No Thinspiration

Nicole Richie, whose rail-thin frame has been a source of much discussion in the media, is now joining the chorus of voices saying that she is too skinny.

“I know I’m too thin right now, so I wouldn’t want any young girl looking at me and saying, ‘That’s what I want to look like,’ ” Richie tells Vanity Fair in its June issue. “I do know that they will, which is another reason I really do need to do something about it. I’m not happy with the way I look right now.”

Richie blames her severe weight loss on, in part, her December breakup with then-fiancé Adam “DJ AM” Goldstein. “I get really stressed out, and I do lose my appetite,” she says. (She and AM have been spotted together again recently.)

In an effort to put on a few pounds, Richie says she forced herself to eat – particularly high-calorie foods like burritos – but eventually sought professional help. “I started seeing a nutritionist and a doctor. I was scared that it could be something more serious.”
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The Cranberries star Dolores O’Riordan suffered a nervous breakdown and anorexia because the band was so successful. The singer says she couldn’t eat or sleep when the Irish rockers reached the height of fame more than a decade ago.

She says, “I honestly think that it was beyond anorexia - it was bigger than that. I was having a nervous breakdown. Losing lots of weight.

“I wasn’t sleeping, I couldn’t eat. I was suffering an awful lot from out-of-control anxiety attacks. I just couldn’t control my motor skills - I was panicking too much to move my limbs.

“So I went to see the psychiatrist and he just said it was too much stress.”

O’Riordan left the band after suffering a breakdown in 2003.

via StarPulse

A centre of excellence to treat a growing number of patients with eating disorders has been relaunched in Yorkshire as experts warn more young people than ever are in need of specialist care.
Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Liam Donaldson officially marked the landmark at the Yorkshire Centre for Eating Disorders in Seacroft, Leeds.

The number of inpatient beds at the centre is being increased from 16 to 19 as it deals with an increasing number of referrals of seriously ill patients from across the North of England and further afield, treating as many as 200 people a year.

A link-up with the world-leading service provided at St George’s Hospital in London is also enhancing expertise and leading to new research into problems caused by anorexia nervosa and severe bulimia.
Doctors fear increasing pressures on both sexes are leading to more cases amid evidence one in five young women aged 14-30 now have eating binges, one in 20 have bulimia and one per cent are anorexic. A massive 80 per cent believe they are overweight while even girls as young as nine or 10 view their bodies in disparaging terms.

There are also signs more boys are suffering disorders. About 10 per cent of patients treated in Leeds are male.
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LONDON (Reuters) - Marg Oaten’s daughter was a happy, healthy girl who loved table tennis and drama until at the age of 10 she developed anorexia. Twelve years on she is still fighting the illness, which almost killed her.
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“I was absolutely distraught,” said Oaten, 54. “It is the worst thing in the world to know your daughter might die.”

At her darkest point, Oaten said her daughter existed on five flakes of cereal a day, washed down with a mouthful of water.

Children as young as seven can suffer from eating disorders. The illness also afflicts older women as well as men and boys, though it is most common in young women, health experts say.

In Britain, about five to ten percent of women aged 14 to 24 suffer from some form of eating disorder. The ratio falls to 1 percent for the whole female population, said Professor Janet Treasure, head of the eating disorders service and research unit at King’s College London.

Bulimia nervosa, when a person binges and vomits, is two to five times more common than anorexia nervosa, when someone restricts their intake of food and drink, she said.

Both psychiatric disorders, can be fatal — two models from Latin America died this year after becoming anorexic — or cause permanent health defects such as brittle bones and infertility.
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If you are a young woman with anorexia, the best way to figure out the seriousness of your problem would be to go to your doctor to see if you will require hospitalization or psychiatric services. Recovery from anorexia nervosa includes both short- and long-term treatment, help from dietitions, psychiatrists and doctors who specialize in anorexia.

Hospital treatment is recommended for anorexics with any of the following characteristics: weight of 40% or more below normal body weight, or more than 30 pounds of weight- loss over a three-month period, severely disturbed metabolism, serious binging and purging, severe depression or risk of suicide. During hospitalization, you will have individual and group therapy as well as refeeding and monitoring of your physical condition. Treatment usually requires two to four months in the hospital. In extreme cases, you may be force-fed through a tube inserted in the nose (nasogastric tube) or by over-feeding.

Anorexics have been treated with many different medications, including antidepressants and antianxiety drugs. The effectiveness of these medications are not certain. However, at least one study of Prozac showed it helped patients maintain the weight gained while in the hospital. The determination for long-term recovery may vary from study to study, but the most reliable estimates are that 40 - 60% of anorexics will make a good physical and social recovery, and 75% will gain weight after treatment. The long-term mortality rate for anorexia is estimated at around 10% (or 1 in 10 with anorexia), although some studies give a lower figure of 3 - 4%.

Vía: Anred