Eating Disorders Blog

March 11, 2009 marks the 105th anniversary of the birth of Hilde Bruch, one of the 20th century's groundbreaking experts on childhood obesity and anorexia. Dr. Bruch was born in a small town in Germany. As a young woman she wanted to become a mathematician, but an uncle convinced her that medicine was a more practical profession for a Jewish woman. In 1929, she earned her medical degree from the University of Freiburg. In 1933, she fled from Germany due to growing anti-Semitic sentiment and spent a year in England before immigrating to the United States.

In New York, she began working at Babies Hospital; here, she started groundbreaking research into obesity in children in 1937. In 1941, she left this area of research to study psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Upon returning to New York in 1943, Dr. Bruch started a private psychoanalytic practice and joined the faculty of Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons.

At Columbia, and later at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas (she joined the faculty in 1964), Dr. Bruch focused her research on the underlying causes of anorexia nervosa. Throughout her career, Dr. Bruch published academic and lay articles on eating disorders and saw patients in her private practice until she was 80. Dr. Bruch died in Houston in December of 1984. Her collected work was published in 1973 under the title Eating Disorders: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa, and the Person Within; it is still considered a definitive work. (Source: http://thisdayinjewishhistory.blogspot.com)

Labels: anorexia, childhood-obesity, research

Posted By: Aspen Education Group 0 Comments

The bones of young girls suffering from anorexia nervosa have fat in the marrow, according to a new study from Children's Hospital Boston.

• Dr. Kirsten Ecklund and her colleagues performed MRIs on the knees of 20 girls with anorexia and 20 healthy girls whose average age was 16 years old.
• Radiologists reading their charts did not know which girls were in which group, and found that the anorexic girls had increased fat content or "yellow marrow" in their bones.

One theory is that the malnutrition caused by anorexia changes hormone levels, which in turn causes the bone marrow to stop producing bone-producing cells but to form fat instead. This may explain why people with anorexia lose bone mass. It is also known that many people with anorexia develop osteoporosis and are prone to fractures.

Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by low food intake. An anorexic's weight can drop to a starvation level, but he yet perceives himself as overweight.

This study appears in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.

Labels: anorexia, health, research

Posted By: Jane St. Clair 1 Comment

A new study of Prader-Willi Syndrome may cast some light on a baffling and disabling disorder that affects one in 10,000 people.

• Prader-Willi Syndrome is a genetic disorder in which people have four to five times the amount of ghrelin, a hormone produced by the stomach that helps regulate the appetite.
• Those who have the syndrome are born hungry and remain that way 24 hours a day. Parents say they often have to keep food under lock and key.
• There is no cure for Prader-Willi Syndrome, and many people with the disorder can never function independently as adults.

"It is really a biological drive that they have and it reminds us that the regulation of body weight is very complex," said Dr. Andrea Haqq, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Alberta in Canada, and the lead author of the new study. "A lot of people with Prader-Willi will end up living in group homes that are tailored to constant supervision around food. There has to be very strict control of their food environment both at home and at school."

• Dr. Haqq has recruited eight children with Prader-Willi Syndrome to take part in her study of the syndrome, but she hopes to recruit 50 more.
• Her research will look at links between obesity and the syndrome by comparing children in the study with obese children who do not have Prader-Willi.
• She will also research whether levels of ghrelin can be manipulated by controlling protein in the children's diets, and investigate proteins in the brain that are connected with the syndrome.

Labels: canada, research

Posted By: Eating Disorders Blog 1 Comment