Anorexia and the Genetic Connection

Craig Johnson, lead researcher at The Genetics of Anorexia Nervosa Collaboration revealed that a person is twelve times more likely to contract anorexia if it shows up in the family's medical history.

At a time when fashion houses are quick to claim that their models no longer need to be as thin as rakes and 'size zero' models are being banned from their shows, there is more news about the eating disorder, anorexia.

This comes as a result of ten years of research carried out at a clinic in the USA. It indicates that a preponderance to the potentially fatal anorexia nervosa, commonly known as anorexia, may in all likelihood, be genetic.

“Genetics loads the gun,” said Johnson who also happens to be Tulsa's Laureate Psychiatric Hospital director of the Unit of Eating Disorders.


http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/32783.html

...there could be a genetic basis for body dysphoria, or hypersensitivity to social pressures (whatever they may be). All sorts of temperaments have been shown to be inherited.

Showing a family trend doesn't confirm a genetic basis, however, absent some studies of those biologically related but raised in adopted families.

rather than a cause. Since we've come to a better understanding of anorexia, historians have gone back and realized that there are a number of Catholic saints famous for their heroic fasting who probably were anorexics. What I am saying is that first comes the anorexia, then the victim finds a cultural reason to explain the compulsion. In Medieval times the explanation was a desire to fast as an act of penance. Today the desire is explained as a wish to conform to an ideal body image.

:shrug:

it manifests in an intense fear of body fat. Said person somehow got a message at around age 10 that body fat was bad. Instead of developing a healthy attitude about eating, it became an OCD issue. For years, any contact with any surface that may have contained a fragment of food would cause intense panic! It was very much like a germ phobia, only food related. The "logic" was that the diet was so specifically planned, that any interruption of the plan, even a fictional crumb, would "completely" destroy the person's whole life! So, the person almost starved and freaked out regularly. The person was constantly looking for signs of body fat. If found, person would break down and become dysfuntional. There is no perfectionism in his/her environment, no expectations for any particular life outcome; this is generated from a brain disorder. And let me tell you, it is really difficult--life-threatening.

I hope he/she is getting help. OCD has very good outcomes with cognitive therapy.

We have made real progress with ct and with other approaches but this will be a lifelong problem.

I worry like hell sometimes. She's 8 now, but I've tried not to poison her mind about food. My controlling mother in law made a comment about how if she ate X she'd get "fat." I am still angry when I think about that.

Please pm me if you want to. :hug:

Thanks coffeenap :hi: