theagingofanorexia

Understanding How Brain Chemicals Influence Eating and Behavior

I’ve written two stories about young anorexic women for two different publications over the past 10 years. I knew a little something about the brain chemistry or communication becoming jumbled when it comes to eating disorders. These days I find the information more fascinating.

Anorexia involves severe dieting that can easily turn into starvation. My sister was dieing. The story goes that even when she was in hospice she wouldn’t accept the tray of food because there was a pad of butter with the bread.

I know other women who exercise twice a day for a couple of hours – something after every meal. Their entire life revolves around food.

Research today is hinting that eating disorders may result in part from a chemical malfunction in the brain. The disorder may have been initiated by a strong desire to look thin, but either something happened along the way or that something was there all the time. The thought is that since not everyone becomes anorexic even with the bombardment of messages to be thin, biology may well play a role in the development of this disease.

The evidence points to eating disorders running in families. One large family study found that a mother or sister of a person with anorexia is about eight times more likely to get anorexia than the general population. Variations of eating disorders also occur more often in relatives of individuals with anorexia than in relatives of healthy people.

Other researchers found that the brain chemical, serotonin, may play a role in the disease. The complex molecule is manufactured in brain cells from the amino acid, tryptophan, which is found in many types of food. Serotonin is important to brain function because it helps transmit chemical messages in the brain by attaching to specific proteins or receptors, on nearby brain cells.

Studies of mice with altered serotonin systems do end up with eating disorders. Other studies reported that individuals currently with eating disorders do have abnormal serotonin activity. In the meantime, it is hoped that by pinpointing the exact nature of serotonin’s relationship to eating disorders may lead to more successful treatment methods.

Cheers Ruthan Brodsky

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Eliminating Fats in Food May Lead to Dementia?

I wrote about the benefits of the Mediterranean Diet for another blog and part of the discussion focused on consuming the right kind of fat in our diet. In my research I stumbled upon the fact that the brain needs fat to build cells and maintain communication between the synapses. Check out the site: http://www.balanceyourhealth.com It was posted yesterday, January 11.

It occurred to me that not eating fatty foods would definitely apply to anorexics. In fact, my brother-in-law commented that he felt my sister was showing signs of dementia a year and a half before he admitted to her being anorexic.

The problem is that when someone in their 60s shows signs of memory loss or other possible dementia symptoms we tend to equate it to growing older, not to an eating disorder. Although the symptoms of dementia may well be related to age, I believe they were initiated and accelerated by lack of fat in the diet – at least for my sister.