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Eating Disorders Trouble Teen-Agers and Grown-Ups as Well | |
| By TOWN & COUNTRY A Hearst Magazine For AP Special Features Eating disorders do not just trouble teen-agers - grown women also struggle with these deadly afflictions. "It's very prevalent," Jane Supino, director of the Center for the Study of Anorexia and Bulimia in New York City, told Lauren Picker in an article in the current issue of Town & Country. There are no hard statistics of how many of the estimated 8 million people with eating disorders in the United States are adults. A 1981 National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders survey of 1,400 self-described anorexics and bulimics found that 25 percent were over the age of 30. Because the full recovery rate from anorexia and bulimia is just under 50 percent, most women with eating disorders carried the disease over from adolescence. For those who develop a disorder later in life, the illness is typically triggered by emotional turbulence. Eating disorders differ. Anorexics starve themselves. Bulimics, who outnumber anorexics about 10-to-1, secretly consume vast quantities of food, then purge by vomiting, exercising compulsively or abusing laxatives. A third problem is binge-eating disorder, which is like bulimia without the purge. Stopping the self-destructive behavior becomes more difficult, and urgent, the longer the condition persists. Eroded by gastric acids, the bulimic's teeth begin to rot. Vomiting and laxative abuse also can give rise to heart arrhythmias or digestive-tract ruptures. Anorexics may develop heart and kidney problems and osteoporosis. More than 10 percent of the most seriously ill anorexics die. "If one finds life intolerable or out of control, an eating disorder plays the role of deflecting and defocusing from issues that are too painful," said Vivian Hanson Meehan, president of ANAD. Treatment can be highly effective for adult sufferers. Many adult anorexics and bulimics are highly motivated to change because they are more aware than adolescents of the consequences of the disorder. Eating disorders also have an affect on sufferers' children. "We have heard of 2- and 3-year-olds who put their fingers down their throats because they know that's what mother does," Meehan said. "They may not follow through with the vomiting, but the gestures and the implications are there." Eating disorders can become a family legacy. "There's a much higher incidence of eating disorders in women whose mothers had eating disorders, and they do pass it on to their own daughters," said Dr. Barbara Wingate, medical director of the weight and eating disorders program at the University of Pennsylvania. There is no standard course of treatment for eating disorders, but most residential and outpatient programs take a multifaceted approach. In addition to working with a psychotherapist specializing in eating disorders, the patient sees a nutritionist and an internist. The first step is to interrupt self-destructive behavior. Then patients can grapple with the core emotional problems. Bulimics can begin to break the binge-purge cycle by learning to eat more frequently and distracting themselves with self-nurturing activities when the impulse to binge hits. For anorexics, behavior modification, which uses a system of rewards and punishment to enforce weight gain, is a common treatment method. The punishment for failing to gain weight could mean withholding certain privileges and pleasurable activities. Some specialists think this approach is inappropriate, especially for grown women. "We want them to feel in charge of their treatment," said William Davis, executive director of the Renfrew Foundation, a nonprofit education and advocacy group for women's mental health. Researchers also are exploring the efficacy of drug therapy, but remain at odds as to whether these diseases are biologically based. Copyright 1996 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | |