Hacking Your Holiday Eating

Pennsylvania: At this point, you’ve made it past the Halloween candy. You’ve gotten through Thanksgiving dinner — and dessert — without a problem. But now, you’re squarely in the holiday [eating] season, complete with fruitcake, gingerbread cookies, and holiday party punch. Each year around this time, we start to see articles about the calorie count in a Thanksgiving feast, as tallied by Consumer Reports; hacks for how to avoid holiday weight gain as seen in the Los Angeles Times; and substitute ingredients for making healthier holiday treats, as suggested by SELF magazine. For many, the worry of holiday eating stops at the waistline – the fear that they might pick up an extra pound or two of “insulation” this winter is enough to keep them from going back for the second slice of pie – but for those with diabetes, eating disorders, or those battling obesity, there is far more of a risk associated with these indulgences.

Starving to fit into those genes

Scimex: A genetic mutation associated with an increased risk of developing eating disorders in humans has now been found to cause several behavioral abnormalities in mice that are similar to those seen in people with anorexia nervosa. The findings, published online April 9 inCell Reports, may point to novel treatments to reverse behavioral problems associated with disordered eating.

Orthorexia nervosa: when righteous eating becomes an obsession

UNSW: Passionate about paleo or obsessed with organic? It might be time to reassess how you think about food, writes Rebecca Charlotte Reynolds. Orthorexia nervosa, the “health food eating disorder”, gets its name from the Greek wordortho, meaning straight, proper or correct. This exaggerated focus on food can be seen today in some people who follow lifestyle movements such as “raw”, “clean” and “paleo”.

In Anorexia Nervosa, Brain Responds Differently to Hunger Signals

UCSD: Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have pinpointed differences in brain function that may help to explain how people with anorexia nervosa can continue to starve themselves, even when already emaciated. The finding adds to growing evidence about the role of brain mechanisms in eating disorders and could lead to new treatment development efforts targeting specific brain pathways.

Anorexia nervosa: the facts

Anorexia Nervosa Genetics Initiative

•  Anorexia nervosa is not a choice. 
• Anorexia nervosa is not about physical appearances and wanting to achieve some societal thin ideal. 
• Anorexia nervosa is a serious biologically based mental illness that robs millions of women and men of their lives every year. 
• Anorexia afflicts approximately 1% of the population. 
• Women are between five to nine times more likely to develop anorexia nervosa than men. 
• Although adolescent and young adult women are most commonly afflicted, it can strike at any time. Anorexia does not discriminate on the basis of age, sex, race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic class. 
• Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness—about 5 per cent per decade. 
• Individuals with anorexia nervosa are over 50 times more likely to commit suicide than their peers. 
• Anorexia nervosa is heritable; genes play a role. 
• We have identified no medications that are effective in the treatment of anorexic nervosa. 
• Family based treatment is the treatment of choice for youth with anorexia nervosa. 
• We know less about best practices for the treatment of anorexia nervosa in adults. 
• Of those who survive, about 25% of individuals with anorexia nervosa make a full recovery, about 50% experience remission with some lingering symptoms, and 25% develop a chronic unremitting course. 
• Eating disorders affect nearly 4 times as many children and adolescents as diabetes and 11 times as many children as cancer.

Irregular sleeping pattern may affect how teens eat

AHA: A sleep study of teenagers found that greater variability in day-to-day sleep habits was associated with higher calories consumed throughout the day. Teens with higher sleep variability also tended to eat more snacks at night.

Study shows that people with anorexia and body dysmorphic disorder have similar brain abnormalities

UCLA: People with anorexia nervosa and with body dysmorphic disorder have similar abnormalities in their brains that affect their ability to process visual information, a new UCLA study reveals. People with anorexia have such an intense fear of gaining weight that they starve themselves even when they are dangerously thin. Body dysmorphic disorder is a psychiatric condition characterized by an obsessive preoccupation with a perceived flaw in physical appearance.

The Impact of Social Media on Body Image

Connecticut University. US: A new study estimates that approximately a half million teens struggle with eating disorders or disordered eating. Anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating can cause serious physical problems and, at their most severe, can even be life-threatening. As we mark National Eating Disorders Awareness Week Feb. 22-28, we asked UConn Health’s child and adolescent psychologist Karen Steinberg-Gallucci about the impact social media may have and some tips on how to approach a friend or family member who may be suffering from an eating disorder.

