoking.
In 1970, Congress passed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act banning the advertising of cigarettes on television and radio. The last cigarette TV commercial, broadcast on the Johnny Carson Tonight Show at 11:59pm on January 1, 1971 was for Virginia Slims. see www.tvparty.com
By the mid-1970s, cigarettes were the most heavily advertised product in America. Newspapers and magazines, the beneficiary of the new tobacco advertising windfall, chose to ignore the nature and health dangers connected with tobacco smoking. Yes, advertising dollars can and does drive editorial content. Then and now.
Throughout the 80s, the push/pull of health warnings and tobacco product glorification, aptly assisted by the membership group, The Tobacco Institute, went on. Millions of dollars went to fight local smoke-free legislation. More millions, if not billions, were spent on creating slam bang pro-tobacco advertising campaigns. More big bucks went to fight law suits being placed by those who considered their health impaired by tobacco use. Or suits placed by their survivors.
The industry’s position was that tobacco is a/not harmful to humans; b/the user chose to use it so it’s their problem, and c/anyway, it isn’t provable that injury or death is caused by tobacco use.
However, the 1980s was the decade when changes towards smoking began to be felt. The first jury verdict ever decided against a tobacco company for the death of a smoker was a mixed victory for Mr. Antonio Cipollone, the widower of Rose Cipollone. His wife died of cancer at age 58 after smoking cigarettes for 40 years. While Mr. Cipollone was awarded $400,00o in compensatory damages for his wife’s death–the first financial award in a liability suit against a tobacco company, nothing was awarded to his wife’s estate. The rationale: She was found to be 80 percent at fault for choosing to smoke tobacco.
As a gal who finds great suspense stories in trial transcripts, this one had a cliff-hanger for me. During a 1988 decision by Federal District Court Judge H. Lee Sarokin (the Cipollone trial) to dismiss four allegations against the tobacco companies, he said that the Council for Tobacco Research, started by the tobacco industry in 1954 with the announcement that it would research whether smoking was safe “was nothing but a hoax created for public relations purposes with no intention of seeking the truth or publishing it. “
“Evidence presented by the plaintiff, particularly that contained in documents of the defendants themselves, indicates the development of a public relations strategy aimed at combating the mounting scientific reports regarding the dangers of smoking,” wrote Judge Sarokin.
Unfortunately, the jury never read or heard these words.
By 1987, thanks to the work of anti-smoking groups, state legislators, and medical edicts, 44 percent of youngsters who had been smoking had quit. Consumption was down. But not for long.
According to the Economic Opportunity institute in Seattle, almost 90 percent of adult smokers begin their habits at or before age 18, making kids an essential market for tobacco advertisers. Bennet LeBow, owner of Liggett Tobacco, is quoted as saying “If you really and truly are not going to sell to children, you are going to be out of business in 30 years.”
In 1998, the tobacco industry signed the Master Settlement Agreement, in which they agreed not to market to kids or on billboards.
Never fear. If anyone is resourceful, it is the tobacco industry. A year later, they simple upped their promotional allowance to stores that kids go to frequently by 23 percent, upped cigarette-related giveaways by 134 percent and added 65 percent more temptations like tobacco purchase related t-shirts and lighters. Advertising around these stores also increased by 13 percent. Now, guys and gals, if I sound a little cranky about tobacco nicotine pushing to kids, read on and weep.
Today, nicotine, the main chemical drug in tobacco, is one of the most heavily used addictive drugs in the United States. In 2004, 29.2 percent of the U.S. population 12 and older—70.3 million people—used tobacco at least once in the month prior to being interviewed.
This figure includes 3.6 million young people age 12 to 17. Young adults aged 18 to 25 reported the highest rate of current use of any tobacco products (44.6 percent) in 2004.
According to TVParty.com, 2000 kids light up for the first time EVERY DAY.
Today, a more insidious form of tobacco advertising is with us. It’s called “product placement.” It goes like this: Instead of a celebrity standing there frankly pitching tobacco, the tobacco product is scripted into the movie, television or “reality” show. Highly visible lead actors “just happen” to be smoking cigarettes or cigars. (See Introduction and the report on Lifetime Channel’s chain smoking heroine played by actor Kelly Gillis in “Perfect Prey”)
Not only does tobacco “product placement” circumvent the law that tobacco ads cannot be placed on television, it convinces watchers that these actors are wildly fond of smoking and that therefore smoking is once again “Super Cool”.
This public relation’s ploy is designed to subliminally influence the viewers to run out and buy the product their idol uses. In addition to scripting in product placement, celebrities are once more being photographed and filmed smoking in their off screen lives. Their actions are telling our youth –and impressionable adults -- that “Smoking is “In”; Smoking is Hot; Smoking is “Baaad.” Television is smoking up those smoke-free zones.
Incidentally, if you think the tobacco industry gave a nice salute to the introduction of smoke free zones, well, wrong.
In 1990, Ellis Milan, president of the Retail Tobacco Distributors of America said, "President George Bush often talks of 1,000 points of light. I'd like to think those points of light are coming from the glowing ends of cigars, cigarettes and pipes across the country, and symbolize the cornerstone of this nation – tobacco”
Gee, and I always thought the American worker has been and is the cornerstone of this nation.
Reading the meticulous tobacco history research done by Mr. Borio is fascinating and revealing. The historic “tug of war " between the medical world and the tobacco production world began and continues to exist since the first tobacco leaf was grown for profit.
Further, because tobacco nicotine gives tobacco companies the kind of profits that led one tobacco executive to say “We make more money than God,” tobacco nicotine is likely to be on the market for a long time.
For some fascinating facts about tobacco – some very funny -- take a peek at www.tobacco.org I don’t know the author, probably never will, but Gene Borio is doing a great job. Thanks, Gene.
Throughout following decades, from Colonial times to today, tobacco became an incredible money-maker and known as a controversial harmful drug -- both at the same time. Even as Surgeon Generals and medical communities warned it could and would kill, its praises were sung in flashy commercials and touted by expensive talents. Nicotine was quickly embraced by the famous and not so famous. Until the 1980s, nicotine’s been so commonly used that smoking, sniffing, chewing and spitting tobacco was accepted as “innocent” and “normal” behavior.
Before I continue to tell you the history of tobacco product use in America, let’s take a quick look at the chemicals in Cigarette Smoke
Did you know that cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, many of which are poisonous? If you smoke, these are just some of the substances you're putting into your body:
• Tar. See those yellow stains on a smoker's teeth? It's caused by tar, a sticky brown substance that contains many toxic chemicals. If the tar from cigarette smoke can stain your teeth, imagine what it does to your lungs! In fact, tar is the main cause of lung and throat cancers in smokers.
• Cyanide is used to make rat poison.
• Formaldehyde is used to preserve dead bodies. Yuck!
• Benzene is found in gasoline.
• Acetone is the main ingredient in nail polish remover.
• Ammonia is found in many disinfectants that you use to clean your house. Ammonia is also an ingredient in fertilizer.
• Nicotine is the drug in cigarette smoke that makes it hard to quit smoking. Nicotine is at least as addictive as heroin. It is also a deadly poison that was once used as an insecticide.
Of course, in early Colonial days, the growers and users of tobacco products did not know this since most of these things were added by companies along the way from those days to ours.
New York City’s Greenwich Village and Christopher Streets, later two of my student addresses, are said to have been tobacco fields in the early Colony days. According to Gene Borio, a foremost American tobacco historian, Christopher Street was lined with tobacco fields. In early Virginia, tobacco growing was the gold that made Virginia the Colony’s Golden State.
Tobacco’s history is alternately layered with great financial tobacco fortunes being made, along with alarms about nicotine’s high level of addictiveness and life-threatening dangers to our health. As early as 1761, scientists and physicians warned that snuff – now referred to as “dipping” -- could cause cancer of the nose. The alarm about chewing tobacco came later. By the 1800s, tobacco was called “a fashionable poison.”
Since 1964 – over 200 years later, 28 Surgeon General’s reports concluded that tobacco use is the single most avoidable cause of disease, disability, and death in the United States.
However, during the 50s and 60s, television’s golden days of growth, most people surveyed were not even aware of the surgeon generals’ tobacco reports. Further, America had a wealth of TV stars happy to put in a good word for tobacco.
Lucile Ball and Desi Arnaz, Jack Benny, Joey Bishop, the cast of “The Dick Van Dyke Show”, the “Beverly Hillbillies”, and Jack Webb who smoked Chesterfields for his “Dragnet” sponsor; and “The Phil Silvers Show” all unwittingly pitched tobacco smoking to American families.
In 1952, actor John Wayne spoke up for Camel cigarettes, when he said he’d been smoking Camels for 20 years. 27 years later, the Duke died of lung cancer. The last commercials he made asked audiences to stop smoking.
In 1970, Congress passed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act banning the advertising of cigarettes on television and radio. The last cigarette TV commercial, broadcast on the Johnny Carson Tonight Show at 11:59pm on January 1, 1971 was for Virginia Slims. see www.tvparty.com
By the mid-1970s, cigarettes were the most heavily advertised product in America. Newspapers and magazines, the beneficiary of the new tobacco advertising windfall, chose to ignore the nature and health dangers connected with tobacco smoking. Yes, advertising dollars can and does drive editorial content. Then and now.
Throughout the 80s, the push/pull of health warnings and tobacco product glorification, aptly assisted by the membership group, The Tobacco Institute, went on. Millions of dollars went to fight local smoke-free legislation. More millions, if not billions, were spent on creating slam bang pro-tobacco advertising campaigns. More big bucks went to fight law suits being placed by those who considered their health impaired by tobacco use. Or suits placed by their survivors.
The industry’s position was that tobacco is a/not harmful to humans; b/the user chose to use it so it’s their problem, and c/anyway, it isn’t provable that injury or death is caused by tobacco use.
However, the 1980s was the decade when changes towards smoking began to be felt. The first jury verdict ever decided against a tobacco company for the death of a smoker was a mixed victory for Mr. Antonio Cipollone, the widower of Rose Cipollone. His wife died of cancer at age 58 after smoking cigarettes for 40 years. While Mr. Cipollone was awarded $400,00o in compensatory damages for his wife’s death–the first financial award in a liability suit against a tobacco company, nothing was awarded to his wife’s estate. The rationale: She was found to be 80 percent at fault for choosing to smoke tobacco.
As a gal who finds great suspense stories in trial transcripts, this one had a cliff-hanger for me. During a 1988 decision by Federal District Court Judge H. Lee Sarokin (the Cipollone trial) to dismiss four allegations against the tobacco companies, he said that the Council for Tobacco Research, started by the tobacco industry in 1954 with the announcement that it would research whether smoking was safe “was nothing but a hoax created for public relations purposes with no intention of seeking the truth or publishing it. “
“Evidence presented by the plaintiff, particularly that contained in documents of the defendants themselves, indicates the development of a public relations strategy aimed at combating the mounting scientific reports regarding the dangers of smoking,” wrote Judge Sarokin.
Unfortunately, the jury never read or heard these words.
By 1987, thanks to the work of anti-smoking groups, state legislators, and medical edicts, 44 percent of youngsters who had been smoking had quit. Consumption was down. But not for long.
According to the Economic Opportunity institute in Seattle, almost 90 percent of adult smokers begin their habits at or before age 18, making kids an essential market for tobacco advertisers. Bennet LeBow, owner of Liggett Tobacco, is quoted as saying “If you really and truly are not going to sell to children, you are going to be out of business in 30 years.”
In 1998, the tobacco industry signed the Master Settlement Agreement, in which they agreed not to market to kids or on billboards.
Never fear. If anyone is resourceful, it is the tobacco industry. A year later, they simple upped their promotional allowance to stores that kids go to frequently by 23 percent, upped cigarette-related giveaways by 134 percent and added 65 percent more temptations like tobacco purchase related t-shirts and lighters. Advertising around these stores also increased by 13 percent. Now, guys and gals, if I sound a little cranky about tobacco nicotine pushing to kids, read on and weep.
Today, nicotine, the main chemical drug in tobacco, is one of the most heavily used addictive drugs in the United States. In 2004, 29.2 percent of the U.S. population 12 and older—70.3 million people—used tobacco at least once in the month prior to being interviewed.
This figure includes 3.6 million young people age 12 to 17. Young adults aged 18 to 25 reported the highest rate of current use of any tobacco products (44.6 percent) in 2004.
According to TVParty.com, 2000 kids light up for the first time EVERY DAY.
Today, a more insidious form of tobacco advertising is with us. It’s called “product placement.” It goes like this: Instead of a celebrity standing there frankly pitching tobacco, the tobacco product is scripted into the movie, television or “reality” show. Highly visible lead actors “just happen” to be smoking cigarettes or cigars. (See Introduction and the report on Lifetime Channel’s chain smoking heroine played by actor Kelly Gillis in “Perfect Prey”)
Not only does tobacco “product placement” circumvent the law that tobacco ads cannot be placed on television, it convinces watchers that these actors are wildly fond of smoking and that therefore smoking is once again “Super Cool”.
This public relation’s ploy is designed to subliminally influence the viewers to run out and buy the product their idol uses. In addition to scripting in product placement, celebrities are once more being photographed and filmed smoking in their off screen lives. Their actions are telling our youth –and impressionable adults -- that “Smoking is “In”; Smoking is Hot; Smoking is “Baaad.” Television is smoking up those smoke-free zones.
Incidentally, if you think the tobacco industry gave a nice salute to the introduction of smoke free zones, well, wrong.
In 1990, Ellis Milan, president of the Retail Tobacco Distributors of America said, "President George Bush often talks of 1,000 points of light. I'd like to think those points of light are coming from the glowing ends of cigars, cigarettes and pipes across the country, and symbolize the cornerstone of this nation – tobacco”
Gee, and I always thought the American worker has been and is the cornerstone of this nation.
Reading the meticulous tobacco history research done by Mr. Borio is fascinating and revealing. The historic “tug of war " between the medical world and the tobacco production world began and continues to exist since the first tobacco leaf was grown for profit.
Further, because tobacco nicotine gives tobacco companies the kind of profits that led one tobacco executive to say “We make more money than God,” tobacco nicotine is likely to be on the market for a long time.
For some fascinating facts about tobacco – some very funny -- take a peek at www.tobacco.org I don’t know the author, probably never will, but Gene Borio is doing a great job. Thanks, Gene.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Anorexia/Bulimia – Treatment
For all patients there will be both medical treatment as well as psychoanalysis. Some people respond better to group therapy were others respond better to one-on-one therapy. Depending on the situation, your therapist may even suggest family therapy. It may take several attempts at different types of therapy before the patient finds something that works. Here are list of different types of therapies that a person with an eating disorder might have:
Setting Goals
No matter which therapy is decided upon, the patient, along with trained professionals, will establish a goal. To simply say that the patient needs to gain weight and eat healthy is not enough. These goals must be written down and be attainable. To be effective, they also must be goals that the patient buys into. Simply going through the motions is not enough. This can be the biggest struggle.
Medication
Because many people who are experiencing eating disorders also suffer from depression, antidepressant medication may be prescribed in the early stages of treatment. However, if the patient has gone to the point where they are in starvation, the doctor may hold off using antidepressants until there is some weight gain, as starvation can increase depression.
Some studies show that antidepressant medication may also be a long-term way of helping to prevent relapse. If the person with the eating disorder starts slipping into depression again, there is more of a risk they could also slip into their old habits.
A doctor may also prescribe other medications that have shown to help with eating disorders. But medication alone should not be used to treat an eating disorder.
Cognitive Behavior Therapy or CBT
Working together with a therapist, the patient identifies their irrational behavior and the illogical thinking they have associated with eating, weight, and food. Obsessive-compulsive behavior will also be explored. This type of treatment is very beneficial for people who have ritualistic behaviors such as those who suffer from bulimia.
Psychodynamic Therapy
The goal of psychodynamic therapy is for the patient to achieve a better understanding of the psychological reasons behind their eating disorder and what motivates them to this destructive behavior. Through this type of therapy the patient can see how their thought processes today have been shaped and informed by the past.
This type of treatment does not start until the therapist has assessed the patient to see where they are at in the disease.
Feminist Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
Feminine social conditioning is explored in this type of psychotherapy. During therapy, the therapist gives a voice to the patient and explores their thoughts about their self-image and how it compares to societal standards. In this type of therapy, the therapist acts as the vehicle to help the patient expose their own feelings about image and intimacy rather than giving the patient all the answers.
Interpersonal Therapy
Originally used to treat depression, this type of therapy has been modified to also help patients with eating disorders. In this therapy, the patient looks at how they interact with the people around them so they may understand conflicts that may contribute to the continued pattern of behavior. While these conflicts may not have caused the eating disorder, they may impede or contribute to the eating disorder.
The goal of this type of short-term therapy is to identify behavior patterns and not specifically address the eating disorder itself.
Family Therapy or Marital Therapy
There is some debate on where the focus lies for family or marital therapy. While the patient might see this as therapy with their family or spouse present, the therapist and family members may view this as therapy for all those involved. Many times a person with an eating disorder will have a higher success rate at recovery when the entire family or those that live in the immediate home participate in therapy. This is certainly true for children with eating disorders as this type of therapy can help educate not only the child but the family members as well.
The problem with family or marital therapy is that sometimes a family member does not buy into the idea that they need therapy. They view the eating disorder as being the problem of the person who has the eating disorder. This is true to an extent. But many times there are underlying factors that have contributed to this person having an eating disorder.
Not only does the person with the eating disorder sometimes exhibit fear of exposing personal problems, but so do family members. Still this can be a highly effective way of treating the patient as well as educating the family members.
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is the most intensive of therapies. With this therapy, the patient will see a therapist five times per week over the period of many years. During this time, the patient will delve deep into their psyche to discover how they arrived at the point they are at. From there, they will be learn behaviors, examine thoughts and dreams and talk openly about their feelings.
This type of in-depth therapy is not for everyone. In fact, many people shy away because of the fear of delving too deep. However, it can be highly effective.
Focal Psychoanalytical Psychotherapy
In this therapy the therapist is not directing the patient at all and no advice is given. Instead, the patient focus is on the behaviors, symptoms and problems in regards to what happened in their past and their experiences with their family. The patient then tries to find meaning in that and how it associates with the eating disorder.
Dialectic Therapy or DBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy)
DBT is a somewhat new approach to therapy where the patient observes and finds meaning in their emotional reaction to things that happened in their past, helps them find validation of those feelings and then come to accept them and make a change. This type of therapy is especially good for people who experienced post traumatic stress or who have suicidal tendencies.
Supportive Psychotherapy
Nearly all the psychotherapy treatments available to people with eating disorders have a supportive element to them. However, the goal of this type of therapy is to help relieve the anxiety associated with the eating disorder and what is happening to the patient. Through encouragement, reassurance, and pointing out the patient’s individual strengths, the therapist can help the patient find adaptive defenses to the anxiety.
Nutritional Therapy
Since the goal of treatment is to help a patient with an eating disorder gain weight to a healthy level, nutritional therapy is vital. In this therapy the patient will learn how to stabilize their eating habits.
Rarely will a dietitian deal with just the issues of food. Instead, the dietitian will take a whole body approach and educate the patient about body image as well as nutrition and the risks associated with having an eating disorder. The dietitian will also touch upon the patient’s fears of gaining weight.
Because many young girls are still in their early teens when they develop eating disorders, a dietitian may decide to work with the family by shopping for food, coming to the home and preparing food, and sitting down for a meal with the family.
Psycho-Educational Therapy
Rarely is this type of therapy available all by itself. Many times psycho-educational therapy is included in other types of therapies. However, a more intensive educational therapy may be needed to help the patient and the family understand the different definitions of the illness, why a person develops an eating disorder, nutritional and medical issues, and sociocultural issues that may have contributed to the patient’s body image.
Addiction Model
Because many people who have eating disorders also suffer from low self esteem and depression, there is a high amount of alcohol and drug addiction associated with eating disorders. Having an addiction outside of the eating disorder presents a challenge to the health care professionals working with a patient. Which do you treat first? How do you treat both the addiction and the eating disorder together?
Many therapists find the 12-step program for alcoholics and drug addicts too restrictive to be effective. However, more medical professionals are incorporating the 12-step program with nutritional, psychological, and behavioral therapies with success.
Self-Help
As a first step, many patients with eating disorders will try to help themselves through their disorder. But even for those who want to help themselves, it is difficult to go it alone. People who have eating disorders need support and communication between family, friends, and their doctor to be successful. Since so many things play into whether or not a person has an eating disorder, it can be dangerous if the person tries to hide and “self medicate.”
This private type of support group can mean the difference between having some help and having no help, especially if the patient is resistant to formal treatment. If the initial health danger from the eating disorder is not present, the patient can set up a support group with family and friends to help them through the process of healing.
It is important, though, that you do this under the advice of a healthcare professional or formal support group adviser. A support group adviser can help steer the patient towards self-help manuals and online web sites that offer support.
Expressive Therapy
Finding an outlet for what troubles you can be an effective therapy for people with eating disorders. This is particularly helpful for the patients who have a difficult time expressing themselves by using their own words. There are many mediums the patient can use to help express themselves without words. Drama, drawing, painting, dance and movement are all effective ways to express feeling without using words.
Light Therapy
For years people with seasonal affective disorder or SAD have used light therapy to help them deal with the depression they feel during the winter months. Some people with SAD also have eating disorders. Light therapy has been an effective means of improving the patient’s mood and has helped to decrease binging and purging that sometimes happens with people who have SAD. Each light treatment can last as long as four weeks.
As you can see, there are many different types of therapies that professional have been using to help treat people with eating disorders. No one treatment will work for everyone.
Even when a person is successful with treatment, it doesn’t guarantee that the person will continue to remain successful in their treatment. Relapses are common with eating disorders, sometimes with devastating affects because now the patient has more knowledge.
This is why when a person goes into treatment, the patient must have the support of those around them. Without that support, it is too easy for the patient to slip back into old habits. By educating family members and friends in anorexia and bulimia, it would be more difficult for the person with the eating disorder to hide their disease if a relapse does occur.
Setting Goals
No matter which therapy is decided upon, the patient, along with trained professionals, will establish a goal. To simply say that the patient needs to gain weight and eat healthy is not enough. These goals must be written down and be attainable. To be effective, they also must be goals that the patient buys into. Simply going through the motions is not enough. This can be the biggest struggle.
Medication
Because many people who are experiencing eating disorders also suffer from depression, antidepressant medication may be prescribed in the early stages of treatment. However, if the patient has gone to the point where they are in starvation, the doctor may hold off using antidepressants until there is some weight gain, as starvation can increase depression.
Some studies show that antidepressant medication may also be a long-term way of helping to prevent relapse. If the person with the eating disorder starts slipping into depression again, there is more of a risk they could also slip into their old habits.
A doctor may also prescribe other medications that have shown to help with eating disorders. But medication alone should not be used to treat an eating disorder.
Cognitive Behavior Therapy or CBT
Working together with a therapist, the patient identifies their irrational behavior and the illogical thinking they have associated with eating, weight, and food. Obsessive-compulsive behavior will also be explored. This type of treatment is very beneficial for people who have ritualistic behaviors such as those who suffer from bulimia.
Psychodynamic Therapy
The goal of psychodynamic therapy is for the patient to achieve a better understanding of the psychological reasons behind their eating disorder and what motivates them to this destructive behavior. Through this type of therapy the patient can see how their thought processes today have been shaped and informed by the past.
This type of treatment does not start until the therapist has assessed the patient to see where they are at in the disease.
Feminist Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
Feminine social conditioning is explored in this type of psychotherapy. During therapy, the therapist gives a voice to the patient and explores their thoughts about their self-image and how it compares to societal standards. In this type of therapy, the therapist acts as the vehicle to help the patient expose their own feelings about image and intimacy rather than giving the patient all the answers.
Interpersonal Therapy
Originally used to treat depression, this type of therapy has been modified to also help patients with eating disorders. In this therapy, the patient looks at how they interact with the people around them so they may understand conflicts that may contribute to the continued pattern of behavior. While these conflicts may not have caused the eating disorder, they may impede or contribute to the eating disorder.
The goal of this type of short-term therapy is to identify behavior patterns and not specifically address the eating disorder itself.
Family Therapy or Marital Therapy
There is some debate on where the focus lies for family or marital therapy. While the patient might see this as therapy with their family or spouse present, the therapist and family members may view this as therapy for all those involved. Many times a person with an eating disorder will have a higher success rate at recovery when the entire family or those that live in the immediate home participate in therapy. This is certainly true for children with eating disorders as this type of therapy can help educate not only the child but the family members as well.
The problem with family or marital therapy is that sometimes a family member does not buy into the idea that they need therapy. They view the eating disorder as being the problem of the person who has the eating disorder. This is true to an extent. But many times there are underlying factors that have contributed to this person having an eating disorder.
Not only does the person with the eating disorder sometimes exhibit fear of exposing personal problems, but so do family members. Still this can be a highly effective way of treating the patient as well as educating the family members.
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is the most intensive of therapies. With this therapy, the patient will see a therapist five times per week over the period of many years. During this time, the patient will delve deep into their psyche to discover how they arrived at the point they are at. From there, they will be learn behaviors, examine thoughts and dreams and talk openly about their feelings.
This type of in-depth therapy is not for everyone. In fact, many people shy away because of the fear of delving too deep. However, it can be highly effective.
Focal Psychoanalytical Psychotherapy
In this therapy the therapist is not directing the patient at all and no advice is given. Instead, the patient focus is on the behaviors, symptoms and problems in regards to what happened in their past and their experiences with their family. The patient then tries to find meaning in that and how it associates with the eating disorder.
Dialectic Therapy or DBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy)
DBT is a somewhat new approach to therapy where the patient observes and finds meaning in their emotional reaction to things that happened in their past, helps them find validation of those feelings and then come to accept them and make a change. This type of therapy is especially good for people who experienced post traumatic stress or who have suicidal tendencies.
Supportive Psychotherapy
Nearly all the psychotherapy treatments available to people with eating disorders have a supportive element to them. However, the goal of this type of therapy is to help relieve the anxiety associated with the eating disorder and what is happening to the patient. Through encouragement, reassurance, and pointing out the patient’s individual strengths, the therapist can help the patient find adaptive defenses to the anxiety.
