No Thinspiration

Without their parents’ knowledge, many adolescents with diagnosed eating disorders are visiting Web sites that encourage anorexia and bulimia, according to a study in the journal Pediatrics last month.

“Parents of pro-eating-disorder Web site users were more likely to know about these sites” – which provide “thinspiration” (images of extremely thin women) and reinforce disordered eating habits – than other parents, said Rebecka Peebles, one of the study’s authors and an instructor in adolescent medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. “Still, over half the parents of these pro-eating-disorder Web site users didn’t know their own kids were on these sites.”

Researchers surveyed 76 adolescents who were patients at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and whose eating disorders had been diagnosed between 1997 and 2004. They also surveyed 106 parents of adolescents with eating disorders. Most of the teens reported visiting pro-eating-disorder sites or pro-recovery sites, which provide support and encouragement for people recovering from eating disorders; some visited both types of sites.

But visiting pro-eating-disorder sites – of which there are likely hundreds – may harm patients’ health and productivity, Peebles said. Users of such sites “reported spending less time on school or schoolwork and had a longer duration of illness,” the study states. And about 96 percent of adolescents who visited such sites reported learning potentially harmful tips and techniques – about laxatives, diet pills and supplements as well as suggestions for weight loss and purging.

Most of the parents surveyed said they don’t restrict the amount of time their kids spend online or the types of Web sites they visit – “even though more than half knew (pro-eating-disorder) sites existed,” Peebles said.

The question: Not just the flu but other illnesses as well, many of them serious, tend to spike during the so-called flu season. Might a flu vaccination offer protection beyond the flu?

This study analyzed medical data from four flu seasons (November to April) on 17,393 adults, most in their early 70s, who were hospitalized during those months with pneumonia. While in the hospital, 1,245 of them died from pneumonia or another cause. People who had had a flu shot were less likely to have died than were those who had not been vaccinated – 22 percent less likely if people whose vaccination history was unknown were assumed to have been vaccinated or 43 percent less likely if those people were excluded from the analysis.

Who may be affected? Adults. Most medical experts consider a flu shot the most reliable way to avoid the respiratory infection known as influenza.

Caveats: Vaccination history was unknown for about half the people in the study. The results may have been affected by pneumococcal or other vaccinations.

Find this study: Jan. 8 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine; abstract available at www.archinternmed.org.

via: Nashuatelegraph.co.uk