The true causes of eating disorders

There is a discouragingly high failure rate in the treatment of anorexia* In spite of the variety of approaches from psychoanalysis to behaviour modification, present treatment models share the common assumption that the anorectic is wilful and stubborn in her refusal to eat. This refusal is so annoying to practitioners and so terrifying to family and friends that interventions focus almost entirely on attempting to make the woman give up the refusal. When the anorectic is unable to comply with the dietary plan offered, she may well be force-fed. In civilized hospitals throughout the United States and England, doctors are perfecting ever more elegant techniques to bypass women's mouths and push food into their stomachs. The general consensus is that the patient has recovered when the normal weight is reached and appropriate sex role functioning is achieved. Such interventions reflect, at best, only superficial attempts to understand the problem, and the goals they are meant to achieve are inevitably short-lived. Further, such treatments are paradoxical. The woman cannot maintain the weight gain, and her original insecurity and lack of self-esteem are amplified. In the anorectic denial she could achieve some private form of success, a sense of achievement. Now she feels she is failing again. Cognitive approaches, by far the most common, assume that if only the anorectic could be made to see what she is up to, she would be able to give up her troublesome and difficult behaviour. However well reasoned, such approaches cannot possibly penetrate to the level of the unconscious except as further judgments. For anorexia is not so much a conscious act of will.“ Susie Orbach 

 

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a complex disorder of unknown etiology that is characterized by severely low weight and significant obsessions and compulsions in relation to body shape, weight, and calorie intake. It has the highest mortality rate of all psychiatric disorders, with exceptionally high relapse rates, where only 10–30% recover with the best available psychotherapies, as pharmacological interventions are largely ineffective and have low acceptability. article

 

Since the 1950s the recovery rate of Anorexia nervosa has decreased, while the mortality rate and the prevalence has increased, in spite of decades of research, 'life-saving' tube feeding and high-tech ICUs. 

Despite treatment advances, mortality rates of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa remain very high: those who have received inpatient treatment for anorexia nervosa still have a more than five times increased mortality risk. Mortality risks for bulimia nervosa, and for anorexia nervosa treated outside the hospital, are lower but still about twice those of controls. article

 

These so called advances will be examined in this article.

 

There are currently (2021) 455 adult inpatient beds in the UK for eating disorders and people can face long waits for a space. That’s while the prevalence of ED is estimated to have surpassed 1,000,000. 

 

A dramatic rise in the use of compulsory admissions over the last two decades does not mean that psychiatric disorders have in their nature got worse, but that the prospects for those who have them seem more bleak. [...]The rate of involuntary admissions (being 'sectioned' under the Mental Health Act) per year in the NHS increased by more than 60%, while the provision of mental illness beds decreased by more than 60% over the same period. The authors calculated the closure of two mental illness beds contributes to an additional involuntary admission in the subsequent year”. article

 

While eating disorders have the highest treatment cost of any mental health condition and the second highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness, second only to opioid use disorder, the NIH has historically underfunded research into these disorders”.

 

The biggest parts of research money is spent in neurology (see treatments of the future below).

 

Despite treatment advances, mortality rates of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa remain very high: those who have received inpatient treatment for anorexia nervosa still have a more than five times increased mortality risk. Mortality risks for bulimia nervosa, and for anorexia nervosa treated outside the hospital, are lower but still about twice those of controls. article

 

These so called advances will be examined in this article.

 

There are currently (2021) 455 adult inpatient beds in the UK for eating disorders and people can face long waits for a space. That’s while the prevalence of ED is estimated to have surpassed 1,000,000. 

 

A dramatic rise in the use of compulsory admissions over the last two decades does not mean that psychiatric disorders have in their nature got worse, but that the prospects for those who have them seem more bleak. [...]The rate of involuntary admissions (being 'sectioned' under the Mental Health Act) per year in the NHS increased by more than 60%, while the provision of mental illness beds decreased by more than 60% over the same period. The authors calculated the closure of two mental illness beds contributes to an additional involuntary admission in the subsequent year”. article

 

While eating disorders have the highest treatment cost of any mental health condition and the second highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness, second only to opioid use disorder, the NIH has historically underfunded research into these disorders”.

 

The biggest parts of research money is spent in neurology (see treatments of the future below).


Finding the causes vs fighting the symptoms

Anorexia/bulimia nervosa might be the unsolved riddle of modern medicine and is considered by many physicians as an incurable disease, as no pharmacological therapy shows results and other therapies are not very successful either.

Central in the development of eating disorders is early childhood trauma. The common clinical therapeutic methods – coercion and behavior therapies – are ineffective, as they only address the symptoms, but ignore the cause. The focus is put on changing specific attitudes and eating patterns, suppressing memories at the same time. These kinds of treatments can be cruel and potentially re-traumatize survivors of trauma. Talk therapy does not reach the implicit memory in the right brain and is therefore not suitable for trauma patients either.  

 

 Eating Disorder Treatment is Broken, and Only Abolition Can Fix It Psychiatric institutions – and psychiatry in general – have always been another arm of incarceration under the guise of ‘care’. […] Angela Davis’ quote that ‘prisons don’t disappear social problems, they disappear people’ is only too applicable to psychiatry and the cosmetic, often traumatic treatment it provides. By treating an eating disorder as the problem, not a symptom, treatment models ignore the complex roots and different manifestations of the illness C[…] On top of this, treatment methods are rooted in fatphobia. […] If the basic model of treatment reinforces people’s fears and entrenches punishment, it is bound to fail. We need a complete overhaul of current methods, and people’s lives depend on it. We cannot continue to punish mental illness.“  

Harlow's traumatized monkeys

In this experiment, the monkey babies’ need for love and comfort was so great that they spent their time almost entirely with the cloth doll that didn’t provide food.

 

The behavioral differences that Harlow observed between the monkeys who had grown up with surrogate mothers and those with normal mothers were;

a) They were much more timid.

b) They didn’t know how to act with other monkeys.

c) They were easily bullied and wouldn’t stand up for themselves.

d) They had difficulty with mating.

e) The females were inadequate mothers.

When the isolated infants were re-introduced to the group, they were unsure of how to interact — many stayed separate from the group. A few were so overwhelmed that they refused to feed themselves and died in a few days – of „emotional anorexia,“ as Harlow noted. The general pattern was that the psychologically broken animals were in a chronic state of alarm and terrified of any touch or approach from others. Many exhibited self-harming behavior, and some had a tendency suddenly to explode in aggression.“

 

The institutional treatment of eating disorders can be regarded analogue as the wire doll, that only can provide food and keep individuals alive, but cannot heal developmental traumas, as essential needs are being ignored. Many anorexics rather die from a lack of love, touch deprivation and social isolation than from malnourishment.

Trauma link to malnutrition

(Article from The New Humanitarian (abridged))

 

Data collected at a hospital clinic for malnourished children in the Central African Republic suggests that many of the childrens’ parents present symptoms of post-traumatic stress directly linked to their exposure to extreme violence

Six-year-old Gilbert’s story is an example of how trauma affects children directly and also through its effect on relationships, Duverger said.

He showed signs of SAM and after demonstrating no appetite he was hospitalized,” she wrote in a report on his case. “After three days he still refused food, was apathetic, often aggressive, cried when approached, rejected milk and often seemed angry against any adult including his mother.”

Like many of the children treated for SAM at the hospital, Gilbert eventually had to be fed through a tube attached to his nose.

The mother thought the malnutrition was due to a change in his diet, because for several days in the bush they had had nothing to eat except manioc leaves. But it was only Gilbert who developed acute malnutrition. Seeing the way she hit him to make him drink, we hypothesized that violence had affected her behaviour.

She said that after living in the bush, Gilbert was not as before. He had frequent nightmares, lost his appetite and started bed-wetting. She said this had exasperated her. She had often hit him and at one point had threatened to cut his throat.

Even with the nose tube, Gilbert was not getting much better. It was removed and a difficult process began of encouraging him to drink milk. The mother was taught not to force-feed him. After initial rages, at the end of the week he was drinking his milk, starting to make requests and had stopped bed-wetting.

We hypothesize that his refusal to eat was his way of saying no to additional violence.

It’s also hard for a lot of people to understand the importance of psychosocial aspects as opposed to life-saving treatments… but when you spend only a few days talking to the families, you realize that eating is not only physiological. It is also a question of having the right mental disposition.” 

Interviewed by IRIN, the mother said Gilbert had been refusing to eat and had had temper tantrums which she had thought were capricious. In the hospital she had learned that these were the result of their traumatic experiences, and that she should comfort her children and play with them. She had noticed this helped them more than punishments. “I’ve learned a lot from a group I attended here at the hospital. I learned that instead of dwelling on bad experiences and problems, it’s better to play with my child because my behaviour affects him too.”

She also said she now realized it was important to vary the child’s diet, giving him vegetables, potatoes and eggs, instead of just rice, beans and soya every day. 

ACF collected 1,008 individual counselling sheets at the Complexe Pediatrique in Bangui between October 2013 and March 2014, and found that 688 children (68 percent) refused to eat, either because of psychological distress or medical complications; 75 percent of parents had been exposed to traumatic factors and 50 percent had been force-feeding their children or punishing them violently.

In a 2005 study, Conceptual Models of Child Malnutrition, researcher Cecile Bizouerne (an adviser to ACF) asks whether the illness is often a consequence of a deficient affective relationship between mother and child, and concludes “there is no unique answer to the question.” 

She points out that the etymology of the term “kwashiorkor” itself (a type of malnutrition where the patient has oedemas and discoloured hair) suggests the mother and child bond can be a possible cause of the symptoms.

(In the Ashanti language “kwashhiorkor” is used to describe first born children neglected by mothers in favour of younger children.)

Duverger believes other risk factors for malnutrition in CAR, besides trauma and extreme poverty, include the high incidence of one parent families, and traditional beliefs.

She hypothesizes that most of the children admitted to the clinic have previously been treated by traditional healers, pointing to the “fetishes” they typically wear around their necks as evidence.  

These healers cannot cure the children,” she said, “but because children are taken to them first they are often in a very bad state by the time they reach here.” 

 

How is a treatment that turns healthy people anorexic supposed to cure an eating disorder?

 

In the 70s Ira members Dolours and Marian Price being imprisoned went on a hunger strike. They were force-fed for 200 days. The force-feeding was ended when both came close to death nevertheless.

 

Although the strike was over, the sisters didn’t start eating normally again. They had developed anorexia so severe that they were ultimately released because they were on the brink of starvation. The hunger strike had “alienated us from the process of sustenance, the whole process of putting food into your body,” Dolours Price said years later. Their detractors accused them of faking it, or of being motivated by vanity and a desire to lose weight.”  article

 

In 1980, Marian was gravely ill, days away from death due to severe anorexia – which she had developed following the ordeal of being force-fed. Marian was granted a ‘Royal Pardon’ (Royal Prerogative of Mercy) and was immediately released from prison.” article

 

I think I’m going to die. I don’t want to eat and if I eat I vomit – then I hate myself then I want to die.” 

Dolours Price

 

This treatment, which the Prices compared to rape and which gave the sisters lifelong anorexia nervosa, disquieted humanitarians. The International Medical Council subsequently ruled it unethical for doctors to participate in force-feeding.” article

With the exception of those with AN ...

The judge ruled that E should be restrained, physically or chemically, for a year and force-fed, recognizing that it would cost over half a million dollars to achieve this – and that it was likely that she would not change her view.

He declared that all E’s stated wishes, despite their consistency over time, were not valid as she lacked the capacity to make decisions about her care and lifestyle. The main cause of this lack of capacity was her weight loss and low BMI – based on the idea that a BMI of 17 is needed to ensure that E has an adequately functioning brain.”  article 

 

… and based on the idea that there are no alternatives to save her life. In 2020 a judge ruled against force-feeding a 28 year old woman with the diagnosis SEED (Severe and Enduring Eating Disorder)

 

Since AB was diagnosed with anorexia at the age of 13, she had been admitted to hospital under compulsory treatment orders for nano-gastric feeding eleven times. According to Dr B, AB found this “incredibly distressing”. It was, quite simply, physically and psychologically too traumatic for her and there was a clear risk that she may suffer a cardiac arrest as a result of “refeeding syndrome”.

[AB reports:]To say however simply that I have had 11 in-patient admissions doesn’t in and of itself convey what happened during those admissions. It couldn’t. I have been held down by my legs with a tube thrust forcefully and forcibly up my nose. I have had food inserted through a syringe so quickly and violently that I was sick. I have had my mobile phone removed from me so that I couldn’t call my friends or my family, and they couldn’t contact me. I have been restrained and force fed in front of other patients. I have been left covered in bruises and scratches. I have been thrown down on to a bed because I refused to sit in a chair. I have had my feet stamped on when being manhandled. I have been lied to, blackmailed, promised that something would happen, only then to be told that it won’t, and threatened. I have been searched on returning from leave, as have my parents. I have been helpless – and watched helplessly – as every aspect of my life, every aspect of my being, has been controlled by those with the power to do so. In turn, I have kicked and screamed until I’ve been hoarse.

AB wondered whether in fact the mental stress of being treated against her will would eventually kill her”. article  


Products of imagination?

In 1980 the leading textbook of U.S. psychiatry still claimed that incest happened to fewer than 1 in a million women, and that it’s impact was not particularly damaging.

 

Were those psychiatrists really so out of touch with reality? 

 

Freud mentioned in context with eat-purge behavior (swallowing the father’s sexual organ). This remark aimed at the inner reality of the patient. Today we know, that many times real life trauma is part of the history of bulimics. 60-80% of clinical patients showed a past with sexual abuse, incest or rape, to which not rarely coercive oral sex belonged."

The German association of gynecologists write:

In a group of patients with eating disorders who they examined, they found up to 69% sexually abused women and girls. However, German studies could not confirm this high proportion. Research has shown that vulnerability to psychophysical disorders generally increases after experiencing sexual violence. However, a specific connection with eating disorders could not be established.

 

In my experience, almost everyone with bulimia (and most with anorexia) have sexual trauma in their past.

Eating disorders are quite literally, I WILL CONTROL WHAT GOES INTO MY BODY! 

Many people do not have the memories and some of them never recover them. (quote by a recovered bulimic)

 

Very seldom, scientists, psychologists, pedagogues, physicians and judges were defending the victim. Rather they were occupied proving the victims to be lying, fantasizing, or actually wanting it themselves. They were part of society’s denial system and got even paid for it. 

 

Within the medical profession, denial persists even in the presence of incontrovertible physical evidence, such as venereal disease in children. Rather than acknowledge the possibility of sexual abuse, physicians have been known to assert that children can contract venereal disease from clothing, towels or toilet seats.“ (Judith Herman 1980)

 

Even today there are fantastic ideas in textbooks about the transmission mechanisms of venereal diseases in children; Girls and boys should be infected with well-tempered washcloths, sponges or the like.”

 

According the conviction of about two thirds of psychotherapeutical experts questioned in 1999 are their clients’ accounts an indication of a fantasy product, if they attribute guilt to the perpetrator, or are very certain this occurrence actually happened. This makes a grotesque level of confusion obvious within the psychotherapeutic profession.” 

 

 The reality looks very different:

 

The significance of sexual conflicts in many patients with eating disorders has been well documented. However, even when these have been considered to have some degree of etiological importance, the occurrence of actual sexual trauma or incest in the early lives of these patients has been generally neglected in the literature. At one point in time, it was noted that five of six patients on an inpatient unit for eating disorders revealed an early history of sexual abuse or incest.” [1] 

 

One 2004 study found that 53 percent of 32 female sexual trauma survivors experienced eating disorders, as compared to just 6 percent of 32 women with no sexual trauma history.

 

As Hilde Bruch (1982) pointed out, anorexia nervosa often occurs after a film showing or a lesson on sex education.  

 

Predisposing factors to a compulsory admission were a history of childhood sexual or physical abuse or previous self-harm. [pub] 

 

In 1936, Ryle demonstrated that psychosexual trauma could lead to amenorrhea. His psycho-endocrine thesis was further elaborated by Reifenstien in 1946, when the latter described several cases of amenorrhea demonstrably due to psychophysiological causes. This research clearly established that developmental traumas and interferences, as well as psychosocial stress, can alter hormone patterns and secretions and led to a burgeoning of interest in the psychobiology of anorexia nervosa. article

Trivial scientific studies

Despite decades of failure scientists are still looking for organic causes. As an example I give a study of Charité’s (Germany’s largest and most prestigious hospital) psychologist, for which she was awarded a doctor title.The study examined the reaction of anorexics to stimuli (photos of food/women).

The hypotheses 

 

Patients with AN and somatic comorbidities have a higher mortality than patients with AN without somatic comorbidities”

 

- are as meaningless and self-explanatory as the results:

 

The result of the first study  showed that the affective  stimuli of all four  groups regarding the validity were not evaluated differently: aversive stimuli were evaluated as more unpleasant as neutral stimuli, positive stimuli more pleasant than neutral stimuli. In analogue, it showed a higher level of fear in all groups at aversive stimuli than at neutral/positive stimuli, as a lower level of fear at positive stimuli compared with negative stimuli.”

 

Only the technical jargon deceives about the trivial content  of the study.  In other studies she examines  the heartrate variability, and looks inside the brain chemistry (too high serotonin level) for the cause of AN. At least in her publications she tries to explain the disease with the biomedical model, being in line with psychiatry, which denies, ignores or neglects psycho-social-cultural causes of mental “diseases”.

 

Eating disorders research is very under-funded. The National Institute of Health allocates only 93 cents towards research funding for every person diagnosed with an eating disorder. In comparison, they give $88 for every person diagnosed with autism. This is painfully low.

 

Neurotransmitters: hen or egg?

Additionally in ED biological changes occur, like neurotransmitter disorders, metabolic and hormonal dysfunction, disordered hunger- and satiety feeling. However, we are not certain if this changes are cause or effect of ED.“

 

The Charité psychologist asks the same question:

For once it is questioned, in how far specific observed traits during an acute AN correlates of the underweight are, or rather represent independent traits (hen or egg, state or trait)”

 

She seems to believe in a causal connection, otherwise she wouldn’t do these studies. It should be understandable, that extreme emaciation would cause as a by-product emotional and physiological changes. If those biological symptoms were only results, the effort put into the studies were not worthwhile. Desiring to be recognized as a scientist, she puts her research emphasis on empirical and quantifiable areas, which are irrelevant.

 

Aversive stimuli

 How were the study results used for the clinical therapy?

A long-term ED inpatient, who spent more than one year involuntarily in the Charité, suffered an additional trauma from the repulsive hospital food.I myself had many (not ED) room mates who lost weight because of the inedible food. They at least had the option to supply themselves, ED patients are not allowed to buy their own food.

The most important thing to regain the pleasure of eating would be appetizing, healthy and lovingly prepared food. No doubt the hospital food belongs to the category “aversive stimulus”. Rice pudding is unbearably sweetened with aspartame (highly neurotoxic!). 

Accumulating evidence suggests that frequent consumers of these sugar substitutes may also be at increased risk of excessive weight gain, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease" (that’s why it’s used for industrial animal fattening).

The other stimuli of the study were women’s bodies. The Charité ward has a young, attractive, charismatic nutritionist, who exclusively consults private patients. Then there is a diet assistant, who from her appearance and personality is the opposite. She is responsible for ED patients. You couldn’t tell her apart from an adipositas patient, her “nutritional knowledge” is restricted to the use of the BMI calculator and the food pyramid. In another clinic the dietician was a “former” anorexic/bulimic. When I saw her the last time, she looked even more emaciated than her AN patients. These two should be categorized as “aversive stimuli” as well.

“Low-fat”dietary guidelines

From own experiences I know the torture of blood sugar fluctuations if you are extremely emaciated. A high fat diet would ensure a stable blood sugar. Only recently the medical profession found out, a high fat diet can prevent the Refeeding Syndrome. Dr. Berg even recommends a ketogenic diet (obviously for AN recovery this is too restrictive as well as IF).


In the Charité low-fat dairy products are being served to ED patients, which is neither suitable for weight gain, nor weight loss, there is also an issue with calcium absorption.

Antidepressants, serotonin and weight-gain

Every second anorexic is also suffering  from depressions. Conversely, anorexics show an abnormal high serotonin level. Antidepressants'(SSRI) mechanism is to raise the serotonin level. 

 

Increased serotonin activity may be associated with certain characteristics, such as: Food restriction and rigid, inhibited, anxious and compulsive behavior, such as occur in anorexia.

 

Neither in a state of acute hunger nor as prophylaxis after weight rehabilitation has medication with serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) shown a positive effect on eating disorder symptoms, depression or obsessive-compulsive symptoms in patients with AN ", write Dr. med. Katharina Bühren and Prof. Dr. med. Beate Herpertz-Dahlmann. 

...starvation actually makes people with anorexia feel better by decreasing the serotonin in their brains. As they continue to starve themselves, however, the brain responds by increasing the number of serotonin receptors to more efficiently utilize the remaining serotonin. So in order to keep feeling better, the person needs to starve themselves further, creating the illness’s vicious cycle. When someone with anorexia starts eating again, however, serotonin levels spike, causing extreme anxiety and emotional chaos. Nationaleatingdisorders.org

 

If this is true, the worst thing ever you could do to promote this vicious cycle is to prescribe SSRIs.

Why do depressive anorexics get antidepressants prescribed anyway?

 

Study:  Antidepressants cause weight gain

 

ArticleIn the present analyses, those taking antidepressants reported more severe ED, depression and anxiety symptoms at baseline i.e., they appeared to be more psychologically unwellIn this context, it is of note that none of the participants in the antidepressant group, but 3/10 (30%) of the participants in the no antidepressant group, reported ED symptom recovery prior to rTMS treatment.

The serotonin pathway has been most intensively studied in eating disorders. It is involved in a broad range of biological, physiological and behavioral functions. Serotonin is involved in body weight regulation and more specifically in eating behavior. In both rodents and humans, drugs that either directly or indirectly increased postsynaptic serotonergic stimulation routinely decreased the consumption of food.“

 


Researchers are still puzzled as to why, if anorexics already have high levels of serotonin, then SSRIs (medications like Prozac which raise serotonin levels) are successful treatments for some individuals.

 

Obvious answer: the underestimated placebo effect. 

And most depressions seem to lift spontaneously within a period of days, weeks, or months, without the need for professional therapeutic intervention anyway.


Body Mass Index

The Body Mass Index is a good example of a reductionistic pseudoscience. It was thought of by a mathematician and has no medical relevance, and can be very misleading (e.g. bodybuilders, the skinny fat type). Many other parameters, like body frame, hydration, extra-cellular water, varying bone and muscle mass are being ignored. Some anorexics starve to death at BMI 14, some are still able to live on their own at BMI 10.

Also, you cannot use the BMI to calculate your calorie-need. An obese woman not losing weight was blamed for not eating sufficient calories. In fact it was the hospital food, I would have put her on a healthy (not calorie-restricted) diet for weight-loss. Women with lipoedema most often are misdiagnosed and given the false treatment.

A survey of 500 patients by Beat in 2013 discovered that 40 percent had been told their BMI was not low enough to access treatment. In the US, health insurers are allowed to refuse payment for eating disorder treatment based on their own diagnostic criteria. This illogical system means doctors wait for a patient's condition to become severe—even life-threatening—before they offer a cure. Just imagine if the same attitude was taken to physical diseases like cancer, or other psychological disorders such as schizophrenia.“

BMI as the sole criterion for determining access into treatment, whether that is for the physical or the psychological aspect of an eating disorder, is horribly flawed. Equally, we would not advocate the arrival at a particular BMI marker as being evidence of recovery.“

Psychoanalytical nonsense

Kleptomania, laxative abuse and vegetarianism are discussed as side symptoms of bulimia and associations with masturbation conflicts and phallic activities, e.g. horse riding, with adolescents.” 

 

According to psychoanalysis, girls' obsession with horses is related to penis envy, and vomiting is a masturbatory equivalent.

 

Preoedipal fixations on the mother lead to difficulties in psychosexual development and anorexic girls suppress sexual and masturbatory conflicts from the genitals to the mouth.” 

 

Anorexia was also interpreted in the context of instinctive theory analyzes from the point of view of oedipal conflicts: Oedipal conflicts, i.e. conflicts due to a failed identification process with one's own gender identity, therefore determine the symptomatic behavior of anorexics, understood as an oral form of conception phobia. However, this theory is to be assessed as insufficient for the occurrence of anorexia nervosa, especially since it cannot explain the steadily increasing rate of illnesses despite information and increasing emancipation. Based on FREUD's comments on the death instinct, HANS WILLENBERG interprets the anorectic as well as the bulimic symptom formation as an auto-destructive behavior disorder in the sense of an uninhibited form of the death instinct. Seen this way, anorexia stands for a rebellion against biological laws, for a game with death, which - including the urge for autonomy - forms the flip side of the desire for security and protection.” 

 

At least it follows a self-criticism in the same publication:

 

It is obvious that behavioral theories are very clearly opposed to deep psychological / psychoanalytic and psycho-morphological  concepts  in  their  intellectual  approach.   Behavioral  theories  try to  objectify behavior  and to influence it “mechanically”. Both concepts are  criticized. An essential point of  attack, especially in  the analytical treatment of anorexics, is the reluctant treatment of the symptoms.  Severe conditions of exhaustion must always be remedied - be it in the extreme case by force-feeding - so that  patients are physically and mentally capable of therapy in the first place. At the same time, anorexics show strong resistance if they deny the disease and show no insight. In  this case, it is not advisable  to force  resistance, since the  strongest form of resistance - the refusal to eat - can be used as a weapon against the therapist. Then he is forced to intervene, that is, to break the resistance and force the patient to eat.”

 

So the lack of empathetic understanding has to be compensated with violence. 

 

Constraint and coercion a necessity?

Study: Self-injury, and self-harm such as in eating disorders, are commonly found in closed institutions where residents or inmates have little sense of control over their lives, and where the most basic bodily functions may be closely scrutinized and regulated. These behaviors are used to express a sense of control, despair, and anger that inmates or residents have difficulty expressing. [...]These reports suggest an unreported high rate of eating disorders in a women's prison in the USA, with a disturbing number developing for the first time during incarceration. It is suggested that the extreme controlling nature of the prison environment, combined with the unusual relational nature of this prison community, induced the development of new eating disorders by means of a contagious process which served to provide inmates with a sense of control and power over their jailers. A critical factor seems to be that the American penal system appears to be more controlling and punitive than other penal systems in the developed world.

 

In many  ED treatment centers you are forced to eat up by threat of punishment, sometimes even on the first day which is health-damaging from a physiological perspective. One awful clinic I left after a few days was named after goddess Ananke. 

 

 Anánkē (Ἀνάγκη)”, meaning “constraint, necessity” 

 Constraint is no necessity for ED!

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An Experience Much Worse Than Rape: The End Of Force-Feeding
A Chapter from the book: "A History of Force Feeding: Hunger Strikes, Prisons and Medical Ethics, 1909–1974" by Ian Miller
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 Ethical Dilemmas in Treating Clients with Eating Disorders

Conversely, mental health professionals arguing against involuntary treatment recognize that while involuntary treatment prolongs life, in the long term it may actually be more destructive and counterproductive for the client’s autonomy to be usurped, leaving her feeling out of control and desperate to resort to more drastic measures to return to her former weight upon discharge from the hospital. Furthermore, those opposed to involuntary treatment argue that such treatment is not curative and indicative of longer chronicity and an increased risk of suicide. A major tenet of those against involuntary treatment involves the ruptured therapeutic alliance and decreased likelihood of seeking subsequent treatment after a compulsory admission.

 

In 2004, a German court awarded €200,000  compensation for pain and suffering to an anorexia patient who had been subjected to force-treatment.

One of the reasons was:"The cure of their illness is only through long-term psychosomatic treatment and not by 

means of
coercive measures were expected."

British studies have shown that stealth increases as the pressure and coercion on those with eating disorders increase.

 

Only by coerced eating in inpatient treatment many anorexics turn from the restrictive into the purging type.


- It interferes with the fragile alliance between the patient and treatment team

- The patient may feel disempowered and embittered towards the treatment team, which may have an impact on future personal and professional relationships

- It is invasive, frightening, unpleasant and mirrors the dynamics of trauma

-There is an emotional toll on staff treating involuntary patients

-Patients may demonstrate an inability to maintain adequate intake and weight gain once the tube is removed

-Force feeding in low weight patients achieved little in relation to remitting illness or suffering

-Patients tamper with the tube by adjusting the control, decanting the feed into other containers when unobserved, biting, and removing the tube

-Medical complications i.e. aspiration ; nasal bleeding and nasal irritation ; reflux and sinusitis

-The tube may not be inserted properly which is more likely when patients have one inserted against their will

-Patients become emotionally attached to and physically reliant on nasogastric feeding, and were anxious about the tube being removed

-Used as a form of punishment and seen as a strategy that doctors used to assert their control

-It may reinforce a tendency to focus only on physical symptoms rather then the psychiatric implications of AN

-It cannot teach patients anything about eating, food choice or portion size, or to perceive their bodies more accurately

-Medical complications i.e. infections, arterial injury, cardiac arrhythmias (from placement), changes in vascular endothelium, hyper-osmolarity, and hyperglycaemia ; hypophosphataemia and hypokalemia

 

Body weight obsession

 

While one is not very imaginative with forms of therapy, the more importance is attached to weight gain. One of the curious ironies of AN is that the medical profession is just as obsessed with weight goals and numbers (BMI) as the patients. You are being weighed daily in many clinics.

Very often, inpatients are coerced into tube-feeding. There are only economic reasons for these measures, because in this way the discharge weight can be reached in a shorter time. Artificial feeding does not have any therapeutic value. Exclusively artificial feeding (like in my case) is even detrimental to curing an ED. For this, health risks are accepted and pain and discomfort through the tube.

 

ArticleTherapeutic approaches primarily aim for rapid weight restoration by high caloric diets and activity restriction. This often promotes abdominal body fat gain, which potentially negatively influences the patient's compliance and increases the risk of relapse. Half of the patients had sufficiently high fat mass, despite very low BMI. Consequently, their muscle (and other organ) masses must have been extremely low.

 

Tube feeding actually can cause oral aversions. Researchers found that women born at least eight weeks prematurely were three times as likely to be treated for anorexia. They believe it may be due to the extended period of separation from the mother, as well as being fed through a tube. 

 

However, notwithstanding the aforementioned similarity in the rate of weight restoration and short-term benefits of compulsory refeeding, patients with an eating disorder who are treated involuntarily may have a less favorable long-term outcome.

The lived experience of mental health nurses when force feeding patients with eating disorders 

 

You’re telling me that you’ve got a patient with a history of sexual abuse – lots of them do, at this point, yeah? – and then you get a load of strangers pile into their bedroom, hold her down and shove something in them against their will – it’s hard to feel like you’re doing a good job there, you know?”

 

I definitely felt with some patients, just ship them out to palliative care or something you know? We could be helping others, but we were locked in this cycle of mutual abuse, them of us, us of them, and no one won. It just felt pointless.”

 

At no point have we been trained what to do – no one knows the best way, safest way to do it, we all just find what works and do it, but it always feels so risky you know? If there was a specific ‘this is how you restrain and tube feed’ course, then great, we’re doing the right thing, but there’s not.”

 

It leaves us terribly open, professionally. If you have to use five staff to hold down a patient, get a tube down, pass the feed down, and they’re fighting it, it’s violent. It’s tough. If someone gets hurt can we say we did it by the book, safely? Well - there is no book. It’s unsafe for all of us.”

 

I’m supposed to be caring for them – and I’m fighting, literally fighting. And you know their history and it impacts on you. You feel abusive. Tainted.”

 

I think they [the patients] perceive you differently too – even the patients who are informal, there to recover. They know what you’re doing and it makes them wary of you too, I think. You’re no longer a nurse to them either – you’re also…I don’t know, a combatant, a…a guard. It just creates barriers, everywhere.”

 

I’ve had nightmares about tubing, really intense dreams, you just can’t switch off from it” 

 

Tube feeding and supplemental drinks essential?

 

In severe cases of AN feeding tubes often feed the illness:

 

It got to the point that I loved being stomach-tubed because that meant I didn’t have to eat anymore,” article

 

What absurdity, to give drinks otherwise used for weight loss diets that give you GI issues, take away your appetite and have "unintentional weight loss" as a common side effect, to anorexics. When I was hospitalized 2016 in life-threatening conditions, no doctor believed I would survive. In addition they had the conviction artificial tube feeding and formula drinks were essential for the survival of AN patients. 

Knowing the truth and how my body functioned, I refused it, and gained in a short time 45 pounds on regular hospital food, a weight gain that was unseen on artificial feeding. All other AN patients get edemas (not only related to protein deficiencies), I didn’t.

If they want to optimize weight gain, why would ED patients get such crappy food (e.g. unripe fruit)?

 

In this video a medical professional warns of the high risks of NG tubes and that it kills an unreported number of patients every year.

The Death of Nasogastric Tube Feeding 

Cognitive Behavior Therapy or symptom shifting

Cognitive Behavior Therapy is said to be moderately successful.

 

Conversely, criticisms of behavioral therapy relate to symptom-relatedness. Certainly, learning theoretical conceptions hold potential in psychological behavior research, but they always fall short if they ignore a holistic experience and events. In addition, even with so-called  cognitive deficits” it is necessary to ask in what overall context they are to be seen and whether a purely cognitive view of this phenomenon offers sufficient explanation. Do you not have to ask what meaning(understood in an overall context) is denial? It suggests that another method is being sought with the method presented below in order to explore the phenomenon of anorexia and make them understandable.” 

 

First off, it’s worth saying that there’s something of a monopoly at work in CBT trials for eating disorders. Chris Fairburn is involved in virtually all studies, and independent replications are rare. The first attempt at one was by Katherine Halmi and colleagues in 2002 . She reported a 44% rate of relapse within four months after CBT ended, leaving only 14% of 194 patients in remission at that time. For the supposedly pre-eminent treatment for bulimia, this is a pretty damning finding. In response, Fairburn and Cooper explained in a 2003 letter to the Archives of General Psychiatry (the journal which published Halmi’s paper) that in their studies the rate of relapse is ‘matched by an equivalent rate of remission among those participants who were not yet fully asymptomatic at the end of treatment’. That is, the headline remission rates are achieved by replacing those who relapse with the same number who do remit after the end of treatment. It is deeply bizarre to me that they present this as a positive in the attempt to counter Halmi’s results. What’s actually going on here?” Psychologytoday.com

 

Every era has a practice it can believe in as a miracle cure – until research gradually reveals it to be as flawed as everything else. 

 

Genes to blame or who?

Complex behaviors cannot be caused by one gene. Physiological genetic diseases are caused by one single gene mutation, there is no such a thing as polygenic mental illness! Belief in the genetic etiology of an illness leads to self-surrender because neither doctors nor you can change your own genes. A biological determinism of a disease can lead to those affected being evaluated more unpredictable, dangerous, fundamentally different or incurable.

 

Most recently, researchers identified the anorexia gene” . From a DIE WELT article:

 

Genetic cause can exonerate anorexics

These discoveries could “permanently change” the previous understanding of anorexia, explained Anke Hinney from the Clinic for Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy of Childhood and Adolescence at the UDE. A psychiatric disorder with a physiological background opens up completely new and previously unexpected treatment .In addition, the genetic cause can relieve those affected. The research results were published in the specialist journal The American Journal of Psychiatry

 

Here again it is implied that those with a non-genetic (or non-neurological) cause are themselves to blame for their illness.

 

A survey among medical staff has shown that patients with anorexia nervosa are perceived unpleasant, often consider the disease to be self-inflicted, and think that patients should exercise more self-control.

 

Highlights of studies of inexperienced clinicians and trainees revealed:

  • first year residents (including psychiatry residents) had more negative attitudes toward patients with anorexia nervosa than obesity or diabetes

  • medical and nursing students considered patients with eating disorders to be significantly more responsible for their illness than schizophrenic patients

  • 31% of therapists from a variety of disciplines (psychiatry, psychology) preferred NOT to treat eating disorder patients

  • most common feelings toward ED patients included frustration and anger

  • nurses working WITH ED patients reported increasingly MORE negative impressions of ED patients as their interactions with them continued

Again and again the ambivalence of health care professionals becomes apparent, who on the one hand see AN justified by a biologically based diagnosis, on the other hand accuse the affected (from a psychoanalytic point of view) of being responsible for their own suffering. AN or BN cannot be grasped intellectually.

 

Whether bulimia (bulimia nervosa) or anorexia (anorexia nervosa), those affected have attitudes and perceptions that are irrational and distorted.

 

The behavior of anorexics and bulimics is not irrational, but arational, and is therefore not understandable for
doctors and psychologists who are caught in
 a worldview ruled by scientism.

 

High IQ 

Children at risk for eating disorders on average have a higher IQ and better working memory but are less able to control automatic thoughts, according to researchers at the UCL Institute of Child Health, meaning they have a harder time suppressing traumatic memories.

But the most severely underweight adult anorexia nervosa (AN) patients (BMI ≤ 15) had higher IQ than the other adult AN patients. In adult AN patients PIQ was associated with psychological/behavioral severity of the ED. Discussion: Our findings suggest that, in contrast with other severe mental disorders where low intelligence is a risk factor, higher than average intelligence might increase the vulnerability to develop an ED.

 

Genetic defects and metabolic imbalances would rather lead to a lowered intelligence.

  

Maudsley family-based approach

Parents are not ideal therapists for eating disordered children and adolescents, but they cause less damage than experts and institutions.

 

Article: During the 12-month follow-up period, however, FBT became statistically superior to AFT. This may have been due in part to different rates of relapse from full remission 10% for FBT and 40% for AFT. Those in the FBT group gained weight more quickly, but this effect was no longer present at follow-up. Those in the FBT group also were hospitalized significantly less often.“
FBT is not the solution, but expert-free treatment away from home that doesn’t ignore the causes.
Agnostic view of illness: FBT takes an agnostic view of the eating disorder, meaning we do not waste time trying to analyze why the eating disorder developed.

Self-fulfilling prophecies and nocebos

The diagnosis of an incurable disease leads to a state of hopelessness and apathy in most people and often ends in death, regardless of the diagnosis' validity. This phenomenon is called nocebo (opposite of placebo)

Deep Brain Stimulation - lobotomy in disguise

A new trend in anorexia therapy is deep brain stimulation, in which electrodes are inserted 15 cm deep into the brain. Don't be tricked by false promises of a miracle cure into such foolishness. 70 years ago, doctors were still enthusiastic about lobotomy (in which brain pieces are being cut out), there were "therapeutic successes", and even a Nobel Prize was awarded. Neither the cause nor the solution to your problems lies in your brain!

The problem with deep brain stimulation is that we are actually fishing in murky waters because we don't know where exactly to intervene. Each of the studies available so far has chosen a different stimulation location. Experience in Parkinson's patients has shown that DBS is very susceptible to placebo effects. In my opinion, the patients from the Canadian study did not gain weight because electrodes stimulated any center in their brain, but because they regularly went to therapy afterwards.” Prof. Dr. Martina de Zwaan 

 

[One trial] recently published [shows] less favorable results: only 20% (3/15) of their patients treated with NAcc DBS showed improvements in symptoms. The other 80% underwent a second surgery (anterior capsulotomy), which improved eating behavior and psychiatric symptoms in all patients.“

In anorexia nervosa patients, a high rate of severe complications have been reported: further weight losspancreatitishypophosphataemiahypokalaemia, a refeeding delirium, an epileptic seizure during electrode programming, QT prolongation, and worsening of mood .

Stimulation-induced adverse effects comprised mood disturbances, suicidalityanxiety, panic attacks, fatigue, and hypomania, partly induced either by a change of stimulation parameters, or by battery depletion.

 

Some DBS patients report feelings of self-estrangement. A great problem is the high number of suicides and suicide attempts after DBS that have been reported in eight papers. Further side effects include vertigoweight loss or gainlong-lasting fatigue, an increased headache frequency, and visual disturbance.“ article

 

Deep Brain Stimulation Fails to Outperform Placebo in Sham-Controlled Trial

This woman gained 100 lbs after her brain surgery (lobotomy)and lost her humanity.


Brain Lesioning Procedures (modern lobotomy)

In the wake of deep brain stimulation (DBS) development, ablative neurosurgical procedures are seeing a comeback, although they had been discredited and nearly completely abandoned in the 1970s because of their unethical practice. Modern stereotactic ablative procedures as thermal or radiofrequency ablation, and particularly radiosurgery are much safer than the historical procedures, so that a re-evaluation of this technique is required.

Microsurgical ablative procedures is based on the paradigm ‘quick fix,’ radiosurgery on the paradigm ‘minimal-invasiveness,’ and DBS on the paradigm ‘adjustability.“

 

Scottish child star Lena Zavaroni became victim of a lobotomy-style operation and died at the age of  35.

 

It’s described as keyhole surgery to partially interrupt the nerve pathways that control emotions. Interestingly, however, the hospital were quick to stress that it was not a lobotomy, nor was it an operation for anorexia, for which there is no known cure. The relationship between illness and operation is not clear.

Mr Simpson, said that a brain scan had confirmed that the operation had been successful. He also stated that Ms Zavaroni had only mild confusion afterwards (a normal side effect) and that it had cleared up quite quickly. he further stated that, “She seemed surprisingly cheerful”. However, a few days later her condition worsened and she lost 20 per cent of her body weight, taking her down to three-and-a-half stone.

On September 29th Ms Zavaroni contracted bronchial pneumonia and her condition deteriorated she subsequently died on the evening of 1 October. Mr Simpson said he was surprised by her sudden weight loss and the infection. “By that stage she was getting better.” Mr Simpson’s claim that the operation had been successful reminds me of that famous quote by Ernest Hemmingway after receiving numerous treatments of ECT, “it was a brilliant cure, but we lost the patient.” Mr Hemmingway committed suicide just two days after leaving the famous Mayo psychiatric clinic. Recording his verdict, Dr Addicott said Ms Zavaroni had understood the risks of surgery and still wished to proceed. “There is no distinct and definite connection with the operation. In conclusion I would say it was natural causes.”

Lena had suffered from the eating disorder anorexia nervosa and depressive illness for over 20 years, she had been prescribed numerous drugs, had undergone ECT (Electro Convulsive Therapy) and a brain operation none of which had been effective in curing her condition. Yet she died of “natural causes.”  article

Electroshock-cure

Severe cases of anorexia get sometimes treated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in which seizures are electrically induced by electrodes to the head. Without muscle relaxants the seizures would break bones. There is no scientific explanation how it benefits the patients, except losing temporarily some painful memories. It can (and will) give you permanent brain damage. Inspiration for this "therapy" were sedated pigs in a slaughterhouse. 

I'd rather have a small lobotomy than a series of electroconvulsive shocks… I just know what the brain looks like after a series of shocks — and it's not very pleasant to look at."  

Karl H. Pribram, professor of psychology and psychiatry at Stanford University

 


Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

Research has found connections to AN and abnormal neural circuitry, which in their belief Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) can address.

 

The study offers “striking evidence” that the right TPJ, located at the brain’s surface above and behind the right ear, is critical for making moral judgments, says Liane Young, lead author of the paper. 


It’s also startling, since under normal circumstances people are very confident and consistent in these kinds of moral judgments, says Young, a postdoctoral associate in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

You think of morality as being a really high-level behavior,” she says. “To be able to apply (a magnetic field) to a specific brain region and change people’s moral judgments is really astonishing.” article

 

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation No Better Than Placebo

In “sham stimulation,” the participants are hooked up to the same machine and told they are receiving active TMS, but are actually not receiving any magnetic stimulation. The study was double-blinded, meaning that medical staff were also unaware of whether the participant was receiving active TMS or “sham.”

The researchers write that they were surprised by the high rate of remission in the placebo group.“

Hospitalism - multiple types of deprivation

One of the reasons why I almost died in therapy and many others are being unresponsive to psychiatric treatment is that the cold hospital environment is the most unfavorable place to cure eating disorders, as demonstrated by an experiment on home children (1940):

 

The children reacted to the mother's deprivation with symptoms of" an increasingly severe deterioration ". The course of the hospital syndrome initially showed the same stages as that of the "anaclitical depression"; they followed each other rapidly. After 3 months the course continued: "The slowdown in motor skills was fully expressed; the children became completely passive; The facial expression became empty and feeble-minded, the coordination of the eyes decreased. ”The average developmental quotient of these children was 45% of the norm at the end of the second year. The decline “first manifests itself in a slowdown in the child's psychological development; then mental dysfunction sets in with somatic changes. In the next stage, this leads to an increased susceptibility to infection and finally, if the lack of affective intake continues into the second year of life, to a noticeable increase in the mortality rate. "Most of the children observed by Spitz at the age of 4 years" could not sit "Stand, run, talk". Of the 90 children, 24 died in the first year of life and 4 died in the second year of life. This high mortality rate is explained by the "total withdrawal of affective intake", from the complete lack of maternal care. 

 

Even if patients with eating disorders are not infants, they react similarly to emotional deprivation. The Charité also ignores the need for human touch. Therapeutic massages are only available for back problems. 

What Does It Mean to Be Touch Starved?

 

 Massage Therapy 

 

Anorexic patients also report a strong desire for more tactile nurturance. Compared with a nonclinical sample, anorexics have reported greater touch deprivation during their current lives as well as their childhood. (Gupta et al 1995) These studies suggest that the inclusion of positive touch experiences such as massage therapy may be important for successfull treatment. Studies have shown that elderly individuals (Fakouri & Jones 1987) and hospitalized depressed children (Field et al 1992) showed decreased anxiety, depression, and stress hormones following massage. Bulimic adolescents have also benefitted from massage therapy (Field et al 1998). Massaged patients reported improved attitudes on the Eating Disorder Inventory, including drive for thinness, bulimia, body dissatisfaction, ineffectiveness, perfectionism and anxiety levels and they exhibited less anxious behavior and more positive affect. Following a month of treatment, massaged subjects showed lower cortisol, again suggesting reduced stress, and increased dopamine.

The anorexic women in this study reporte decreased anxiety and improved mood immediately following the massage therapy sessions. In parallel with the self-report data, decreases in saliva cortisol levels further suggested reduced stress. These findings confirm previous reports on the benefits of massage therapy for bulimic women (Field et al 1998). The increased dopamine levels and the increased norepinephrine levels were unexpected and certainly warrant further research.

By the last day of the study, the massaged women reported less body dissatisfaction on the Eating Disorder Inventory. That the EDI scores of subjects in the control group were unchanged, despite being in standard treatment, supports reports on the stability of EDI responses and confirms observations that anorexia does not respond readily to traditional therapies.

Touch Therapy by Tiffany Field 

 

Why Massage Therapy Needs to Be Trauma-Informed

 

 

Leptin - the ultimate anorexia remedy or just another placebo?

 

Hyperactivity in many anorexics is associated with low leptin-levels.

I am not an endocrinologist myself, but for me as a layman it would be more obvious that hyperactivity, just like 
calorie restriction, is linked to the desire to lose weight or the fear of gaining weight.
I (who didn't have distorted body image) never felt an urge to move when I was very underweight, on the contrary.

The effect exceeded our wildest expectations," says Prof. Hebebrand. After just two to three days, the mood of the depressed patients had clearly brightened. In addition, their urge to move decreased, they could concentrate better and would have shown more interest in their surroundings and interacted more socially. Even the eating disorder-specific carousel of thought was alleviated by the administration of leptin. One of the study participants is quoted as saying: "I feel like I'm on vacation from my eating disorder.

One should bear in mind what (placebo) effect it could have if the three participants are told that they have the privilege of trying out a drug that is a ray of hope for anorexia.
I could imagine that they were suggested a lack of leptin is responsible for their hyperactivity, just as a lack of serotonin would be the cause for depressions.

In 1997 scientists still believed high leptin levels would induce weight loss.

The patients, they found, had very low leptin levels at the beginning of treatment, which suggests that leptin doesn't play a role in the condition's onset. As the patients gained weight, however, the hormone shot up to above-normal levels. Although Hebebrand cautions that the results are preliminary, he says the leptin rise may leave patients vulnerable to losing weight during treatment, as high leptin levels would suppress appetite.“

That's why leptin is also used in the therapy of obesity:

In the animal model, high leptin levels lead to a reduction in appetite and weight loss, while low leptin levels have the exact opposite effect. So far, leptin has mainly been researched as a potential starting point for the therapy of obesity.

In another study, increased leptin levels caused negative symptoms in anorexic patients:

In HSS (high severity group) [very low BMI] patients, higher leptin levels were associated with greater feelings of depression, anxiety, and stress.

Hyperactivity is another trauma symptom. The rule with other hunger victims seems to be lethargy: 
One could explain the occurrence of some somatic" lethargy "symptoms under extreme restriction of the food supply in evolutionary terms by saying that urgently needed energy is saved through the restricted movement.

Amphetamines for BED and Bulimia

 

In 2015 the FDA approved the ADHD drug Vyvanse the treatment of BED and Bulimia.

 

It's well-documented that drugs like Adderall, Ritalin, Vyvanse or Concerta — all stimulant medications used to treat ADHD, which cut down hyperactivity and improve focus — can cause weight loss. According to Dr. Lenard Adler, a psychiatrist and ADHD specialist at New York University, both short- and long-acting ADHD stimulants can cause appetite suppression. That means people who take them might need to "set reminders to eat even if not hungry at lunch, eat a large breakfast, dinner and possibly a snack," Adler told Mic. Whether or not an ADHD patient will rely on prescribed stimulants to lose weight — a condition sometimes referred to as "Adderexia" — often depends on their pre-existing relationship with food and body image, according to Rosenfeld. But it also has plenty to do with our cultural reverence for thinness. 

 

I think the danger is that if you don't have a disordered relationship with food to begin with, taking drugs and experiencing appetite suppression could lead to disordered eating," Rosenfeld said. "For people who are prone to eating disorders, when they start to experience reduced appetite and lose weight, there can be some momentum that gathers and cause someone to cross the line. For any clinician who values such approaches to eating disorder treatment, Vyvanse is an inappropriate medication choice for those who suffer from BED.

 

A drug such as this serves to disconnect a woman from her body by shutting off hunger cues, which will result in weight loss.. Unfortunately, the trauma associated with a rape, the rejection she experienced from her mother, the spiritual chasm that developed because God seemingly let her down when she needed Him most—whatever emotional turmoil she has been living with is still there. It does not miraculously disappear with appetite suppression or weight loss. Treating an obese person who struggles with BED with Vyvanse is not much different than considering weight restoration from tube feeding for a person with anorexia. A weight-related goal will be achieved. However, once the medication is curtailed, or the feeding tube is removed, the eating disorder will return. Or, she will substitute it with another equally harmful coping technique, such as chemical addiction or self-harm.

Another Vyvanse-Assisted Suicide Streamed Live on Facebook

 

A recent Canadian study found youth prescribed ADHD drugs were thirteen times more likely to be prescribed antipsychotic medications, and almost four times more likely to be prescribed antidepressant medications than children who were not prescribed ADHD drugs.  The study’s authors argued that children with ADHD have more psychiatric comordibities than children without ADHD, omitting the exceedingly relevant fact that psychosis and depression are labeled side effects of ADHD drugs.“

 

The expensive cost of Vyvanse - typically about $340 for 30 pills - is due in large part to the fact that the original manufacturer’s patent is not set to expire until 2023.

 

In 2014, Shire agreed to pay $56.5 million to settle charges it over-promoted ADHD drugs (it allegedly said Vyvanse could help prevent car accidents, divorce, arrests, and unemployment).The fine is nothing compared to Shire’s profits. Vyvanse is a blockbuster drug that makes over $1 billion a year, and binge-eating disorder sales are expected to add $200-$300 million annually.

 

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) an alternative?

The present STUDY examined the changes in the attachment state of mind, narrative coherence, and reflective function in a sample of AN patients after about a year of EMDR or CBT psychotherapy. The results presented, despite the small sample size, suggest that EMDR is a valuable effective treatment for ED and AN, in line with other clinical study. Several sources starting from 1980 have reported a net correlation between ED and traumatic experiences. Research has been initially focused on the relation between ED and physical abuses and sexual harassment for the simple correspondence to a parental guidance failure. Recent studies showed that also emotional abuses, repetitive micro‐traumatic relational experiences can result in further traumatic symptomatology.

The hoax of the false memory syndrome

Emotional and sexual abuse can take many forms. The number of unreported cases is always higher than the statistics, very few have memories of early childhood, and particularly traumatic experiences are mostly repressed. If you have been the victim of any form of violence, do not let your therapists convince you that you suffer from false memory syndrome or that you should simply forget everything and adapt to society.

The hoax of the "false memory syndrome"

 

If the gap between the development of eating disorders and occurrence of sexual abuse is very short, subjects may 

not be recovered from memories of such a horrible experience. Severity of eating disorders might also affect their

sexual abuse reports.
In severe forms of eating disorders, CSA experience may be inaccessible to victims.
[4]

Eating disorders as a denial mechanism

Eating disorders take an immense amount of thought and time. Sometimes thoughts about food or body image are less anxiety-provoking than the events that caused or amplified the level of emotional distress. Worrying about food, exercise, and/or body size is stressful, but for some, it serves as a distraction (consciously or subconsciously) to thoughts or memories that may be more fear-inducing and distressing. In the aftermath of sexual abuse, eating disorders provide relief and protection from what an individual’s mind tells them might be worse. [2]

 

MAINTAINING AN ILLUSION OF CONTROL

The "need" for an eating disorder arises from a combination of two factors: too much is out of control; and the other available coping strategies are not up to the challenge. Survivors of childhood sexual abuse had childhoods that were out of control to an extreme degree, and many of these individuals were, in a sense, betrayed by their bodies when the abuse triggered physiologically normal arousal. The horrible, disgusting, depraved body needs to be punished, starved into an asexual, prepubescent state, and disconnected from the head so that no physiological arousal of any kind enters consciousness, whether it be fear or sexual arousal. [3]

ED and homosexuality

In a study on this topic, 53% of all boys and men with eating disorders were homosexual. This is a huge amount when you realize that the overall frequency of homosexuality is only 1-5%. The causes of this connection are unclear, at least from a scientific point of view. As a possible reason, psychologists cite that homosexuality more often leads to conflicts with oneself, which can prepare the ground for anorexia.

 

The explanation is that homosexuality is also often caused by sexual abuse.

Dishonest and aggressive
[A medical article]warns that anorexics are notorious liars and cheats and must be watched over to ensure they 
are following an agreed process. For a while, insulin treatment was common, but now a version of carrot and stick
seemed appropriate.“

Dishonesty may certainly occur in some and my diagnosed (passive) aggressiveness, which still resonates here, was correct, but this behavior does not have to be understood as an inherent trait, but as a response to the wrong treatment.

 

The bulimic, on the other hand, identifies strongly with the male ideal. She secretly lives her aggressive needs (eating, throwing up) in order to appear adapted to the outside world.“

Comorbidities

Many studies agree anxiety is extremely pervasive in cases of anorexia. The study by Kaye et. al. included nearly 700 individuals (some with anorexia, some with bulimia, and others with both eating disorders) and found about two-thirds of them had an anxiety disorder with obsessive compulsive disorder being the most common (41%).

 

ED patients often have further additional diagnoses such as depression, borderline, personality disorders or self-harming behavior. In reality, these are not independent psychological disorders (which, by chance, often occur together), but only different symptoms from a single, very complex clinical picture that is associated with psychological trauma.

Such patients typically receive five or six unrelated diagnoses during the course of their psychiatric treatment. If their doctor focus on their mood swings, they will be identified as bipolar and get prescribed lithium or valproate. If the professionals are most impressed with their despair, they will be told they are suffering from a major depression and given antidepressants. If the doctors focus on their restlessness and lack of attention, they may be identified as ADHD and treated with Ritalin or other stimulants. If the clinic staff happens to take a trauma hjstory, and the patient volunteers the relevant information, he or she might receive the diagnosis PTSD. None of these diagnoses will be completely off the mark, and none of them will begin to meaningful describe who these patients are and what they suffer from.” (Van der Kolk 2014)

 

Developmental Trauma Disorder (DTD) as a new diagnosis?

In absence of a sensitive trauma-specific diagnosis, such children are currently diagnosed with an average of 3-8 co-mordi disorders. The continued practice of applying multiple distinct co-morbid diagnoses to traumatized children has grave consequences: it defies parsimony, obscures etiological clarity, and runs danger of relegating treatment and intervention to a small aspect of the child‘s psychopathology rather than promoting a comprehensive treatment approach.“

In a letter to the APA: „We urge the APA to add developmental trauma to its list of priority areas to clarify and better characterize its course and clinical sequelae and to emphasize the strong need to adress developmental trauma in the assessment of patients.“

As a reply they wrote that „the consensus was that no new diagnosis was required to fill a missing diagnostic niche.“

One million children who are abused and neglected every year in the US a diagnostic niche“?

The letter went on: „The notion that early childhood adverse experiences lead to substantial developmental disruptions is more clinical intuition that a research-based fact.“ (Van der Kolk 2014)

The downside of subjective diagnoses

The diagnosis of mental illnesses” is not objective and very vague. A disadvantage is social stigmatization, another danger is identification with the diagnosis. Patients often unconsciously behave according to their diagnosis. In the worst case, it can lead to groups like PRO ANA.

 

The current diagnostic criteria according to DSM-IV (refusal to maintain normal weight) and ICD-10 (the weight loss is self-induced) imply a voluntary act by the patient and could therefore favor such accusations of guilt.

It's not about thinness

Exposure to this ideal [of thinness] is ubiquitous, but everybody doesn’t get anorexia nervosa,” Bulik says. “None of the sociocultural literature has ever been able to explain why.” She adds, “A lot of patients will say, ‘It was never about being thin for me, ever.’”

If you look at psychiatric syndromes over 200 years, anorexia hasn’t changed at all,” whereas our culture has, says James Lock, a child psychiatrist.

A deadly punishment

There was a girl starving to death from a neuropathic gut disorder, everybody was pitying her. So it was tolerated I gave her massages. There was also an anorexic woman, at the beginning down to 45 pounds, who had been rejected by everyone all her life for her ugly looks. She expressed the wish to have a massage, too. This time it was not tolerated by the head physician, we got both kicked out as a punishment. She gave herself up and didn’t want to go into therapy anymore and died. My own conditions deteriorated and my relationship to the doctors was broken.

These strict rules and the punishment were meant to protect us (rape and false accusations of rape). The staff was projecting their own hypersexuality, anorexics don't show much in interest in sex, the higher is their need for non-sexual touch.

I was literally repeatedly sexually assaulted in a psychiatric ward where staff had access to sedative type drugs and opiate type drugs and long night shifts that have opportunity.” ( a ritual abuse survivor"s experience)

 

Body contact is strictly forbidden even among female patients, hugs are tolerated at best. Friendships among the patients are said to be of disadvantage, since they should “concentrate on themselves.”

 

STUDIES with diving suits have shown that anorexics start eating again when they feel they are being held.

  

STUDY - Anorexia nervosa symptoms are reduced by massage therapy

Bulimia Nervosa and Massage: a case report examining BodyAwareness with Co-Morbidities Anxiety and Depression.

The developmental literature suggests that touch, consisting of secure holding and hugging, plays an important role in the formation of body image.

So-called consequences (operant conditioning)

If an anorexic doesn’t reach the weight goal (at least 1.1 pounds/week) the blame is always put on the patient. An athletic and physical active girl didn’t manage to gain weight with the calculated amount of calories and was unjustly punished. This was emotional abuse, afterwards she lay curled up crying on the floor, and had to secretively eat sweets in order to gain weight. She had been too honest to drink water prior to the weighing. Another inpatient drank so much water in order to reach the weight goal, she had to be rushed to intensive care. Punishments are euphemistically called “consequences”. In contrast, the other kind of “consequences” (rewards) are not really worthwhile for an anorexic (e.g. allowance to buy some ice-cream).

Voluntary weight contracts?

A consequence for not meeting the weight goal can be confinement to the ward for weeks, which is very detrimental to health, as sun and fresh air is essential.

Therapists want to trick patients into believing they are signing this contract voluntarily. However, it’s indirect coercion, if you don’t comply you are getting kicked out even sooner for not cooperating.

Refeeding syndrome

 

When it was decided to force-feed me to break my resistance, my psychiatrist Dr. Sänger wanted to do everything right. Because the medical literature warns against refeeding syndrome, I was started with a calorie intake of 600 kcal (ignoring the fact that I had previously eaten almost 2000 kcal. Because the exact number of calories could only be determined with formula food, I was denied all natural food for months!)

 

Six years later, the first paradigm shift has occurred, the fear of refeeding syndrome was recognized by doctors as unfounded. An electrolyte imbalance can easily be prevented with phosphate supplementation, or a different diet:

Of course, the conservative approach leads to slow weight gain, longer hospital stays and possibly also to medical complications."  Dr. Verena Haas

 

In the future, the weekly weight gain will no longer be limited to 0.5-1.0 kg. There will also be a paradigm shift in synthetic liquid foods, and I hope Dr. Haas is rethinking her "low-fat" nutritional guidelines.

 

There are no studies of food composition at all. From a scientific point of view, therefore, no advantage of certain combinations can be proven.”  Dr. Verena Haas 

Who's susceptible for ED?

Self-centered, unscrupulous and ruthless people (“the perpetrators”) have a stronger immune system, are less susceptible to psychosomatic or psychogenic diseases, and have greater professional success.Sensitive, compassionate, altruistic, highly intelligent people are more likely to develop eating disorders and other mental illnesses. That is why eating disorders are probably the population group with the highest proportion of (ethical) vegans, among doctors in institutions vegans are practically non-existent. Four years ago I had to explain to a vegan medical student that veganism and mainstream medicine cannot be reconciled.

Veganism/Vegetarianism an ED?

A vegan diet is not allowed in almost any treatment center. In many cases, the vegan diet is part of the eating disorder, but there is also a high percentage that are ethically motivated.Categorizing veganism as an eating disorder is a mechanism of self-justification for (meat-eating) doctors and therapists. Many health professionals consider veganism as a trait of narcissism, not compassion.

Since many eating disorders have problems with self-acceptance, one should not force them to give up their ideals and accept animal suffering for their own therapy. A vegan diet should be possible and organic animal products should be offered.

 

Families are never responsible?

 

These 9 so called truths are the best proof how all leading organizations are in denial of childhood trauma by saying:

 

"Families are not (i.e. never ever) to blame."                        

How could anyone disagree with Keanu? I don‘t think he was picked for Truth #2 by chance.



Anorexia Nervosa Inventory for Self-Rating (ANIS)

The ANIS has 14 questions that are not food-related:

 

These four questions suggest that ES is a suppression mechanism for trauma.

 

- I can't stand boredom.

 

- I feel dull and empty.

 

- I am tense and restless.

 

- It's hard for me to sit around and do nothing.

 

 

These three questions indicate sexual trauma.

 

- I am uncomfortable seeing others in sexual arousal.

 

- I'm afraid of kissing.

 

- I am very afraid of intimate relationships.

 

 

These questions also indicate trauma.

 

- I feel inferior and helpless inside.

 

- There is no point in me struggling to achieve something in life,

 

   since all my efforts and efforts do not change anything.

 

- I have many requirements that I find difficult to meet.

 

- I feel restricted by the expectations of others.

 

5 Ways Childhood Neglect and Trauma Skews Our Self-Esteem

 

 

 

Perfectionism is also an indication of trauma.

 

- When I start something, I need to do everything perfectly and accurately.

 

- Compared to others, I am very conscientious and thorough in everything I do.

 

The Traumatized Perfectionist: Understanding the Role of Perfectionism in Post-Traumatic Reactions to Stress

The Chains of Perfectionism (Beating Trauma)

Group therapy

It is not uncommon for forced group activities to give the impression that group therapy is a type of comprehensive psychological sausage machine that, regardless of what is thrown into it, produces a satisfactory result. The rigidity of doctor-centered forms of treatment seems to have been exchanged only for the tyranny of the group as an end in itself. 

Most of the patients I know were annoyed by group therapy.. I myself was often bored to death. It happened that 

there was a dead silence for 15 minutes.

Misdiagnoses

In some cases health care professionals overlook organic causes (e.g. hormonal or GI) for an anorexia symptomology.

 

A young man with a long history of obsessional traits and food fads presented with anorexia, vomiting and marked weight loss. He showed little concern for his physical state and his vomiting was frequently witnessed as self-induced. A diagnosis of anorexia nervosa was made and he took his own discharge from hospital. He was readmitted one month later, severely cachectic and with biochemical abnormalities consistent with advanced Addison's disease which was subsequently confirmed. He responded dramatically, both mentally and physically, to corticosteroid therapy. It is likely that anorexia nervosa, relatively rare in males, was a manifestation of the psychological abnormalities commonly seen in severe Addison's disease.

Ibogaine for Eating Disorders

Many people who are binge eaters, anorexic or bulimic have had traumatic experiences take place in their lives that were never addressed or fully dealt with and that's what triggered their eating disorder. iBogaine is different from other conventional methods used to treat eating disorders. One of the greatest effects of ibogaine is that it will clear the neural pathways which constituent negative behavioural patterns such as depression. But it will leave the positive ones. In other words, ibogaine resets your neurotransmitter mechanisms, which re-balances your neurotransmitters. How Iboga Heals Eating Disorders with Karen O'Neel

 

Yoga for Eating Disorders

Teaching those who are in conflict with their physical selves – that there are other aspects of self they can identify with (an energetic body, a witness body and even the pure consciousness of their True Self) – is exceptionally healing. It is often the first step to feeling at home in our physical bodies, and the first step in trusting our feelings and our own unique experiences in the world.

Physically, yoga can be tailored to support digestion, relieve constipation and reduce reactivity around the painful process of refeeding. Emotionally, yoga supports a connection with internal resources so that feelings, needs and longings are grounded. With a design that first “opens” the body through stretching and ends with relaxation, stressful thought patterns that perpetuate eating disorders can often fade (at least temporarily). Sometimes, emotions that have burdened us for years are able to be released during or after a yoga practice.[5]

A STUDY concluded that yoga could be effective in the treatment of ED.

Equine-assisted therapy for Eating Disorders

Horses are congruent in what they are feeling internally at all times and do not pretend to be something they are not. They are authentic and relate to each other honestly and truthfully and embody their experiences. They naturally live in the here-and-now. They do not worry about what might happen next or what has happened in the part. This focus on the here-and-now becomes a particularly powerful way of relating to reality because many clients with eating disorders focus on the source of their anxiety in their inner worlds and oftentimes struggle to live their life authentically.

An eating disordered mankind

As a result of  civilization, everyone is eating  disordered, i. e. eats (or starves) at times for emotional reasons and not for biological needs.

However,  people whose  disordered  eating habits  are less  dysfunctional,  only moderately harmful to health and 
within societal norms are not being pathologized.

Experts and the Dunning-Kruger-Effect

Now eating disorders are all labeled under one section. . . . Amenorrhea is no longer a criterion for anorexia nervosa—this never provided accurate data during research.” In addition, she pointed out, “a patient can now qualify for a diagnosis of bulimia nervosa with binging and purging once a week for three months instead of twice a week for three weeks. These are all good changes that I’m enthusiastic about and will be beneficial for better serving our patients.”

 

The data shows that more children born in March / April and October have [anorexia] than children born in February. [...] The report considers the possibility that some women may have seasonal anorexic attacks associated with Seasonally Affected Disorder (SAD) that in turn affects the peaks and valleys in the statistical data explained.

 

Seriously, how much more nonsensical can it get, they don’t even know how to read statistics. If the mother has SAD, it would affect the child not only at birth time, but before and afterwards as well.

 

Indoctrination and self-deception

I do not assume that most doctors and therapists are malevolent, but all have been through lifelong indoctrination, and very few people have the ability to question given circumstances and authorities. And like those with ED, they are very good at lying to themselves. They know that they cannot change the system. Even though they recognize many grievances, they are repressing it out of opportunism.

 

Conventional medicine is a facade, which  gives only the illusion of treating/curing patients. A hospital is in the red very quickly if too many hospital beds stay empty. Sustainably healed patients would mean bankruptcy. 

Hidden realities of our society

Institutional psychiatry and psychology also serve to prevent social realities such as pedophilia and ritual abuse from being fully publicized. The perpetrators are in influential positions. While new clinical diagnoses are devised almost every day in order to be able to prescribe even more medication, in DSM 5 pedophilia was originally no longer classified as a paraphilia, but rather as a “sexual orientation” so as not to stigmatize those affected. When there was an outcry at the change, it was referred to as a typographical error.” 

 

There is an agenda to make pedophilia / hebephilia socially acceptable. In the 1980s there were movements (the Green Party and others) that advocated the legalization of sex with children. One can find the suggestion in a book by the German psychologist Kentler that parents and young children should have sexual intercourse, as he says, “to fail because of the disappointment of inappropriateness, instead of being frustrated with the norm of the today’s exclusivity of adult sexuality.” 

 

The psychologist Kerscher emphasizes the burden of the taboo. When the incest taboo is compared with the shyness of menstruating women and the non-thematicization of homosexuality, it appears as an anachronistic relic.” 

 

The psychologist Bornemann states: I am therefore just as unable to gain credibility from the horror stories that are so popular today about the serious and inevitable late effects of a sexual relationship between a child and an adult, as I can from the similar myth of the spinal cord-damaging consequences of masturbation.” 