Nutritional Therapy
Since the goal of treatment is to help a patient with an eating disorder gain weight to a healthy level, nutritional therapy is vital. In this therapy the patient will learn how to stabilize their eating habits.
Rarely will a dietitian deal with just the issues of food. Instead, the dietitian will take a whole body approach and educate the patient about body image as well as nutrition and the risks associated with having an eating disorder. The dietitian will also touch upon the patient’s fears of gaining weight.
Because many young girls are still in their early teens when they develop eating disorders, a dietitian may decide to work with the family by shopping for food, coming to the home and preparing food, and sitting down for a meal with the family.
Psycho-Educational Therapy
Rarely is this type of therapy available all by itself. Many times psycho-educational therapy is included in other types of therapies. However, a more intensive educational therapy may be needed to help the patient and the family understand the different definitions of the illness, why a person develops an eating disorder, nutritional and medical issues, and sociocultural issues that may have contributed to the patient’s body image.
Addiction Model
Because many people who have eating disorders also suffer from low self esteem and depression, there is a high amount of alcohol and drug addiction associated with eating disorders. Having an addiction outside of the eating disorder presents a challenge to the health care professionals working with a patient. Which do you treat first? How do you treat both the addiction and the eating disorder together?
Many therapists find the 12-step program for alcoholics and drug addicts too restrictive to be effective. However, more medical professionals are incorporating the 12-step program with nutritional, psychological, and behavioral therapies with success.
Self-Help
As a first step, many patients with eating disorders will try to help themselves through their disorder. But even for those who want to help themselves, it is difficult to go it alone. People who have eating disorders need support and communication between family, friends, and their doctor to be successful. Since so many things play into whether or not a person has an eating disorder, it can be dangerous if the person tries to hide and “self medicate.”
This private type of support group can mean the difference between having some help and having no help, especially if the patient is resistant to formal treatment. If the initial health danger from the eating disorder is not present, the patient can set up a support group with family and friends to help them through the process of healing.
It is important, though, that you do this under the advice of a healthcare professional or formal support group adviser. A support group adviser can help steer the patient towards self-help manuals and online web sites that offer support.
Expressive Therapy
Finding an outlet for what troubles you can be an effective therapy for people with eating disorders. This is particularly helpful for the patients who have a difficult time expressing themselves by using their own words. There are many mediums the patient can use to help express themselves without words. Drama, drawing, painting, dance and movement are all effective ways to express feeling without using words.
Light Therapy
For years people with seasonal affective disorder or SAD have used light therapy to help them deal with the depression they feel during the winter months. Some people with SAD also have eating disorders. Light therapy has been an effective means of improving the patient’s mood and has helped to decrease binging and purging that sometimes happens with people who have SAD. Each light treatment can last as long as four weeks.
As you can see, there are many different types of therapies that professional have been using to help treat people with eating disorders. No one treatment will work for everyone.
Even when a person is successful with treatment, it doesn’t guarantee that the person will continue to remain successful in their treatment. Relapses are common with eating disorders, sometimes with devastating affects because now the patient has more knowledge.
This is why when a person goes into treatment, the patient must have the support of those around them. Without that support, it is too easy for the patient to slip back into old habits. By educating family members and friends in anorexia and bulimia, it would be more difficult for the person with the eating disorder to hide their disease if a relapse does occur.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Anorexia/Bulimia – Relapses & Treatment
If you or the person you love who is affected by an eating disorder has gotten to the point where you are beginning to talk about treatment, there is cause for celebration. While a person with an eating disorder who starts treatment is not out of the woods by a long shot, it is the first step needed to get back on the road to recovery.
The truth is, even if a person with an eating disorder starts treatment, it doesn't mean that they have embraced the idea of changing their life and behavior. Treatment for an eating disorder is a long process, and many patients go into treatment kicking and screaming, if they are standing at all.
Sometimes a person starts treatment after they've collapsed from weakness or malnutrition. A hospital can feed them intravenously to keep them alive; however, that doesn't mean any other treatment will be successful. To be fully successful, the person with the eating disorder needs to be a willing participant in treatment. Because having an eating disorder doesn't just mean that you're not eating food, you can't simply start eating and expect everything to be all right. Not eating is only a symptom of a bigger problem.
Anorexia and bulimia nervosa are psychological problems as well as physical problems. Until the person gets to the root of why they are being destructive with their eating habits, they can't start the healing process. A person with anorexia or bulimia can be hospitalized and monitored while they eat. That process will keep them alive. But that doesn't mean when they walk out the door of the hospital they won't revert to their old habits. In fact, relapses are very common and people who are in recovery need monitoring to make sure they not only stay on their treatment program, but that their body is responding properly to treatment.
Years ago I was saddened to hear that Karen Carpenter had died. Up until this point, I had never heard of anyone dying from an eating disorder. During her two-month stay in a treatment facility for anorexia, Karen Carpenter gained 30 pounds. Even though most of the weight gain was due to intravenous feeding, she seemed to be on the road to recovery.
However, the weight gain in such a short amount of time put a strain on her already weakened heart, which was due to years of dealing with her anorexia. Karen Carpenter died of heart failure as a result of her battle with anorexia.
Often times, because a person has suddenly started to gain weight, there is a false sense of security that the person with anorexia or bulimia is out of the woods. It can trick people into believing that treatment is no longer needed. The person who has been suffering with anorexia and bulimia will sometimes use this false sense of security that others feel as a way to revert back to old habits, and in turn, suffer a relapse.
Because of this, psychoanalysis and medical treatment must go hand in hand when treating a person with anorexia or bulimia. Simply gaining weight isn't enough to make the problem go away. In fact, even when a person has been successfully treated for anorexia or bulimia, the struggle can sometimes continue their whole life.
Because each person is unique and their reasons for becoming anorexic or bulimic are uniquely their own, treatment will not be a one-size-fits-all approach. Before treatment can begin, the doctor and therapist need to assess at what point the patient is in their struggle with anorexia and bulimia. It may even take consultation with several therapists and medical professionals to decide just how advanced the disease is in that patient.
The truth is, even if a person with an eating disorder starts treatment, it doesn't mean that they have embraced the idea of changing their life and behavior. Treatment for an eating disorder is a long process, and many patients go into treatment kicking and screaming, if they are standing at all.
Sometimes a person starts treatment after they've collapsed from weakness or malnutrition. A hospital can feed them intravenously to keep them alive; however, that doesn't mean any other treatment will be successful. To be fully successful, the person with the eating disorder needs to be a willing participant in treatment. Because having an eating disorder doesn't just mean that you're not eating food, you can't simply start eating and expect everything to be all right. Not eating is only a symptom of a bigger problem.
Anorexia and bulimia nervosa are psychological problems as well as physical problems. Until the person gets to the root of why they are being destructive with their eating habits, they can't start the healing process. A person with anorexia or bulimia can be hospitalized and monitored while they eat. That process will keep them alive. But that doesn't mean when they walk out the door of the hospital they won't revert to their old habits. In fact, relapses are very common and people who are in recovery need monitoring to make sure they not only stay on their treatment program, but that their body is responding properly to treatment.
Years ago I was saddened to hear that Karen Carpenter had died. Up until this point, I had never heard of anyone dying from an eating disorder. During her two-month stay in a treatment facility for anorexia, Karen Carpenter gained 30 pounds. Even though most of the weight gain was due to intravenous feeding, she seemed to be on the road to recovery.
However, the weight gain in such a short amount of time put a strain on her already weakened heart, which was due to years of dealing with her anorexia. Karen Carpenter died of heart failure as a result of her battle with anorexia.
Often times, because a person has suddenly started to gain weight, there is a false sense of security that the person with anorexia or bulimia is out of the woods. It can trick people into believing that treatment is no longer needed. The person who has been suffering with anorexia and bulimia will sometimes use this false sense of security that others feel as a way to revert back to old habits, and in turn, suffer a relapse.
Because of this, psychoanalysis and medical treatment must go hand in hand when treating a person with anorexia or bulimia. Simply gaining weight isn't enough to make the problem go away. In fact, even when a person has been successfully treated for anorexia or bulimia, the struggle can sometimes continue their whole life.
Because each person is unique and their reasons for becoming anorexic or bulimic are uniquely their own, treatment will not be a one-size-fits-all approach. Before treatment can begin, the doctor and therapist need to assess at what point the patient is in their struggle with anorexia and bulimia. It may even take consultation with several therapists and medical professionals to decide just how advanced the disease is in that patient.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Dangers of Anorexia/Bulimia – Short and Long Term
Personal story as told to me:
"When I was in college, well over 20 years ago, I lived in a high-rise dormitory that had a sub shop on the bottom floor in the student recreation hall. I'd succumbed to the "freshman 10," gaining 10 pounds my first year of college by eating late-night subs while studying."
"During that time I got to know one of the students who worked in the sub shop. Her name was Julie and she was a sweet girl who was just a year older than me. Someone had once commented to me that they didn't know how she stayed so thin after seeing her eating habits. At the time I thought that I was just one of those girls who had a slow metabolism and Julie must be one of those girls who had a fast metabolism."
"In the two years I lived at the dormitory, my roommates and I got to know Julie. The following year I was sad to learn that she had died of a heart attack in her dorm room. Her roommate was unable to wake her up one morning for class."
"At this point I'd been living off campus and read the news in the school newspaper. Not only did her family not know that she was bulimic, but her roommate and her boyfriend did not know. All those years of eating anything she wanted and staying thin was the result of her purging her food."
"In the days that followed, I learned that Julie had gone on a long hiking expedition the day before. The stress of that activity on her already weakened system due to bulimia had been enough to make her potassium level plummet and caused the massive heart attack that killed her."
The dangers of anorexia and bulimia are many over the long-term. The longer a person suffers with the disease, the more effects the disease has on the person's overall health.
Unfortunately, many times even knowing the dangers that a person with anorexia or bulimia faces is not enough to make the person stop their behavior. Since many girls who suffer from anorexia would rather die than be fat, scaring them with the realities of how their anorexia or bulimia will hurt them does not move them to change their behavior. For the person who is watching their loved one suffer with anorexia or bulimia, it can be quite frustrating to simply watch the disease slowly kill them.
People who have eating disorders can sometimes suffer short- and long-term problems as a result of the eating disorder. Some of these problems include:
• Gastrointestinal problems
• Heart complications
• Dehydration
• Heart attacks
• Severe tooth and gum decay from stomach acids
• Ulceration of the stomach, mouth, trachea, and esophagus
• Kidney damage
• Malnutrition and the results of malnutrition
• Death
As you can see, the quicker a person with an eating disorder is diagnosed and begins treatment the better their chances of not having long-term problems associated with their eating disorder.
"When I was in college, well over 20 years ago, I lived in a high-rise dormitory that had a sub shop on the bottom floor in the student recreation hall. I'd succumbed to the "freshman 10," gaining 10 pounds my first year of college by eating late-night subs while studying."
"During that time I got to know one of the students who worked in the sub shop. Her name was Julie and she was a sweet girl who was just a year older than me. Someone had once commented to me that they didn't know how she stayed so thin after seeing her eating habits. At the time I thought that I was just one of those girls who had a slow metabolism and Julie must be one of those girls who had a fast metabolism."
"In the two years I lived at the dormitory, my roommates and I got to know Julie. The following year I was sad to learn that she had died of a heart attack in her dorm room. Her roommate was unable to wake her up one morning for class."
"At this point I'd been living off campus and read the news in the school newspaper. Not only did her family not know that she was bulimic, but her roommate and her boyfriend did not know. All those years of eating anything she wanted and staying thin was the result of her purging her food."
"In the days that followed, I learned that Julie had gone on a long hiking expedition the day before. The stress of that activity on her already weakened system due to bulimia had been enough to make her potassium level plummet and caused the massive heart attack that killed her."
The dangers of anorexia and bulimia are many over the long-term. The longer a person suffers with the disease, the more effects the disease has on the person's overall health.
Unfortunately, many times even knowing the dangers that a person with anorexia or bulimia faces is not enough to make the person stop their behavior. Since many girls who suffer from anorexia would rather die than be fat, scaring them with the realities of how their anorexia or bulimia will hurt them does not move them to change their behavior. For the person who is watching their loved one suffer with anorexia or bulimia, it can be quite frustrating to simply watch the disease slowly kill them.
People who have eating disorders can sometimes suffer short- and long-term problems as a result of the eating disorder. Some of these problems include:
• Gastrointestinal problems
• Heart complications
• Dehydration
• Heart attacks
• Severe tooth and gum decay from stomach acids
• Ulceration of the stomach, mouth, trachea, and esophagus
• Kidney damage
• Malnutrition and the results of malnutrition
• Death
As you can see, the quicker a person with an eating disorder is diagnosed and begins treatment the better their chances of not having long-term problems associated with their eating disorder.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Where Can You Find Support?
As you've probably guessed by reading the last two weeks, anorexia and bulimia not only affects the person who has the eating disorder, but also affects the people around that person. That being the case, both the person with the eating disorder and the people that person lives with need support to help them get through the trials associated with treatment.
The ANAD (Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders) Group has over 250 support groups in the United States, with some in foreign countries as well. A partial list of local organizations by state and their representatives is listed on the ANAD website at http://www.anad.org.
An ANAD support group is a group of people who are going through the same struggle with anorexia and bulimia. They provide a safe place to share thoughts and fears and meet other people who are experiencing the same struggle.
While an ANAD support group can be very beneficial and therapeutic in many ways, it should never replace treatment or intense one-on-one therapy with a psychologist. When a person has anorexia and bulimia, there is no magic pill that suddenly stops it. Treatment is ongoing. Joining an ANAD support group can complement your treatment.
One of the things that people who go to support groups find is that there is no stereotype of a person who is struggling with an eating disorder. People of all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds will be part of the support group. One thing remains the same in all support groups and that is the ANAD’s eight-step approach.
These are the steps from the ANAD website:
1. Admit to ourselves that we have an eating disorder.
2. Recognize that "food" and "weight" are not the real issues, but that other underlying problems in our lives have led to our obsessions with food, eating, and weight.
3. Make an honest attempt to identify the problems underlying our eating disorder.
4. Acknowledge that self starvation and/or binge - purging are not offering a healthy or satisfactory solution to these problems.
5. Accept the responsibility for changing our lives and applying more appropriate methods of coping with these problems.
6. Realize that we do not have to struggle alone to overcome our problems. We can accept the caring support of others and the guidance of spiritual strength.
7. Establish small individual goals aimed at changing our unhealthy attitudes and behaviors and begin working seriously towards their achievement.
8. Reinforce and sustain our personal growth process by reaching out and helping others struggling with eating disorders.
Seeking help takes a commitment to wanting to get better. While the frequency of attending support meetings is not dictated in any way and is up to the individual to decide, some people find that going to regular meetings helps motivate them as well as educate them. Just like the alcoholic who might attend regular AA meetings, a person who has an eating disorder may find it beneficial to continue to attend meetings to prevent a relapse or to help another person who is still struggling with their eating disorder.
For the person who is still struggling with opening up about the eating disorder or who can't attend regular meetings for a particular reason, there is online support that can help as well. It takes courage to seek help and open up to others about your feelings, and an online group can be a first step for those who have difficulty expressing themselves.
The goal through either online or live support groups is to help with recovery. Nearly 90% of the people who regularly attend support group meetings through ANAD find that attending meetings is helping them with recovery.
The ANAD (Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders) Group has over 250 support groups in the United States, with some in foreign countries as well. A partial list of local organizations by state and their representatives is listed on the ANAD website at http://www.anad.org.
An ANAD support group is a group of people who are going through the same struggle with anorexia and bulimia. They provide a safe place to share thoughts and fears and meet other people who are experiencing the same struggle.
While an ANAD support group can be very beneficial and therapeutic in many ways, it should never replace treatment or intense one-on-one therapy with a psychologist. When a person has anorexia and bulimia, there is no magic pill that suddenly stops it. Treatment is ongoing. Joining an ANAD support group can complement your treatment.
One of the things that people who go to support groups find is that there is no stereotype of a person who is struggling with an eating disorder. People of all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds will be part of the support group. One thing remains the same in all support groups and that is the ANAD’s eight-step approach.
These are the steps from the ANAD website:
1. Admit to ourselves that we have an eating disorder.
2. Recognize that "food" and "weight" are not the real issues, but that other underlying problems in our lives have led to our obsessions with food, eating, and weight.
3. Make an honest attempt to identify the problems underlying our eating disorder.
4. Acknowledge that self starvation and/or binge - purging are not offering a healthy or satisfactory solution to these problems.
5. Accept the responsibility for changing our lives and applying more appropriate methods of coping with these problems.
6. Realize that we do not have to struggle alone to overcome our problems. We can accept the caring support of others and the guidance of spiritual strength.
7. Establish small individual goals aimed at changing our unhealthy attitudes and behaviors and begin working seriously towards their achievement.
8. Reinforce and sustain our personal growth process by reaching out and helping others struggling with eating disorders.
Seeking help takes a commitment to wanting to get better. While the frequency of attending support meetings is not dictated in any way and is up to the individual to decide, some people find that going to regular meetings helps motivate them as well as educate them. Just like the alcoholic who might attend regular AA meetings, a person who has an eating disorder may find it beneficial to continue to attend meetings to prevent a relapse or to help another person who is still struggling with their eating disorder.