Researchers discover brain circuit that controls compulsive overeating and sugar addiction

Cell: Compulsive overeating and sugar addiction are major threats to human health, but potential treatments face the risk of impairing normal feeding behaviors that are crucial for survival. A study published January 29th in the journal Cell reveals a reward-related neural circuit that specifically controls compulsive sugar consumption in mice without preventing feeding necessary for survival, providing a novel target for the safe and effective treatment of compulsive overeating in humans.

Summer triggers for male eating disorders

UWS. Australia: Sun, sand and swimming may sound relaxing but for an increasing number of men summer is a stressful time as they grapple with concerns about body image. These concerns may seem benign but they can lead to 'eating-disordered behaviour' and, in some cases, eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and muscle dysmorhphia.

Family meals help teens

Tufts University. US: Eating meals together as a family can help steer teenagers away from depression, eating disorders, drug use and other problems, according to an analysis by public health researchers at Tufts.

Do time-restricted eating habits reduce obesity?

NHS. UK: “Want to lose weight? Eat all your food in an eight-hour time frame – and never snack at night,” reports the Mail Online.
However, these tips are based on a mouse study – no humans were involved.Nearly 400 mice were studied in a series of experiments for up to 26 weeks. Sets of mice were given unrestricted 24-hour access to high-fat food, high-fat and high-sugar food or low-fat, high-fruit sugar foods. Their weight gain was compared to mice given the same types of food, but restricted to 9, 12, or 15 hours per day.
Mice ate the same number of calories per day irrespective of the number of hours they had access. All mice on high-fat or high-fat and high-sugar diets gained a large amount of weight regardless of access timescales. However, those with time-restricted access gained less weight.
The current stage of this research has limited application for people. We already know that high-fat and high-sugar diets cause weight gain, as was found here. It may be that future randomised controlled trials in humans will show that the amount of weight gain is more if the calories are consumed at times which do not make the most of our natural metabolic rhythm. However, despite the continued quest to “have your cake and eat it”, at present the best advice to combat obesity is to eat a balanced diet and to take regular exercise.

Where did the story come from?

The study was carried out by researchers from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla and the University of California. It was funded by the US National Institutes for Health, grants from the American Federation for Aging Research, Leona M and Harry B Helmsley Charitable Trust, the Glenn Center for Aging, the American Diabetes Association, the Philippe Foundation and the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases.
The study was published in the peer-reviewed medical journal Cell Metabolism.
BBC News reported the story accurately; however, the Mail Online’s report was misleading. Its headline implies this study was conducted on humans, when it was only on mice. It also says that people should stop “eating after 4pm”. The restricted feeding times used in this study were for mice with nocturnal eating habits. There is no evidence from this study that weight gain would be avoided in people if we stopped eating at 4pm.

What kind of research was this?

This was a piece of animal research that aimed to look at whether restricting the timing of feeding could prevent weight gain or cause weight reduction in obese mice.
Obesity rates are increasing at an alarming rate and traditional methods of weight control – such as calorie restriction, change in diet and increase in exercise – are hard for many people to adhere to.
A person’s metabolic rhythm changes over the course of the day. Previous research has shown that this rhythm is heavily dependent on eating at the same time each day. Therefore, the researchers wanted to see if sticking to the optimal time of eating within this rhythm would prevent weight gain. They called this time-restricted feeding (TRF). As this study was conducted on mice, the optimal nine-hour feeding time was chosen to be during the night.
Research such as this is a good starting point for understanding the biological processes within an animal’s body, and seeing what can influence this, but we don’t know that the results will be directly applicable to people.
As the researchers conclude, a randomised controlled trial in people would be required.

What did the research involve?

The researchers used 392 male wild-type mice aged 12 weeks for a series of experiments lasting up to 26 weeks.
The mice were given free access to food 24 hours a day or TRF for either 9, 12 or 15 hours overnight. Some mice were switched from one type of access to the other.
The mice were given one of the following types of diets:

• high-fat (32%), high-sucrose (25% table sugar) diet
• high-fat (62%) diet
• low-fat (13%) and fructose (60% fruit sugar) diet
• normal chow diet

The weights of the mice on each regime and diet were compared. Further studies looked at the effect of obese mice switching to TRF regimes.

What were the basic results?