 

When this approach failed, more subtle methods were adopted:

 

In 2007 two brochures were published by the Federal Center for Health Education, “Body, Love, Doctor Games” , here are some excerpts:

 

The vagina and especially the clitoris receive little attention due to naming and tender touch (neither by the father nor the mother) and make it more difficult for the girl to develop pride in her sexuality.” 

“Sometimes trigger feelings of excitement in adults.” 

“It is a sign of the healthy development of your child if he makes extensive use of the opportunity to create pleasure and satisfaction for himself.” 

If girls ( 1 - 3 years!) rather use objects to help you, then you should not use it as an excuse to prevent masturbation. Would take a look at this information leaflet and be inspired - please feel everyone addressed!” 

 

In the Guide for parents on child sexual development from the age of 4 to 6 years”  the parents are informed that genital games at this age are signs of a well-progressing psychosexual development, that masturbation should be supported  and everyone else Forms of sexual games, such as imitation of the sexual act and the desire to retreat in secrecy” .

In technical terms, 93 percent of the educators give a positive opinion. The brochure is rated as informative, factually sound and comprehensive.

Victim blaming

 

Freud's later theses about the child's desire for an incestuous relationship with the parent of the opposite sex created the breeding ground for the misjudgment, widespread to this day, that weak-willed men are seduced by precocious lolitas in the event of sexual abuse. Many employees in educational, legal, medical and therapeutic professions still wrongly and willingly accept Freud's “revised” theory, regard the victim as a “seductress” and assume their active participation. The behavior of the child molester is explained even with three-year-old girls by the fact that the little one seduced him.” 

 

A good example are the theses of the renowned psychiatrist Otto Kernberg, who is not criticized in public by his peers:

 

A primary school student therefore experiences the rape by her father as a sexually exciting triumph over her mother” ; in doing so, she is charged with (oedipal) guilt  which she later has to tolerate” ; her feeling of triumph is initially unconscious” to her; and only a trained psychoanalyst like Otto Kernberg knows how to decode her unconscious impulses, the job of psychoanalysis is to make her aware of her old messes, which should help her to deal with her own misdemeanors, so she can finally experience herself as the perpetrator and leave the role of victim: With the magic word unconsciously”  psychoanalysis has been complacently trying for over 100 years to immunize its unfortunate pseudo-argumentation against any contradiction and criticism from outside.

 

Kernberg sees the (supposedly) fruitful result of his work with this victim of early childhood experience of sexualised violence as follows: “This gave her the ability to identify with the perpetrator, namely the sexual arousal of the sadistic, incestuous father, and so it became also possible to combine hatred of the father with understanding his sexual and their sexual behavior.” 

 

"The French physician Alfred Fournier wrote that it was the "devious cunning of the simulators and the heartbreaking despair of their victims [that forced him] to denounce such monstrosities and expose them to outrage." The word "victim" is used here to refer to the man who was accused of rape. For F., the accused perpetrator's speech in itself, the fact that he vehemently denies the rape, already serves as evidence of the man's innocence. Here the exposure and speaking out of the victims of sexual violence is transformed into evidence of their own morbidity.” 

Blind belief in authority

Although pedophilia causes outrage in most people, it is received completely differently when it comes from an authoritarian source in a deceptive packaging, almost 90% of parents reacted positively to the above brochure! Authoritarianism is very dangerous, the Milgram experiment has shown that the majority of people are even ready to torture and kill innocent people if someone in a white coat orders them to.

 

Dissidents and non-conformists who criticize the system are silenced. Last year, in a psychiatric report, I was declared mentally disturbed" to discredit me, possibly intending to lock me up again.

Conclusion

 

In  probably no other field, authorities are as incapable and misinformed as in nutrition science and health care in general. The average anorexic has more nutritional knowledge than a clinical nutritionist. 

The many theories and techniques help psychologists little to gain insight into an ED complex. Studies have shown
that lay therapists are more effective than professional therapists.
This realization can be a chance to take on more self-responsibility. YOU are your own most important therapist!

"...but memory is not necessary to heal. All that matters is that the trauma be released. Not to focus on it forever but to examine it, release it, be aware in the future when you are triggered by events of the past and allow yourself healthy nourishment. It is the ultimate act of self-love.“ by Karen

 

I feel from decades of seeing others in therapy, as a buddy, with disorders of all sorts, including eating ones that large amounts of so called "diagnosed" differences are rooted in eiher very early birth/attachment/feeding/maternal disorders and or later serial trauma which may be more subtle and deep - such as not being "filled properly with attention or love" across time .."Fill me in please" .. In others words unmet needs across time ... Sadly it's not possible for many people to grow up properly without coming through the codified messes of their own parents emotional lives and various denials of needs and the baggages that made them like that .. Crucially it is possible to re-feel and re-engage damages like unmet needs/trauma and mourn these things so that "loss of being filled in" or sickness of being "filled in wrongly" in various ways can be grieved ...It's a complex matter but it can be addressed by deep empathic therapy that at it's heart regains back the true emotional narratives the poor patient went through ..- Rabz De Rivers 


Holly, a young woman whose father successfully sued her therapists didn’t like pickles, whole bananas, mayonnaise, cream soups, melted cheese or white sauce. According to her therapists, her eating habits were compelling evidence, that her father forced oral sex on her as a child, because pickles and bananas are penis-shaped, and mayonnaise, cream soups and white sauce resemble semen.

In addition, she entered therapy with a full-blown eating disorder. She was bulimic, eating large amounts of food, and then vomiting in a terrible binge/purge cycle.

Many therapists considered eating disorders a nearly fool-proof symptom of childhood incest. Holly’s therapist told her that 80% of all eating disordered patients had been sexually abused.

 

Yet there is no scientific evidence that eating disorders stem from childhood molestation as Harvard psychiatrists Harrison Pope and James Hudson, experts in the field repeatedly stressed. “Current evidence does not support the hypothesis that childhood abuse is a risk factor for bulimia nervosa”, they wrote in a 1992 article in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

I haven't bothered listing most cited resources, as they are translations from German.

 

 

[1]Is there a relationship between sexual abuse or incest and eating disorders?

[2] My Eating Disorder Protects Me: Development of an Eating Disorder Following Sexual Abuse

 

[3] Psychodynamics of Eating Disorder Behavior in Sexual Abuse Survivors 

[4] A critique of the literature on etiology of eating disorders
[5]The Role of Yoga in the Treatment of Eating Disorders

 

 

Brain size may yield clues to Anorexia

 

Should patients with anorexia ever be force-fed? 

 

Mothers Who Fail to Protect Their Children from Sexual Abuse: Addressing the Problem of Denial

Treating Eating Disorders With Ibogaine: The Facts

Ibogaine for ED: "I have never met an anorexic or bulimic who was not a traumatised person.”

Results of World’s Largest Antidepressant Study Look Dismal

The developmental literature suggests that touch, consisting of secure holding and hugging, plays an important role in the formation of body image.

Therapist-Patient Sex as Sex Abuse

I was misdiagnosed with anorexia when I was 11

When an eating disorder is misdiagnosed Gastric neoplasia misdiagnosed as an eating disorder

Constitutional Thinness and Anorexia Nervosa: A Possible Misdiagnosis?

Young woman misdiagnosed with anorexia actually had a rare syndrome

Celiac Disease and Anorexia May Be Linked in Women

Anorexia Misdiagnosed by Laura A. Daly

Anorexia Misdiagnosed by Laura A. Daly 2

EATING DISORDERS MAY BE MISDIAGNOSED

Teenager’s Cancer Misdiagnosed as Eating Disorder, Leading to Dangerously Late Diagnosis Five Disorders that Mimic Anorexia Nervosa

Investigating Restrictive Eating Disorders in Autistic Women

Averil Hart: 'Neglect and systemic failures caused anorexia death'

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1.Father - Daughter Incest, Judith Lewis
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Psychiatric Rape.pdf
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As a 12-year-old with full-blown anorexia, I was involuntarily institutionalized after having an eating disorder–induced seizure. The institution was not equipped to deal with eating disorders, and their only plan of action was to watch me eat, shower, and sleep to ensure I didn’t throw up, exercise, or throw my food away. I was treated less as a medical patient and more like a criminal, unable to privately mourn the loss of my innocence and adolescence.

This was my first insight into how our health care system is unprepared to treat eating disorder survivors, a travesty compounded by society’s rigid physical ideals for women. Survivors could best be served by the development of new treatment options targeted at modifying harmful behaviors and by eroding patriarchal visions of the female body. Instead, we are treated like social outliers who are shamed and told we have taken things too far. Denying the existence of sexism is a historically convenient method of the ignorant, and to tell an eating disorder survivor that our plight is of self-creation is to validate the disproportionate and unrealistic physical expectations for women that have permeated every aspect of society.

I will never forget the first time I saw my own reflection without wanting to see less of it. It took years for me to regain control of my life and body, both of which deserved respect and love after having spent years as a battleground. Sharing my story was the first step toward total recovery and remains my personal form of resistance. By speaking out, we can reduce the shame and stigma associated with eating disorders and give courage to millions of survivors. Jaclyn Munson



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Die Webseiten dieser beiden genialen Künstler: Politicalartfranzetta Vaccine Fraud (Youtube) www.vaccinefraud.com

 

Die Charité und die Verbrechen an den Patienten (Berliner Morgenpost)

Viele ihrer Kliniken und Institute wurden in den zwölf Jahren zwischen 1933 und 1945 zu Orten der NS-Rassen- und Vernichtungsmedizin. „Teile der Ärzteschaft und des pflegenden Personals folgten bereitwillig den Paradigmen des herrschenden Regimes“, stellte Charité-Chef Karl Max Einhäupl [...] fest. 

Impfversuche an Kindern in der Nervenklinik

Wieso sie offenbar ohne erkennbare Bedenken menschenverachtende oder zumindest ethisch fragwürdige Experimente und Zwangssterilisationen an Menschen durchführten. Darunter etwa der Leiter der Kinderklinik der Charité, Georg Bessau, der [Kleinkinder] für Tuberkulose-Impfversuche missbrauchte und ihnen so vor ihrem Tod noch unermessliche Schmerzen bereitete.

Das Gesetz, das nicht aufhebbar ist

NS-Unrecht konnte per definitionem nur an bestimmten Personengruppen begangen worden sein. So wurde der Begriff des “Verfolgten” für ein und allemal festgeschrieben. Zwangssterilisierte und Betroffene der “Euthanasie” wurden explizit aus dieser Definition ausgeschlossen.

So entschied das OLG Hamm sowohl gegen die Verwerfung des Gesetzes (“Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses”), da es nicht gegen “rechtsstaatliche Grundsätze” und das “Naturrecht” verstieße. In den 60er Jahren vertraten die Sachverständigen den Standpunkt, dass es sich bei dem Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses nicht um nationalsozialistisches Unrecht, sondern um eine von der deutschen Ärzteschaft mit großem Verantwortungsbewusstsein umgesetzte Maßnahme zum Wohle des deutschen Volkes gehandelt habe.  

Es dauerte nach dem Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges noch mehr als 60 Jahre, bis Zwangssterilisierte offiziell rehabilitiert wurden, das Leid, das ihnen zugefügt wurde, wird aber entschädigungsrechtlich nicht als Folge systematischen staatlichen Unrechts anerkannt.  

 

Aufhebung des NS-Erbgesundheitsgesetzes gefordert (Tagesspiegel 13.07.2006)

Die Geisteskranken waren von vornherein als erste Opfer der geplanten Euthanasie-Aktion ausersehen.“ 
-Bert Honolka

Nachdem ich die Autorin dieser (etwas befremdlichen) Ernährungsleitlinien kontaktierte und ihr den Artikel "Die wahren Hintergründe von Essstörungen" zum Lesen gab, veranlasste sie, dass sie aus dem Internet genommen werden.

 

Ich hoffe, von Ärzteseite wird es noch eine gute Erklärung geben.

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Ernährungsleitlinien für Magersüchtige (Charité)
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„In der Verhandlung offenbarte sich Pfannmüller als unbeirrter Anhänger des nationalsozialistischen „Euthanasie“-Gedankens und machte kein Hehl aus seiner rassistischen Einstellung. Sein aktives Mitwirken an den Krankenmorden redete er klein. Das Gericht zeigte Verständnis. Die bürgerlichen Ehrenrechte und somit der Doktortitel blieben ihm erhalten, auch ein Berufsverbot wurde nicht erteilt. Trotz des milden Urteils ging Pfannmüller in die Berufung und erreichte am 15. März 1951 eine Herabsetzung der Strafe auf fünf Jahre. Seine Reststrafe musste Pfannmüller aus gesundheitlichen Gründen nicht mehr verbüßen.“

NS Dokuzentrum nchen

Für die Einrichtung der Hungerhäuser wurde er dagegen nicht bestraft, weil ihm das Gericht damals nicht nachweisen konnte, dass Menschen zu Tode kamen.“dewiki

 

Die Regierung war schon im Jahr 2005 so sehr um das Leben und die Gesundheit von vulnerablen (unheilbaren) Bevölkerungsgruppen besorgt, dass sie am liebsten alle Essgestörten und Demenz-kranken künstlich ernähren lassen wollte.

 

In welcher Hinsicht könnte man eine synthetische, fettarme Kost als eine "notwendige Ernährung" bezeichnen??

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Dr. Hermann Pfannmüller hob ein Kleinkind an den Beinen aus dem Bett und erläuterte: »Bei diesem wird es noch zwei bis drei Tage dauern.« [...]

Die Aushungerungs-Methode bot, so interpretierte Schmidt, für die bürokratisch-korrekten Schreibtisch-Täter den Vorteil, im klassischen Sinne kein Mord zu sein. Selektierte starben nicht mehr an Gift oder Gas, sondern an Stoffwechsel-Intoxikationen und Hunger-tuberkulose. [...]

Dem Obermedizinalrat Pfannmüller bestätigte das Münchner Schwurgericht nach dem Kriege, im klassischen Sinne kein Mörder zu sein." 

DER SPIEGEL 49/1965 

Besonders gering war schließlich das Feingefühl, mit dem die Justiz in den Euthanasieprozessen die Opfer des industriell betriebenen Massenmordes klassifizierte. Das Landgericht Köln – um nur ein eklatantes Beispiel zu nennen – bezeichnete sie in seinem Urtel vom 24.10.1951 als "ausgebrannte Menschen", "unter der Tierstufe vegetierende Wesen" und "unter der Nullstufe stehende Menschen." 

Ingo Müller – Furchtbare Juristen

Es heißt immer, in der Natur werde »lebensunwertes Leben« von gesunden Tieren unbarmherzig ausgemerzt. Wie falsch diese Ansicht ist, bewiesen die Möweneltern. Denn je verkrüppelter ihre Kinder waren, desto liebevoller opferten sie sich für sie auf. Als all die gesunden Jungmöven der Kolonie schon längst flügge waren und ihre Eltern verlassen hatten, wurden die flugunfähigen Krüppel, die schon so groß wie ihre Eltern waren, immer noch gefüttert und gewärmt.“

 

Die Strafkammer [Hamburg 1949] ist nicht der Meinung, dass die Vernichtung geistig völlig Toter und >leerer Menschenhülsen< [...] absolut und a priori unmoralisch ist. Dem Altertum war die Beseitigung lebensunwerten Lebens eine völlige Selbstverständlichkeit. Man wird nicht behaupten können, dass die Ethik Platos und Senecas, die u. a. diese Ansicht vertreten haben, sittlich tiefer steht, als diejenige des Christentums.“       

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In etwa 15–25 Kinderbettchen lagen ebenso viele Kinder von ungefähr 1–5 Jahren. Pfannmüller explizierte in dieser Station besonders eingehend seine Ansichten. Folgende zusammenfassende Aussprüche dürfte ich mir ziemlich genau gemerkt haben, da sie entweder aus Zynismus oder Tölpelhaftigkeit erstaunlich offen waren. Diese Geschöpfe (gemeint waren besagte Kinder) stellen für mich als Nationalsozialisten nur eine Belastung unseres Volkskörpers dar. Wir töten (er kann auch gesagt haben ‚wir machen die Sache‘) nicht durch Gift, Injektionen usw., da würde die Auslandspresse und gewisse Herren in der Schweiz (gemeint war wohl das Rote Kreuz) nur neues Hetzmaterial haben. Nein, unsere Methode ist viel einfacher und natürlicher, wie sie sehen. Bei diesen Worten zog er unter Beihilfe einer mit der Arbeit in dieser Station scheinbar ständig betrauten Pflegerin ein Kind aus dem Bettchen. Während er das Kind wie einen toten Hasen herumzeigte, konstatierte er mit Kennermiene und zynischem Grinsen so etwas wie: Bei diesem z.B. wird es noch 2 – 3 Tage dauern. Den Anblick des fetten, grinsenden Mannes, in der fleischigen Hand das wimmernde Gerippe, umgeben von den anderen verhungernden Kindern kann ich nimmer vergessen. Weiterhin erklärt der Mörder dann, dass nicht plötzlicher Nahrungsentzug angewandt werden würde, sondern allmähliche Verringerung der Rationen.“

 

In den Prozessen und gegenüber Familienangehörigen bestritt Pfannmüller, der für über 3000 Todesfälle verantwortlich war, seine Beteiligung an den Euthanasieverbrechen. 

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Doch der Protest hatte nur vordergründig Erfolg: Getötet wurde nach wie vor, nur die Methoden änderten sich. Statt die Patienten in zentrale Anstalten zu deportieren und dort zu vergasen, wurden sie nun in den einzelnen Pflegeanstalten so lange gezielt vernachlässigt und mangelernährt, bis sie starben. Diese "dezentrale Euthanasie" hielten die Nationalsozialisten bis... [?]

Bereits im August 1942 begann Valentin Falthauser, Direktor der bayerischen Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Kaufbeuren-Irsee, in der Zweiganstalt Irsee mit der so genannten Hungerkost oder Entzugskost, unter den Mördern auch E-Kost genannt. Dabei handelte es sich um eine völlig fettlose Ernährung, die wesentlich nur aus abgekochtem Gemüse und Wasser bestand. Am 17. November fand auf Einladung des Ministerialdirektors im Bayerischen Innenministerium, Dr. Walter Schultze, eine Konferenz der bayerischen Anstaltsdirektoren statt. Dort referierte Falthauser die Anwendung fettloser Kost an arbeitsunfähige Kranke und „aussichtslose Fälle“. [...]

Diese Hungerkost machte die Patienten anfällig: Sie verhungerten nicht, sondern starben zuvor an Krankheiten, denen ihr geschwächter Körper keinen Widerstand mehr entgegensetzen konnte. Der Erlass ging auch an Hermann Pfannmüller, den Leiter der Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Eglfing-Haar. Hier wurden zwei "Sonderkost-Häuser" eingerichtet, deren Bewohner hungern mussten. Ihre Tode sind gut dokumentiert: Die Ärzte fertigten detaillierte Gewichtslisten an; sie läsen sich wie Dokumentationen des Verbrechens, sagt Cranach.                                    Süddeutsche Zeitung 

 

 

 Leider ist Magersucht eine sehr schwere und nicht immer heilbare Krankheit. Nur ein Drittel der Betroffenen werden wieder gesund, ein weiteres Drittel hat zumindest Rückfälle und muss die Therapie immer wieder aufnehmen. Die besonders schwer Erkrankten kämpfen dauerhaft, und 20 Prozent aller Magersüchtigen verlieren diesen Kampf. Sie verhungern an ihrer krankhaften Selbstdisziplin.“ Die Zeit

 

 

Rund 350 000 bis 360 000 Menschen wurden seit 1933 auf der Grundlage des Gesetzes zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses zwangssterilisiert; 5 000 bis 6 000 Frauen und ungefähr 600 Männer starben nach diesen Eingriffen. Zerstörte Lebensplanungen, Stigmatisierung und Ausgrenzung, die auch mit dem Jahr 1945 nicht zu Ende waren, waren die Folgen. 

 

Da in der Psychiatrie auch aus anderen Gründen gestorben wird, mußte Faulstich die Sterberegister fast aller deutschen Anstalten durchgehen, die Speisepläne untersuchen, um nach einzelnen Regionen und Orten differenziert herauszufinden, daß während des Zweiten Weltkriegs mehr als 100 000 "nutzlose Esser" vorsätzlich dem Hungertod preisgegeben wurden. 

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11.01.1961 Die Gesundheitsbehörde und die Ärztekammer Hamburgs sind nach Prüfung gemeinsam zu dem Ergebnis gekommen, daß keine rechtliche Möglichkeit und auch keine Veranlassung besteht, gegen die beteiligten Ärzte behördliche und berufsgerichtliche Maßnahmen einzuleiten.

 

Jeder zweite Arzt war Mitglied in Hitlers Partei (Tagesspiegel)

 Auch mein eigener Großvater war Arzt und SA-Mitglied. Bemerkenswert ist, dass auch er 1942/43 für unmündig erklärt wurde und in der gleichen Klinik wie ich Elektroschock-“Therapie“ (EKT) erhielt.

  

 

Das Paradoxon des Verhungert-Werdens und „Nicht-verhungernlassen-Dürfens“

 

Ein Leserbrief von Dr. med. Gerd Höfling
Ich besuche einen alten Freund, der seit zwei Jahren auf der Pflegestation eines Altersheimes "vegetiert". Diagnose: Alzheimer. Er sitzt im Sessel, erkennt mich nicht, gibt keinen Laut von sich, hört nicht und ist blind. Kein Lidschlag, wenn die Sonne in sein Auge fällt. Würde er nicht atmen, könnte er eine Mumie sein. Aus einer Flasche "Astronautenkost" fließt Saft durch einen Schlauch in seinen Leib. Drei Lungenentzündungen hat er durchgemacht. Auf Wunsch der Angehörigen hat der behandelnde Arzt nicht therapiert. Der Freund hat alle drei gut überstanden. Äußerung des Kollegen: "Er hat früher zu gesund gelebt." Die Angehörigen erzählen, der Freund hätte, als er noch Leben äußerte, sich die Schläuche herausgerissen. Offenbar wollte er nicht mehr leben. Jetzt kann er sich nicht mehr wehren. Auf die Frage, die künstliche Ernährung abzustellen, antwortet der Kollege: "Verhungern lassen dürfen wir ihn nicht." Wirklich?
"Verhungern" alte Leute, wenn sie sterben wollen oder müssen und immer weniger essen und immer weniger werden? Kann es nicht ein Abnehmen sowohl der cerebralen wie der somatischen Zell- und Organfunktionen sein bei oft intakter Herzfunktion? Wenn ein hinfälliger alter Mensch nicht mehr ißt, und er wird künstlich ernährt, ist das nicht genauso eine künstliche Lebensverlängerung wie eine künstliche Beatmung? Ich wünsche mir eine Diskussion über die Inappetenz der Sterbenden und die Quälerei des "Nicht-verhungernlassen-Dürfens". Gibt es keine Arbeit über das Nachlassen der Gewebsfunktionen der Sterbenden? Eine weitere Äußerung eines Juristen: "Selbst wenn Sie persönlich ein Schreiben aufsetzen, im nicht mehr ansprechbaren Zustand nicht künstlich ernährt zu werden, nützt Ihnen das nichts." Schöne Aussichten für uns alle!"