For the person who is still struggling with opening up about the eating disorder or who can't attend regular meetings for a particular reason, there is online support that can help as well. It takes courage to seek help and open up to others about your feelings, and an online group can be a first step for those who have difficulty expressing themselves.
The goal through either online or live support groups is to help with recovery. Nearly 90% of the people who regularly attend support group meetings through ANAD find that attending meetings is helping them with recovery.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
What is Going on Inside the Mind of an Anorexic and Bulimic Person?
Being anorexic or bulimic isn't just about not eating or not wanting to be fat. It's about self image or lack of it.
People who have eating disorders are not ignorant people. They know they need to eat to stay alive. They have average to above-average intelligence and know intellectually that what they are doing can be dangerous.
But the pull they feel toward being thin, the fear and anxiety over eating, is much stronger than anything they might know about eating disorders, making their thoughts about eating irrational by normal standards. To understand why a person with anorexia and bulimia thinks irrationally about their body image, you need to know what is going on inside their mind. While it might not be the same for each person, there are some parallels that can be found in people who have eating disorders.
Historically, the perfect woman's body has always been portrayed as thin and beautiful. It's the definition of thin and beautiful that has changed over the years and skewed our thinking.
Take the BarbieTM doll, which made its debut on March 9, 1959, at the New York International Toy Fair. Since then, it has been a benchmark as the perfect female form in the minds of many young girls. Before that, we had buxom female movie stars like Jane Mansfield, Jane Russell, and Marilyn Monroe who were the envy of all girls.
But let's really look at the Barbie doll and how realistic it would be for people to use "her" form as a benchmark for the perfect body. If the Barbie doll were put into human form, she would stand six feet tall and weight 101 pounds. 101 pounds! A woman with a small frame who is six feet tall should be an average of 138 to 151 pounds to be healthy. With a larger frame, the woman should weigh more.
To suggest that we should all be Barbie-doll-like figures would mean that we would have to be 35-50% below a normal body weight based on our height. Using this model, it is easy to see how a young girl who feels pressure to be perfect in body form could obsess over her weight.
Many feel that the Barbie doll, while a fun plaything for children, has done a major disservice to young adult women. However, it's not the Barbie doll's fault or the even the manufacturer of the Barbie doll. Let's face it; we could all use ShrekTM as a model as well. But that is not what the fashion world at large uses as their criteria for perfection. And people who have eating disorders strive for that perfection.
So where does the fault lie? That's hard to say. The average woman does not wear a size four dress like the Barbie doll. Statistics show that the average woman wears between a size 11 and size 14 dress, yet most store mannequins are size six. It seems everywhere we turn there are unrealistic expectations for women to use as benchmarks for the perfect form.
Without even realizing it, many women internalize these ideals of perfection and begin to obsess about attaining them. The problems happen when losing 10 pounds to fit into a sexy dress or that really cool pair of jeans turns into fitting into a size zero when the person's frame can't possibly handle the kind of weight it takes to fit into a size zero and still be healthy.
What's worse is that even if the person reaches their goal of size 0, they won't see the "rewards" of all their hard work. They see something altogether different, as people with eating disorders continue to see a "fat" body even when they are in a skeletal state.
Despite the fact that these women are intelligent, they have thoughts that are irrational and unrealistic, almost bargaining with themselves about their body image. For instance, they might say something like, "If I lose 10 pounds, I'll feel better about myself."
It sounds like something any woman might say and it doesn't necessarily make her anorexic or bulimic. The difference is, women with anorexia and bulimia either don't have 10 pounds to lose or it becomes an obsession to reach this goal. They plan their day around it and think about it all the time. They become so preoccupied with their weight that they think of nothing else.
Once they have reached the goal, they set themselves up for another unrealistic goal until they're wasting away. But no matter how many goals they reach and how much weight they lose, the image they see in the mirror isn't the image they see in their mind. A person with anorexia or bulimia loses the ability to see reality accurately. Instead, they live in an almost alternate reality that no one else can see.
This is the hardest cycle to break and the one that presents the biggest challenge for healthcare workers and family members when trying to help a person with anorexia and bulimia. It can become a control tug of war. On one side, the person with the eating disorder is trying to maintain their sense of control. On the other side, doctors, psychologists and family members try to break them of that control to help them heal.
Unfortunately, people with anorexia and bulimia also become very skillful at hiding their disease. Not only will they think about not eating and obsessively exercise, but they will craft ways to hide it from people they associate with. People with anorexia or bulimia are often perfectionists or have obsessive-compulsive disorder.
For instance, if you sit down for a meal with a person with anorexia, they may appear to be eating, but often times they are chewing tiny portions of their food a lot so no one will notice they haven't taken another bite. Sometimes they will stuff their food in their cheeks or around their gums and discard it later.
A person with bulimia may appear to be eating, but will chew their food until it is mashed. They may eat a lot, but they'll drink a lot of water while at the dinner table, too, as this helps with purging. They will plan the optimal time to excuse themselves so they can vomit in the bathroom before their stomach has had a chance to absorb any of the nutrients and move the food into the large intestines.
No matter what conversation is being said at the dinner table, no matter what food is being served, the mind of a person with anorexia and bulimia shuts down to those around them, even if they appear to be part of the conversation. Their only concern is getting rid of the food they've just consumed.
Some, but not all, people with anorexia and bulimia also have feelings of remorse when they eat. They don't believe they deserve to enjoy food or even eat it. They use food as a way of punishing themselves because they believe they are not worthy. This is a very dangerous condition because instead of the condition being present for purposes of becoming thin, or for controlling their lives, the person is actually trying to do themselves serious harm or cause death. Unlike other people who attempt suicide as a form of bringing much-needed attention to their problem, the anorexic or bulimic person who does this believes they should be punished for their imperfections or something they've done.
Many times, they have difficulty expressing their feelings and dealing with the stresses of their life. Instead of being able to get angry, they turn their anger inside, hurting themselves. In some cases, the feelings from an incident from the past that was traumatic, such as the death of a loved one or physical or sexual abuse can manifest through an eating disorder.
While it may appear that the person who is injuring themselves is purposely doing it, they are not. In their mind, they deserve it. Only through psychoanalysis and treatment can the feelings that are causing this problem be explored and hopefully resolved.
These are just some of the things going on in the mind of a person with anorexia or bulimia. Through treatment with a therapist, the person with an eating disorder can discover what is causing them to harm their bodies with their behavior. Only then can they begin to change their behavior and heal.
People who have eating disorders are not ignorant people. They know they need to eat to stay alive. They have average to above-average intelligence and know intellectually that what they are doing can be dangerous.
But the pull they feel toward being thin, the fear and anxiety over eating, is much stronger than anything they might know about eating disorders, making their thoughts about eating irrational by normal standards. To understand why a person with anorexia and bulimia thinks irrationally about their body image, you need to know what is going on inside their mind. While it might not be the same for each person, there are some parallels that can be found in people who have eating disorders.
Historically, the perfect woman's body has always been portrayed as thin and beautiful. It's the definition of thin and beautiful that has changed over the years and skewed our thinking.
Take the BarbieTM doll, which made its debut on March 9, 1959, at the New York International Toy Fair. Since then, it has been a benchmark as the perfect female form in the minds of many young girls. Before that, we had buxom female movie stars like Jane Mansfield, Jane Russell, and Marilyn Monroe who were the envy of all girls.
But let's really look at the Barbie doll and how realistic it would be for people to use "her" form as a benchmark for the perfect body. If the Barbie doll were put into human form, she would stand six feet tall and weight 101 pounds. 101 pounds! A woman with a small frame who is six feet tall should be an average of 138 to 151 pounds to be healthy. With a larger frame, the woman should weigh more.
To suggest that we should all be Barbie-doll-like figures would mean that we would have to be 35-50% below a normal body weight based on our height. Using this model, it is easy to see how a young girl who feels pressure to be perfect in body form could obsess over her weight.
Many feel that the Barbie doll, while a fun plaything for children, has done a major disservice to young adult women. However, it's not the Barbie doll's fault or the even the manufacturer of the Barbie doll. Let's face it; we could all use ShrekTM as a model as well. But that is not what the fashion world at large uses as their criteria for perfection. And people who have eating disorders strive for that perfection.
So where does the fault lie? That's hard to say. The average woman does not wear a size four dress like the Barbie doll. Statistics show that the average woman wears between a size 11 and size 14 dress, yet most store mannequins are size six. It seems everywhere we turn there are unrealistic expectations for women to use as benchmarks for the perfect form.
Without even realizing it, many women internalize these ideals of perfection and begin to obsess about attaining them. The problems happen when losing 10 pounds to fit into a sexy dress or that really cool pair of jeans turns into fitting into a size zero when the person's frame can't possibly handle the kind of weight it takes to fit into a size zero and still be healthy.
What's worse is that even if the person reaches their goal of size 0, they won't see the "rewards" of all their hard work. They see something altogether different, as people with eating disorders continue to see a "fat" body even when they are in a skeletal state.
Despite the fact that these women are intelligent, they have thoughts that are irrational and unrealistic, almost bargaining with themselves about their body image. For instance, they might say something like, "If I lose 10 pounds, I'll feel better about myself."
It sounds like something any woman might say and it doesn't necessarily make her anorexic or bulimic. The difference is, women with anorexia and bulimia either don't have 10 pounds to lose or it becomes an obsession to reach this goal. They plan their day around it and think about it all the time. They become so preoccupied with their weight that they think of nothing else.
Once they have reached the goal, they set themselves up for another unrealistic goal until they're wasting away. But no matter how many goals they reach and how much weight they lose, the image they see in the mirror isn't the image they see in their mind. A person with anorexia or bulimia loses the ability to see reality accurately. Instead, they live in an almost alternate reality that no one else can see.
This is the hardest cycle to break and the one that presents the biggest challenge for healthcare workers and family members when trying to help a person with anorexia and bulimia. It can become a control tug of war. On one side, the person with the eating disorder is trying to maintain their sense of control. On the other side, doctors, psychologists and family members try to break them of that control to help them heal.
Unfortunately, people with anorexia and bulimia also become very skillful at hiding their disease. Not only will they think about not eating and obsessively exercise, but they will craft ways to hide it from people they associate with. People with anorexia or bulimia are often perfectionists or have obsessive-compulsive disorder.
For instance, if you sit down for a meal with a person with anorexia, they may appear to be eating, but often times they are chewing tiny portions of their food a lot so no one will notice they haven't taken another bite. Sometimes they will stuff their food in their cheeks or around their gums and discard it later.
A person with bulimia may appear to be eating, but will chew their food until it is mashed. They may eat a lot, but they'll drink a lot of water while at the dinner table, too, as this helps with purging. They will plan the optimal time to excuse themselves so they can vomit in the bathroom before their stomach has had a chance to absorb any of the nutrients and move the food into the large intestines.
No matter what conversation is being said at the dinner table, no matter what food is being served, the mind of a person with anorexia and bulimia shuts down to those around them, even if they appear to be part of the conversation. Their only concern is getting rid of the food they've just consumed.
Some, but not all, people with anorexia and bulimia also have feelings of remorse when they eat. They don't believe they deserve to enjoy food or even eat it. They use food as a way of punishing themselves because they believe they are not worthy. This is a very dangerous condition because instead of the condition being present for purposes of becoming thin, or for controlling their lives, the person is actually trying to do themselves serious harm or cause death. Unlike other people who attempt suicide as a form of bringing much-needed attention to their problem, the anorexic or bulimic person who does this believes they should be punished for their imperfections or something they've done.
Many times, they have difficulty expressing their feelings and dealing with the stresses of their life. Instead of being able to get angry, they turn their anger inside, hurting themselves. In some cases, the feelings from an incident from the past that was traumatic, such as the death of a loved one or physical or sexual abuse can manifest through an eating disorder.
While it may appear that the person who is injuring themselves is purposely doing it, they are not. In their mind, they deserve it. Only through psychoanalysis and treatment can the feelings that are causing this problem be explored and hopefully resolved.
These are just some of the things going on in the mind of a person with anorexia or bulimia. Through treatment with a therapist, the person with an eating disorder can discover what is causing them to harm their bodies with their behavior. Only then can they begin to change their behavior and heal.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Warning Signs for Anorexia and Bulimia
Simply being thin or watching your weight does not automatically make you anorexic or bulimic. There are certain symptoms and signs associated with anorexia and bulimia. Your doctor will give you a physical exam to determine if you are indeed anorexic.
Several factors will play into his diagnosis.
• physical exam, which will include a thorough physical history
• blood test and urinalysis
• electrocardiogram and x-ray
• psychological evaluation
Simply being too thin isn’t enough to be considered anorexic, as there are other illnesses that can contribute to weight loss such as endocrine, metabolic, and central nervous system disorders. If you are indeed anorexic, many times any physical problems you are experiencing are a result of the anorexia, not something more serious. So distinguishing between the two is imperative.
Questions to consider if you think you or someone you love may be anorexic:
• Thinking you are fat even though everyone else thinks you’re too thin.
• Getting obsessive about exercise. Being afraid to miss a workout because you’ll gain weight.
• Gaining even a pound depresses you.
• Worrying about every bite of food you put in your mouth.
• Feeling guilty when you eat.
• Feeling you’d rather die than be fat.
• Not talking about fears of being fat or gaining weight with others.
• Planning your day around food or how you will purge it.
• Exercising obsessively so you can burn off calories.
• Not wanting to eat meals with others so they won’t force you to eat.
• Lying about what you eat.
• Afraid of not being able to stop eating once you start.
• Keeping stashes of food.
If you live with someone you suspect might be bulimic or anorexic, pay attention to how they eat.
• Are they chewing each bite of food for a long time before swallowing? Are they swallowing at all?
• Does this person excuse themselves from the dinner table frequently during a meal?
• Does their breath have a foul odor?
• Has this person lost a lot of weight frequently?
• Are they obsessed with exercise?
• Is this person taking laxatives, herbal supplements or other drugs to help speed up their metabolism or evacuate their bowels?
The key to helping a person with an eating disorder is not to be confrontational about the problem, but be aware that there might be a problem. If need be, contact your health care professional for advice on how to seek treatment.
Several factors will play into his diagnosis.
• physical exam, which will include a thorough physical history
• blood test and urinalysis
• electrocardiogram and x-ray
• psychological evaluation
Simply being too thin isn’t enough to be considered anorexic, as there are other illnesses that can contribute to weight loss such as endocrine, metabolic, and central nervous system disorders. If you are indeed anorexic, many times any physical problems you are experiencing are a result of the anorexia, not something more serious. So distinguishing between the two is imperative.
Questions to consider if you think you or someone you love may be anorexic:
• Thinking you are fat even though everyone else thinks you’re too thin.
• Getting obsessive about exercise. Being afraid to miss a workout because you’ll gain weight.
• Gaining even a pound depresses you.
• Worrying about every bite of food you put in your mouth.
• Feeling guilty when you eat.
• Feeling you’d rather die than be fat.
• Not talking about fears of being fat or gaining weight with others.
• Planning your day around food or how you will purge it.
• Exercising obsessively so you can burn off calories.
• Not wanting to eat meals with others so they won’t force you to eat.
• Lying about what you eat.
• Afraid of not being able to stop eating once you start.
• Keeping stashes of food.
If you live with someone you suspect might be bulimic or anorexic, pay attention to how they eat.
• Are they chewing each bite of food for a long time before swallowing? Are they swallowing at all?
• Does this person excuse themselves from the dinner table frequently during a meal?
• Does their breath have a foul odor?
• Has this person lost a lot of weight frequently?
• Are they obsessed with exercise?
• Is this person taking laxatives, herbal supplements or other drugs to help speed up their metabolism or evacuate their bowels?
The key to helping a person with an eating disorder is not to be confrontational about the problem, but be aware that there might be a problem. If need be, contact your health care professional for advice on how to seek treatment.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Who is at Risk for Becoming Anorexic and Bulimic?
Unfortunately, trying to figure out who would be more at risk for an eating disorder is like trying to fit a square peg into a circle. There are so many things that play into who might be at risk, and not all people who have eating disorders fit into all these categories. But researchers have identified certain characteristics and behaviors as well as certain situations that feed into the likelihood that a person might develop an eating disorder.
Everywhere you look, you see a super-thin, sexy model. Think of it. Every billboard, magazine ad, or television commercial shows models and actresses who are thin, with every hair neatly in place, and the makeup impeccably applied. Researchers have found that the majority of young girls feel that this is the standard by which a normal woman is measured and that if a woman can't attain that same look, then they are lacking in some form.
This standard of the perfect female form has been around for the last 40 years. If you look at the sex symbols of the 30s, 40s and 50s, you'll see that these were not women who were ultra thin. Women like Jayne Mansfield, Jane Russell, and Marilyn Monroe would be considered overweight these days if using these same standards.
A study of the average weight of the contestants of the Miss America pageant showed that since the shift in the standard female form has taken place, a contestant entering the Miss America pageant today is approximately 12 pounds thinner than 40 years ago. This research showed that this trend is not just affecting the advertising industry, but is trickling down to the more basic level.
Certain professions put extreme pressure on a person to be thin. Sometimes ultra thin. Athletes, actors, fashion models and dancers are usually under strict requirements to maintain a certain weight. The result of not maintaining that weight could mean the loss of their job.
"When I was 14 years old," Debbie, a former child model, explains, "I was a bean pole." She laughs. "I was the perfect form for a model. Very tall and very thin. And then puberty set in. I went from having the perfect body on the runway, to having hips that were too wide, and a little pot belly."
