Avalon Hills Blog

Millions of Americans suffer from eating disorders, known as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, and eating disorders not otherwise specified (EDNOS). An estimated 90% + are adolescent and young women, though men and adults suffer from eating disorders as well. Eating disorders have serious mental and physical health consequences including death. In fact anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. (http://www.eatingdisorderscoalition.org/documents/TalkingpointsEatingDisordersFactSheet.pdf)

A Quick Look at Eating Disorders

Eating Disorders refer to a group of conditions defined by abnormal eating habits that may involve either insufficient or excessive food intake to the detriment of an individual’s physical and mental health. Bulimia nervosa, anorexia nervosa, and binge eating disorder are the most common specific forms in the United States.

Anorexia nervosa. This eating disorder is characterized by a person’s refusal to maintain a healthy body weight and often co-occurs with a fear of gaining weight.

Bulimia nervosa. This is often marked by bingeing and then trying to get rid of the food by taking laxatives or inducing vomiting.

Complications by disorder-

Eating disorders have a serious effect on one’s health and wellbeing.  The risk of death for anorexia and bulimia patients can be significant.

Anorexia complications. Among eating disorders, anorexia has many serious effects which may result in death. The death risks are even more pronounced for people who are: young, prone to sickness within the last 6 years or so, already low in weight at the time of the anorexia treatment, and those who also engage in behaviors such as purging, and also have a severe psychological or co-occuring disorder.

Some effects of anorexia include; hormonal changes that result in the absence of menstruation (in females), bone loss or osteoporosis, loss of muscle mass and in some, infertility.

Anorexia is also closely linked with heart problems, such as; slowness of the heartbeat- leading to the starvation of heart muscles. Those who have anorexia are also prone to depression, substance abuse and even suicide. One of the other effects of anorexia is an imbalance of the key minerals and electrolytes needed in the body. In anorexia, these electrolyte imbalance often results in organ failure.

Other complications linked with anorexia may include; constipation, bloating, sensitivity to temperatures, hair loss and fine body hair growth.

Bulimia complications. Bulimia also has serious complications, many of which are life-threatening. Complications include problems with digestion (often causing or from developing a dependence on laxatives ), stomach distress, abdominal bloating, acute tooth decay, irregularity or absence of menstruation and heart problems (including heart failure and irregular heartbeat).

Frequent vomiting can cause the rupture of the esophagus. Excessive exercise, laxative abuse or vomiting may also result in severely low levels of potassium that can result in weakness, even to the point of paralysis. Bulimia has been known to cause erratic heart rhythms that can often be fatal.

Bulimia also has psychological complications that lead to self-destructive behavior such as substance abuse or alcohol abuse, as well as impulsive and self-injurious behaviors.

Prompt Action towards Wellness

Due to the complications and severities of these disorders, eating disorders should be taken seriously and prompt action towards the treatment of eating disorders.  This is necessary before things  become more serious or life threatening. Often, eating disorders are linked to deep-rooted psychological issues and these must be addressed to properly to provide  treatment for bulimia, treatment for anorexia and other eating disorder treatment.

Avalon Hills is an eating disorder treatment center that provides a holistic approach towards these eating problems, not just aiming towards treating the symptoms of the disorder, but also the deep-rooted issues that lie behind these. Avalon Hills provides a wealth of experience, information and insights into these complex disorders.

Our program for anorexia and bulimia treatment has a program based on the individual’s needs.  The treatment program provides a combination of animal assisted therapy, psychotherapy and other experiential therapies, the program aims to provide the patient with the skills in order to manage and cope with the stress and underlying factors that contributed to their eating disorders.

Given the serious health risks and complications of eating disorders those dealing with these disorders should act promptly and seek eating disorder treatment.

There is a saying that says that “having children is like having your heart permanently pinned on your sleeve”. There are many things that can cause parents to fear for their children, particularly when the children are reaching the teenage years and certain stages of development. Unfortunately, more and more parents are seeing their children afflicted with an eating disorder – which range from anorexia nervosa to bulimia to binge eating.

