When the Body is Programmed for Disordered Eating
For people with an eating disorder, “diets” don’t work. This is true whether dealing with compulsive overeating, anorexia, bulimia or other unhealthy behaviors and disordered eating such as emotional eating or food obsession. Changing what you’re doing with food is not about applying willpower or self-discipline. Sometimes there are complex biological issues underlying someone’s food behaviors.
At NEDA’s website, the National Eating Disorders Association, they outline four factors that may contribute to eating disorders. The first two are psychological and interpersonal, and today we will discuss biological factors.
There is fascinating research being done in this area. We already know that there are brain chemicals that affect hunger and digestion, and that these may be unbalanced in people who have eating disorders.
While of course we leave these research pursuits to our colleagues in the medical and scientific fields, as therapists we follow it closely, especially when working in a team approach with these other professionals.
At our center we always rule out the physiological issues first. Often our clients will need to go to their primary care physician or psychiatrist to find the right balance of medications/supplements that will restore them to balance or homeostatis.
For example, a client with depression could have a thyroid issue, low blood sugar or a vitamin deficiency. We would want that treated before we addressed the depression in therapy, or at the same time.
And then there is the nature versus nurture debate. When eating disorders run in families, as they often do, is that because everyone in the family is genetically predisposed to have an eating disorder, or because family members have learned unhealthy behaviors from each other?
It’s important to point out that just because an eating disorder is genetic or physiological, it doesn’t mean it can’t be changed, but it sometimes requires a more intensive therapeutic process, or inpatient therapy.