Debbie went on to explain that looking back she knows there was nothing wrong with her body. Even by model standards she was well within the guidelines. However, the modeling world can be cruel to an already sensitive teenager, making it easy to set the stage for an eating disorder.
"There was nothing wrong with my belly. I was thinner than any of the friends I went to high school with. But I became obsessed because if they were looking at my belly, then obviously something was wrong with me. I began exercising and doing crunches to flatten my stomach muscles. My parents just thought I was keeping in shape and I did, too. But it seemed every time I went out on the job I could see them looking at me and the first thing that came to my mind was that something was wrong with me. I always wondered, even if they didn't say anything.”
"I'm not exactly sure when it became a problem for me but I do know that my parents began to worry. I just wasn't eating. In fact, I hated eating. It became a major struggle for me to eat because food was like poison. I would have taken Drain-O before I ate a hamburger. If I ate something, it meant it was going somewhere in my body and I'd have to exercise to make sure it didn't show. I didn't think of food as a way to sustain my life. I thought it was something that would ruin my career as a model. I was making money, but it wasn't the money that I didn't want to stop. I didn't want them to stop calling me. If they did, it meant that I was too fat. I was convinced of it. It only got worse when I started getting acne."
Unfortunately, this set the stage for a roller coaster ride for Debbie. It wasn't until she was in her late teens that she was formally diagnosed with anorexia.
While some people like to dismiss the idea that certain professions contribute to the risk of eating disorders, a study of 1,443 athletes at 10 colleges in the United States showed some startling statistics to the contrary. Nine percent of college females in the athletics program were diagnosed with some form of an eating disorder. The national average for young women with eating disorders is only one percent. Of those same college students studied, 50 percent admitted to having some behaviors that could have eventually led to a full diagnosis of an eating disorder. More specifically, a startling 20 percent of the gymnasts were found to have an eating disorder, showing the pressure to remain thin that is involved in the sport.
In 1997, 22-year-old Heidi Guenther died of complications from her eating disorder. She was an accomplished dancer with the Boston Ballet. At the time, she was 5' 3" tall and weighed 93 pounds. Even with a small frame, she should have weighed at least 111-124 pounds to be healthy.
The world of dancing, like modeling, acting and sports, can sometimes put unrealistic pressures on women to be thinner. Not only do these girls aspire to be part of that world, they'll do anything, including harm their bodies by starvation or purging and taking laxatives to make sure that they are in that world.
Studies also suggest that there are some racial and socio-economic differences that affect who are more likely to have an eating disorder. In the past, Caucasian women in upper income levels have had higher instances of eating disorders than those from African-American women and women from lower income levels. But research also suggests that the numbers are changing and that there is only a small difference now.
Anorexia and bulimia are more likely to affect people in their teens and early 20s. However, there are rare cases where children as young as six years old and women well into their 60s have developed anorexia or bulimia. In fact, more studies have shown that the number of women who are middle-aged who are affected by anorexia or bulimia has grown. This may be because this is the first age group who has lived their whole lives looking at the new "standard" for the perfect body.
Drugs and alcohol also play a part in who is at risk to become anorexic or bulimic. Since low body image is such a prevalent factor with eating disorders, people who abuse drugs because of depression or are alcoholics under the age of 30 have a very high risk of developing an eating disorder. A woman under 30 who is an alcoholic has a 70% higher chance of becoming anorexic or bulimic than a woman under 30 who is not an alcoholic.
Some doctors believe that these women use alcohol and drugs as a means of escaping the emotional pain that has caused them to become anorexic or bulimic. However, some women will use drugs to help speed up your metabolism to help them lose weight faster.
People who are overly obsessed about exercise are also at risk. While exercise is a very important part of keeping your body healthy, it can also be an obsession that leads to unhealthy activity. When the shift turns from being fit to being obsessed with losing weight, it can be a problem.
Everywhere you look, you see a super-thin, sexy model. Think of it. Every billboard, magazine ad, or television commercial shows models and actresses who are thin, with every hair neatly in place, and the makeup impeccably applied. Researchers have found that the majority of young girls feel that this is the standard by which a normal woman is measured and that if a woman can't attain that same look, then they are lacking in some form.
This standard of the perfect female form has been around for the last 40 years. If you look at the sex symbols of the 30s, 40s and 50s, you'll see that these were not women who were ultra thin. Women like Jayne Mansfield, Jane Russell, and Marilyn Monroe would be considered overweight these days if using these same standards.
A study of the average weight of the contestants of the Miss America pageant showed that since the shift in the standard female form has taken place, a contestant entering the Miss America pageant today is approximately 12 pounds thinner than 40 years ago. This research showed that this trend is not just affecting the advertising industry, but is trickling down to the more basic level.
Certain professions put extreme pressure on a person to be thin. Sometimes ultra thin. Athletes, actors, fashion models and dancers are usually under strict requirements to maintain a certain weight. The result of not maintaining that weight could mean the loss of their job.
"When I was 14 years old," Debbie, a former child model, explains, "I was a bean pole." She laughs. "I was the perfect form for a model. Very tall and very thin. And then puberty set in. I went from having the perfect body on the runway, to having hips that were too wide, and a little pot belly."
Debbie went on to explain that looking back she knows there was nothing wrong with her body. Even by model standards she was well within the guidelines. However, the modeling world can be cruel to an already sensitive teenager, making it easy to set the stage for an eating disorder.
"There was nothing wrong with my belly. I was thinner than any of the friends I went to high school with. But I became obsessed because if they were looking at my belly, then obviously something was wrong with me. I began exercising and doing crunches to flatten my stomach muscles. My parents just thought I was keeping in shape and I did, too. But it seemed every time I went out on the job I could see them looking at me and the first thing that came to my mind was that something was wrong with me. I always wondered, even if they didn't say anything.”
"I'm not exactly sure when it became a problem for me but I do know that my parents began to worry. I just wasn't eating. In fact, I hated eating. It became a major struggle for me to eat because food was like poison. I would have taken Drain-O before I ate a hamburger. If I ate something, it meant it was going somewhere in my body and I'd have to exercise to make sure it didn't show. I didn't think of food as a way to sustain my life. I thought it was something that would ruin my career as a model. I was making money, but it wasn't the money that I didn't want to stop. I didn't want them to stop calling me. If they did, it meant that I was too fat. I was convinced of it. It only got worse when I started getting acne."
Unfortunately, this set the stage for a roller coaster ride for Debbie. It wasn't until she was in her late teens that she was formally diagnosed with anorexia.
While some people like to dismiss the idea that certain professions contribute to the risk of eating disorders, a study of 1,443 athletes at 10 colleges in the United States showed some startling statistics to the contrary. Nine percent of college females in the athletics program were diagnosed with some form of an eating disorder. The national average for young women with eating disorders is only one percent. Of those same college students studied, 50 percent admitted to having some behaviors that could have eventually led to a full diagnosis of an eating disorder. More specifically, a startling 20 percent of the gymnasts were found to have an eating disorder, showing the pressure to remain thin that is involved in the sport.
In 1997, 22-year-old Heidi Guenther died of complications from her eating disorder. She was an accomplished dancer with the Boston Ballet. At the time, she was 5' 3" tall and weighed 93 pounds. Even with a small frame, she should have weighed at least 111-124 pounds to be healthy.
The world of dancing, like modeling, acting and sports, can sometimes put unrealistic pressures on women to be thinner. Not only do these girls aspire to be part of that world, they'll do anything, including harm their bodies by starvation or purging and taking laxatives to make sure that they are in that world.
Studies also suggest that there are some racial and socio-economic differences that affect who are more likely to have an eating disorder. In the past, Caucasian women in upper income levels have had higher instances of eating disorders than those from African-American women and women from lower income levels. But research also suggests that the numbers are changing and that there is only a small difference now.
Anorexia and bulimia are more likely to affect people in their teens and early 20s. However, there are rare cases where children as young as six years old and women well into their 60s have developed anorexia or bulimia. In fact, more studies have shown that the number of women who are middle-aged who are affected by anorexia or bulimia has grown. This may be because this is the first age group who has lived their whole lives looking at the new "standard" for the perfect body.
Drugs and alcohol also play a part in who is at risk to become anorexic or bulimic. Since low body image is such a prevalent factor with eating disorders, people who abuse drugs because of depression or are alcoholics under the age of 30 have a very high risk of developing an eating disorder. A woman under 30 who is an alcoholic has a 70% higher chance of becoming anorexic or bulimic than a woman under 30 who is not an alcoholic.
Some doctors believe that these women use alcohol and drugs as a means of escaping the emotional pain that has caused them to become anorexic or bulimic. However, some women will use drugs to help speed up your metabolism to help them lose weight faster.
People who are overly obsessed about exercise are also at risk. While exercise is a very important part of keeping your body healthy, it can also be an obsession that leads to unhealthy activity. When the shift turns from being fit to being obsessed with losing weight, it can be a problem.
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