Category: Weight & Body

Do you self-starve, compulsively eat and purge? You may have an eating disorder.

Dr Linda Helps – You have seen pictures of emaciated women who think they are fat and girls who slowly starve themselves to near death. Models, actresses and ballet dancers are well known for having high numbers of anorexic women in their professions-professions in which the body and appearance are of great importance.

You probably know someone who has or had an eating disorder. If you live in a college dorm, you don’t have to look far for evidence of the problem because it is rampant on college campuses. You may be old enough to remember singer Karen Carpenter who died from complications related to anorexia.

These disorders are serious and require treatment by a mental health multidisciplinary team trained in eating disorders. Eating disorders are primarily of psychological origin even though they involve medical and physical complications. Early intervention is best because of the potential for serious medical problems, the extreme being death. These disorders affect men and women of all ages, but are especially present in young women. Adolescents are most at risk but all ages can be affected.

Abnormal eating patterns may include self-starvation, compulsive eating, or compulsive eating and self-induced purging. Simple starvation leads to anorexia nervosa; compulsive eating to binge eating disorder and obesity; and purging to bulimia nervosa.

All three patterns share in common certain symptoms: intense fear of gaining weight; excessive preoccupation with food and eating; chronic dieting; poor body image; depression; and the need for approval by others.

Anorexia involves severe weight loss, excessive exercise, body image disturbance and food avoidance. Once 15% of body weight has been lost, medical symptoms can occur: absent menstruation in women; irritability and depression; gastrointestinal problems; headaches; sensitivity to cold; low pulse and temperature; hair loss; weakness; and anxiety. Low blood sugar, fainting and concentration problems also occur. Approximately 1% of adolescent girls develop this disorder. Anorexia is primarily a female problem(90%) but is rising among men.

Compulsive eating includes impulsive, poorly controlled episodes of binge eating. High calorie foods are ingested in excessive quantities, often multiple times per day. The resulting weight gain may lead to chronic and sporadic dieting or fasting. As body weight increases, there is social withdrawal, depression, anxiety and panic attacks, work or school avoidance, and loss of self-esteem.

Bulimia nervosa occurs when self-induced purging follows compulsive eating. The use of vomiting, laxatives, diuretics or fasting to control weight creates serious medical symptoms. These include: large weight fluctuations, gastric distress, headaches, skin irritations, tooth loss and gum disease, electrolyte disturbances, depression, and heart failure. About 2-3% of young women develop bulimia.

How can my relationship with God help me gain control over my eating?

Dr Linda Helps – Self-control is not heavily promoted in our culture. We are encouraged to self-indulge rather than exercise restraint. We are told to buy that expensive car even if we can’t afford it. It will make us feel important. Or treat ourselves to a night out. After all, we deserve it. If we feel love, have sex because the moment may be lost forever. But nowhere is self-indulgence more promoted than with food!

How do you exercise self-control anyway? Our hope is in God who promised we can have self-control. Galatians 5:22 says, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” According to this verse, love is the fruit. Fruit comes from a seed. The seed is the Word of God. You plant the seed (the Word) in your heart first. The result of knowing and believing God’s Word is love, or said another way, the result of planting the seed is fruit (love). God’s love then produces self-control.

Because we love God, we want to please Him and keep His commands. As we bring ourselves into obedience to His plan, His way of living and His will, these things produce self-discipline. Self-discipline entails practicing self-control in all areas of our lives. This may mean changing your behavior and addressing areas you previously denied or numbed out with food. As we practice self-control and please God with our lifestyles, He gives us supernatural control. Then it is possible to be self-disciplined with food. Remember when we are weak, He makes us strong.

The idea here is that in the natural it is hard to exercise self-control over many things in our lives. We try, but it is a struggle. As we understand all the issues involved in overeating, it helps us see why self-control is so hard. Without God helping us, failure is predictable. When we bring all our behavior and motivations into alignment with God’s Word and let Him drive the car, we get to the destination—self-control in all things.

So work on all your issues associated with overeating but don’t neglect filling yourself up with God’s Word. It produces love, which produces self-control. God’s love is the secret ingredient. It’s what changes us from striving to overcoming.

Are you searching for the magic pill that will make pounds melt away?

Dr Linda Helps – We are a pill-popping society. When we feel bad, we take something to feel better. Americans are in love with drug solutions to anything. Pill popping is easy, convenient and doesn’t make us deal with the complicated issues of life. Temporary relief is the goal.

This pill-popping mentality is all around us. On the one hand we tell our children and teens not to take illegal drugs or misuse medications. On the other hand, we model the opposite by popping a pill for every ache and pain. Nowhere is the quick-fix mentality more evident than when you look at weight loss products. The number of products on the market claiming to make you lose weight is staggering. I am amazed at what people will swallow to reach the thin ideal of American beauty. Billions of dollars are wasted on elusive promises to melt away pounds. We covet the magic pill and we’ll try anything in an effort to find it.

At present there is no magic pill. We are still searching for a better understanding of the molecular biology of obesity. If we truly understood the causes of obesity we could do more than treat the symptoms. But until that happens, pharmacological solutions for obesity remain hopeful but not yet proven.

Science continues to bring us new treatments but we need to wait for proof of their effectiveness. Remember the fenfluramine hydrochloride and dexfenfluramine hydrochloride fiascos. Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories in Philadelphia, PA., the American distributor of fenfluramine and dexfenfluramine, voluntarily withdrew these meds from the market in September 1997 at the request of the Food and Drug Administration.

Then there was phen-fen (phentermine and fenfluramine). Obese patients were flocking to physicians for phen-fen prescriptions. They were desperate to find the right combination of drugs to make those pounds drop.

At the height of the phen-fen popularity, I was working with an internist who studied the research of Michael Weintraub and colleagues at the University of Rochester in New York. The results indicated these medications were less than exciting in the long run. Then, national concern about possible serious side effects related to valvular heart disease surfaced. People who jumped on the phen-fen bandwagon were left wondering what damage they may have done to their physical bodies and over time, gained back most of their weight loss.

Since that time, newer agents have been approved–sibutramine and orlistat. Again, time and research will tell if long-term results can be maintained without significant risks. The question continues to be, what amount of sustained weight loss is considered successful and worth the risks? Is a 5% reduction in weight worth the long-term effects of continued drug use?

The search goes on as we learn more about genetic influences after the 1994 discovery of the ob gene and its protein product leptin. The hope is that pharmacology will eventually cure obesity. The wish of many is that a magic pill will be discovered and our obesity problems solved. In the meantime, keep doing the sensible things we know to do: eat healthy, exercise, and change your lifestyle. It may be awhile.