Mice fed a high-fat, high-sucrose diet for 12 weeks gained at least a fifth of their body weight. Weight gain doubled if they could eat at any time, despite eating the same number of calories:

• 9 hours of access caused 21% weight gain
• 24-hour access caused 42% weight gain

Mice fed a high-fat diet had higher weight gain with longer periods of food accessibility, despite consuming the same number of calories:

• 9-hour access caused 26% weight gain
• 15-hour access caused 43% weight gain
• 24-hour access caused 65% weight gain

To measure whether a “lapse” in TRF had any effect, mice were fed a high-fat diet for five days using TRF and two days of unrestricted feeding (to mimic the two-day weekend). They gained 29% body weight over 12 weeks, similar to the weight gain without the lapse.
Mice fed a low-fat, high-fructose diet had a 6% weight gain in both feeding situations over 12 weeks, which was similar to control mice fed a normal chow diet.
Mice fed a high-fat diet for 13 weeks using TRF and then given 24-hour access for 12 weeks, rapidly gained weight after switching so that they gained the same amount of weight as mice with unrestricted access for the whole 15 weeks (111% to 112% body weight). A control set who had TRF for the 25 weeks gained 51% body weight.
In mice with pre-existing dietary-induced obesity from having 24-hour access to a high-fat diet, switching to TRF caused them to consume the same number of calories within a few days. However, they lost weight:

• switching from 13 weeks of unrestricted access to 12 weeks TRF caused a drop in weight from 40g to 38g (5% body weight loss)
• switching from 26 weeks of unrestricted access to 12 weeks TRF caused a drop in weight from 53.7g to 47.5g (12% body weight loss)

MRI images showed that the difference in body weight for all of these experiments was due to fat mass rather than lean body mass. There were also inflammatory markers in the fatty tissue of mice with round the clock access compared to no inflammatory markers in TRF mice.

How did the researchers interpret the results?

The researchers concluded that these “results highlight the great potential for TRF (time-restricted feeding) in counteracting human obesity and its associated metabolic disorders”. They believe “it is worth investigating whether the physiological observations found in mice apply to humans” and say that “a large-scale randomised control trial investigating the role of TRF would show whether it is applicable to humans”.

Conclusion

Time-restricted feeding caused less weight gain than all-hour access for mice eating a high-fat, high-sugar diet over 12 to 26 weeks. It also led to weight loss of up to 12% when applied to mice that were already obese. TRF does not appear to have an influence on weight gain for mice eating a healthy or normal diet.
The current stage of this research means it has limited application for humans. We already know that high-fat and high-sugar diets cause weight gain, as was found here. It may be that future randomised controlled trials in humans will show that the amount of weight gain is more if the calories are consumed at times that do not make the most of our natural metabolic rhythm.
Even if the timing of eating patterns do have an effect on weight gain, we suspect that any beneficial effects would be modest. If you regularly consume high-fat and high-sugar foods, and do not exercise, you will put on weight regardless of any time-restricted eating habits. Sadly, there is no quick fix to weight loss.
Analysis by Bazian. Edited by NHS Choices. Follow Behind the Headlines on Twitter. Join the Healthy Evidence forum.

Orthorexia

Authors:  Márta Varga1, Barna Konkolÿ Thege, Szilvia Dukay-Szabó and al. BMC Psychiatry. 2014
When eating healthy is not healthy.
Orthorexia nervosa (ON) is an alleged eating disorder in which the person is excessively preoccupied with healthy food.

Bulimia nervosa

Author : Dr Sara M. Buckelew, Assistant Clinical Professor and Director, Eating Disorder Program University of California, San Francisco 2008-07-19

Introduction

Bulimia Nervosa (BN) is an eating disorder, which typically affects 2% of adolescent/young adult women in the United States and other western industrialized nations .[1] The word “bulimia” means a condition characterized by perpetual insatiable hunger with bouts of overeating. BN is a mental health disorder characterized by episodes of overeating followed by some compensatory mechanism aimed at weight loss such as underreating, use of laxatives, self-induced vomiting, or compulsive over-exercise. Most people who have this disorder are characterized as bulimics. The disorder is often associated with depression and anxiety about gaining weight. Individuals with BN have an intense preoccupation with food and their weight. They differ from people who suffer from Anorexia Nervosa (AN) as they are not striving to be thin, the driving force in AN. Most individuals with BN have normal weight. In this knol, when we refer to “Bulimia” we are referring to Bulimia Nervosa (BN).

Anorexia nervosa

Author : Dr Sara M. Buckelew, Assistant Clinical Professor and Director, Eating Disorder Program University of California, San Francisco . 2008-06-10

Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is an eating disorder that typically affects adolescent girls, with an average prevalence of 0.3% in young women. [1] The word “anorexia” means loss of appetite, a symptom in other diseases.  Most people with the diagnosis of Anorexia Nervosa are referred to as having “anorexia,” which is technically not correct. In many ways, people with AN do not lose their appetite, but rather are preoccupied with food.