Friday, November 17, 2017

Science and Eating Disorders

I'm going to attempt to be careful and do my best not to offend anyone as I write this post, but I can't guarantee some won't be upset by the content.

Recently, I found myself in a sticky situation after agreeing to work on a project about eating disorders with someone. As I mentioned in a recent post, I'm doing more speaking events. It turns out that the two of us don't see eye-to-eye on a few issues, though we do share a lot of beliefs about recovery. This isn't the first time I have had something like this happen, but it's the first time I have felt uncomfortable saying anything about it directly to the person involved. Unfortunately, in this case, this person said some things that just aren't true, and I'm not sure how to address the situation because I'm 100 percent sure that, on some level, he believes what he said is true, even though there is zero scientific evidence of his claim. It's the illness talking.

Many of us who have eating disorders have gone down a path of justifying strange behaviors by telling people it's related to a physical ailment or something other than the eating disorder. We rationalize or excuse the unhealthy act and pretend that what we are doing is OK because we are afraid or don't really want to let go of the behavior. If anyone challenges these false beliefs, those who can't be honest with themselves or others, or are lacking self-awareness will often get defensive. I'm convinced there's a part of them that knows the truth, but these are the types who will double down on their position so they can keep engaging in their disordered or unhealthy habits.

There are also many who are aware yet still engage in compulsive behaviors. These types rarely suggest others do the same and almost never bombard others about it on social media.

 Unfortunately, you see all kinds of people, especially on Instagram, inflicting their unfounded beliefs on others. You also see people flaunting their illness. They often claim how healthy they are, how far they have come, and how much they have learned, all while showing the world how little things have changed. These situations are bad enough, but it becomes even more problematic when someone tries to scare others into following the plan they have set in place for themselves by using pseudo-science to back their claims or simply ignoring science altogether.

There was a virtual round of applause on one woman's Facebook page recently when she posted the findings of the "Sugar Addiction" study, listed below, which found that there is no such thing. Further, there is no such thing as an allergy to sugar, something people often claim affects them. An allergy is an immune response to a substance. As far as anyone knows, this has never occurred to any human being in response to sugar. I believe people can react strongly to certain substances, but addictions and allergies are not the same as having an emotional or even a physiological response. Obviously, sugar will cause glucose levels in the blood to increase and cause an increase in the production of insulin, but these responses don't have anything to do with an allergic response or addiction. How powerful our minds can be.

Obviously, I'm not suggesting anyone go out and suck up a pile of sugar through a straw. I'm merely saying that most healthy bodies can handle an occasional dose of sweets without much damage. Mostly, stop teling me and others that we need to cut sugar out of our diets. Go ahead. Live dangerously. Have a Snickers.


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/27372453/


RESULTS: We find little evidence to support sugar addiction in humans, and findings from the animal literature suggest that addiction-like behaviours, such as bingeing, occur only in the context of intermittent access to sugar. These behaviours likely arise from intermittent access to sweet tasting or highly palatable foods, not the neurochemical effects of sugar.
CONCLUSION: Given the lack of evidence supporting it, we argue against a premature incorporation of sugar addiction into the scientific literature and public policy recommendations.



I feel like dropping this here:

"Choose... designer lingerie, in the vain hope of kicking some life back into a dead relationship. Choose handbags, choose high-heeled shoes, cashmere and silk, to make yourself feel what passes for happy. Choose an iPhone made in China by a woman who jumped out of a window and stick it in the pocket of your jacket fresh from a South-Asian Firetrap. Choose Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and a thousand others ways to spew your bile across people you've never met. Choose updating your profile, tell the world what you had for breakfast and hope that someone, somewhere cares. Choose looking up old flames, desperate to believe that you don't look as bad as they do. Choose live-blogging, from your first wank 'til your last breath; human interaction reduced to nothing more than data. Choose ten things you never knew about celebrities who've had surgery. Choose screaming about abortion. Choose rape jokes, slut-shaming, revenge porn and an endless tide of depressing misogyny. Choose 9/11 never happened, and if it did, it was the Jews. Choose a zero-hour contract and a two-hour journey to work. And choose the same for your kids, only worse, and maybe tell yourself that it's better that they never happened. And then sit back and smother the pain with an unknown dose of an unknown drug made in somebody's fucking kitchen. Choose unfulfilled promise and wishing you'd done it all differently. Choose never learning from your own mistakes. Choose watching history repeat itself. Choose the slow reconciliation towards what you can get, rather than what you always hoped for. Settle for less and keep a brave face on it. Choose disappointment and choose losing the ones you love, then as they fall from view, a piece of you dies with them until you can see that one day in the future, piece by piece, they will all be gone and there'll be nothing left of you to call alive or dead. Choose your future. Choose life."

2 comments:

  1. People like to attach inappropriate labels to things they sometimes crave but badly want to avoid, acting in the belief that further pathologizing an already dangerous thing will make it all the less likely they'll indulge in it.

    The "Big Book" of A.A. has been around for about 80 years and it opens with a medical doctor describing the way alcoholics react to ethanol as an allergy. Medicos knew better even then, but Dr. Silkworth rationalized his choice of terms using some ham-handed terminology sophistry. The point was that some people clearly shouldn't drink, and if they regarded themselves as allergic to ethanol, they might be incrementally more likely to abstain.

    Now, it should be obvious to anyone that no one can be simultaneously addicted to and allergic to something, although my own relationship with distance running calls this into question.

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  2. Yes, you're right. In addition, the perceived ailment draws attention to the one suffering. It's both a way to divert attention away from the actual disorder while directing it toward the self. For example, if I'm out to dinner and I tell the waiter, "I can't eat that because I have this terrible allergy," I at once get attention directed at me and away from the disordered eating, though I must be clear that people with real allergies are obviously not seeking attention. I'm just talking about the allergies people create around substances that don't actually cause an immune response.

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