With all the pressures that your child may face, whether it is peers, media, siblings, the stresses of being a teenager and other genetic factors that are out of your control, it is frightening to recognize that he or she may be susceptible to an eating disorder. Eating disorders can strike any family, regardless of race, socioeconomic class or group, faith, ethnicity or culture. There is a rise in the prevalence of these illnesses in males as well.

Eating disorders pose serious health risks. These illnesses promote unhealthy behaviors that can have serious physical implications, particularly among teens. For instance, anorexia nervosa can result in malnutrition and bone loss, which can ones growth and development.

When signs and symptoms are present, parents seek eating disorder treatment to help their child or loved one.

Here are some signs that indicate the need to get eating disorder help:

- An obsession with being “thin”

- A compulsion to count calories and/or nutritional content of the food they are eating

- Weight loss that may be sudden or extreme

- Lack of appetite

- Keeping away from social occasions where food is involved, or isolating in other situations

- Bouts of dieting or consistent dieting

- Going to the bathroom during or after meals

- Spending a long time in the bathroom after meals

- Rarely admits he or she is hungry or alternatively, always hungry and eating but never gaining weight

- For bulimics, scrapes, scratches or calluses in the hand caused by inducing vomiting

- Redness of the eyes caused by broken blood vessels

- Food missing from the pantry or the refrigerator. This can also be marked by the child’s tendency to hoard or hide food in unlikely places.

- For girls, the absence of or irregular menstruation

- Frequent upset stomach

- Problems sleeping

- Bloating in the face and swollen hands or feet

- Yellowish skin

- Skin that is dry and hair that is thinning, dry or brittle

- Severe teeth problems

Promoting a healthy body image

Parents don’t generally cause eating disorders but you can watch for the symptoms as well as understand the importance of promoting a healthy body image. One important step is for parents to model healthy eating habits and behavior. Parents should avoid showing their children that they themselves are pre-occupied with their weight and appearance. Parents should also develop a healthy, loving relationship with their children and encourage open communication.

Here are other tips to help promote a good body image:

- Limit the use food as part of your discipline strategy. Food should not always be used to punish or reward a child for his or her behavior.

- Encourage exercise, but emphasize that it is for health purposes and because exercise is fun. Don’t encourage your child to exercise because he or she “needs to lose weight”.

- Limit unnecessary or extravagant compliments that are based on the child’s appearance. This may promote a value system that puts a premium exclusively on appearance and not on other aspects of a child’s personality. Focus instead on character qualities, such as friendliness, honesty, diligence or kindness.

- Focus on what your child does well – if he or she excels in a certain area or has a particular talent.

- Be alert for signs of an eating disorder.

- Educate your child about the negative health effects of an eating disorder

- Gently ask open questions without making your child feel that he or she is being judged.

Getting Help for Eating Disorders

Parents can also get treatment for anorexia nervosa, bulimia and other eating disorders. If you see your child exhibiting signs of an eating disorder, it is best to have him or her evaluated so a diagnosis can be made. That way, your child can find help or find a  treatment program for an eating disorder.

Avalon Hills may be an option to get the treatment that your child needs. Avalon Hills is an eating disorder treatment center that provides a wealth of experiences that are aimed towards developing healthy behaviors and thinking that helps in overcoming the behaviors that are a part of the eating disorders.

Avalon Hills provides crucial help for anorexia nervosa, bulimia and other eating disorders. Some elements of the treatment program include individual and group psychotherapy, nutritional assessment and consultations, animal assisted therapy, psycho-educational classes, medical components and more.

Eating disorders are a major concern on college campuses.  Several studies taken in recent years have revealed that young people are going to college with more mental illnesses and eating disorders.  More students are also developing an eating disorder during college than in previous decades.  Colleges and universities have been trying to prepare for this situation.  Many of them are offering more assistance to students struggling with an eating disorder, including anorexia help.  Some places are experiencing more success than others.

The University of Chicago is one institution that has recently been in need of help.  Last month an article was published about the experience of the university’s students who had eating disorders while attending.  The school is very tough, so there are several students that struggled with eating disorders.

One such student is a young woman who started to develop an eating disorder when she arrived on campus.  She was a disciplined dancer who had a tight schedule.  While at school she started to exhibit symptoms of both anorexia and bulimia.  She often would not eat enough, and sometimes she would actually purge the food she had eaten.  Her symptoms became so severe that she believed there was an even greater mental disorder that was making her condition worse.  She eventually went to the university’s resource center for students in search of treatment for anorexia.

When this young woman got to the center she didn’t receive the help she was seeking.  Instead, the person she was working with would only focus on her physical symptoms.  Each time she visited the center they would weigh her and calculate her body mass index to see if she was in a healthy range.  She was looking for help with the mental causes of the disorder, but she didn’t get it.

This is becoming an issue for colleges and universities.  The New York Times recently published an article that said college campuses are having difficulties providing the treatment needed for mental disorders that manifest physically.  One psychiatrist at the University of Chicago said that using the body mass index is the most effective way for them to treat eating disorders on campus.  This causes some serious problems because the campus isn’t treating the cause of the disorder.

While seeking treatment is a good step for anyone with an eating disorder, it’s important to get the right help.  College campuses are trying to meet the needs of their students, but it doesn’t always work out.  They don’t have the same resources that an eating disorder treatment center has, such as Avalon Hills.  With so many students it can also be hard to provide enough individual care for each student.  To keep the center available to all students, a college or university will often restrict the amount of appointments a student can make each year.  This restriction reduces the amount of eating disorder treatment a student can receive.

Sometimes, one of the best options for a student is to leave the campus for a while.  Going through an eating disorder treatment program can help a person by removing the pressures of the campus.  However, it’s very important that the student feels like they aren’t being pushed out.  If a college or university gives the student the wrong idea about getting help the treatment may not work as well as it could.

Going to a treatment center for a while can also be less expensive.  Some students are required to receive help outside the campus resource center.  The college or university often won’t cover these costs, so the student is forced to pay them on their own.  This is very difficult to do, especially while they’re in school.  Treatment centers, including Avalon Hills, offer affordable solutions.  Avalon Hills even offers scholarships to those people in need.

Life is delicate and many of us who have brutal trials in our lives are effected by such books that feel like we have lived through what it’s talking about. One in particular that captivates its readers is an actress/writer Portia De Rossi.  She writes a book “Unbearable Lightness” that explains throughout her life she has struggled with social pressures that have caused her to have an eating disorder.

Eating disorders are a misuse of the eating to deal with problems in the reality of living as they see it.  What makes this interesting is that more and more woman are struggling with this constant social pressure; that woman think and act as if they are not good enough for society to look at and inside cry out that they need anorexia help.

Now this is just one situation where anxiety has pushed Portia De Rossi to almost be a casualty in this illness that seems to attack more and more girls each year.  The hard thing is that the situation acquires much more attention and needs that can’t be fulfilled in their regular lifestyle.  Why? How so?  Well in any case, the more one is a custom to a habit or a way of thinking it is hard to break change.

While people with anorexia or bulimia often deny having a problem, the truth is that any eating disorder is a serious and potentially deadly to those who suffer with it. However, recovery is possible. With a proper eating disorder treatment program and support, you or someone you care about can break anorexia’s self-destructive pattern and regain health and self-confidence.

Change is a process that may take you or someone you love many months to years depending on how they are helped and if a loved one can help recognize that there family member is ill and needs eating disorder help.  This condition is to be taken very delicately, truthfully it always starts with a question, and does my daughter really need this?  Is it really a problem? Can I handle this situation, why would I need to ask for help?  Sometimes it’s hard to take into consideration that this illness isn’t cured right away and may take someone many years with someone of experience to help with treatment for anorexia or bulimia.

To get the best treatment and prevent further damage, there are programs which main purpose is to restore and maintain a healthy mind and body to overcome an eating disorder.  Avalon Hills is a credited eating disorder treatment center that treats eating disorders.  The facility is located in Utah and gives its patients a breathtaking advantage to the importance of their own lives.  They take adolescent girls from eleven and up, who can go there for their eating disorder and get help to be treated in changing the way they view their bodies and their surroundings.

It’s always hard to prevent things from coming at us whether it is a drizzle or a hail storm.  Some events can take a toll on us and seeking help always seems out of range.  Take it from Portia De Rossi “It’s a hard struggle but never give up.”  There are ways to get help with insurance and scholarships to support those in need.

Athletes that need eating disorder help is something that we are hearing about more and more in the eating disorder treatment field.  Athletes with eating disorders are often hard to diagnose due to the lifestyle that athletes have. The benefits of exercise make it hard to challenge someone (an athlete) that may be involved in a high level of activity. However, athletes with eating disorders are common and coaches and family members are encouraged to watch for obsessive behaviors and to understand over exercising so that they can help those that may need eating disorder help.

Athletes that develop an eating disorder may have started this as they were trying to meet a specific requirement or goal.  There are some sports that actually have a desired weight, such as ballet or wrestling.  This is an easy example because many ballerinas have been known to struggling with eating disorders and have needed anorexia treatment or bulimia treatment. It shouldn’t be taken lightly when someone begins to pursue a specific body type in order to become “better” at their sport.  All too often, men and women are so driven that they start to restrict intake to their bodies to lose weight to get what they consider the ideal body type.

Not all athletes that develop an eating disorder participate in stereotypically female sports. As mentioned before, wrestlers often develop eating disorder behaviors as a result of the weight restrictions on the sport.  Wrestlers have an enormous amount of pressure due to the weight classes they need to fit in so that they are not disqualified.

Athletes often go to extremes to shed pounds or control weight.  This is commonly done by athletes restricting their intake.  They may eat very little or not at all the day before the match.  Some wrestlers focus more on shedding water weight by exercise or sweating a lot.    Sometimes a wrestler will actually need to gain weight to stay in their class. Often athletes such as wrestlers will actually binge eat to gain weight quickly.  Both the behaviors to lose weight and gain weight put these athletes at risk for eating behaviors that could lead to the need for eating disorder treatment.

Most importantly, going to these extremes can seriously harm the body.  Drastic weight changes can damage the metabolism, which will affect a person’s ability to maintain a healthy weight later in life.  If any sort of purging is involved for losing weight it can create an imbalance in the body.  Repeating any of the behaviors can quickly cause an eating disorder because it becomes part of the person’s life when they are dependent on the behaviors.

Avalon Hills is a great eating disorder treatment program that believes in a healthy lifestyle, to include exercise that is done in a noncompulsive way.

Here is a helpful link for athletes, coaches or family members looking for tips to share with athletes or those involved in exercise.

http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/nedaDir/files/documents/handouts/Athletes.pdf

This month a study emerged that connects eating disorders with social networking websites.  The study was conducted by a doctoral student at the University of Haifa.  She asked adolescent girls about their habits.  There were a wide range of activities she asked about.  For example, she asked how much a girl watched TV.

The student discovered some disturbing information after doing the study.  Girls who spent a lot of time online looking at Facebook displayed more habits associated with eating disorders.  Anorexia and bulimia symptoms were the most common.  Many of these girls had also developed a negative body image.

The girls who participated were of different ages with the median age being 14.8 years old.  Young adolescent girls are not the only ones at risk.  Older girls can also be affected.  However, it seems the younger girls are more susceptible.

Another correlation was also discovered.  Girls who frequently read fashion magazines or visited a lot of fashion websites displayed similar symptoms.  It is believed that this is caused by the display of the “ideal” woman.  This correlation was much weaker than the social network correlation.

While the study discovered something important it did not give an explanation for why these girls developed the habits.  It is possible that the reason is similar to that of the fashion magazine reading.  These girls may be seeing pictures of their friends or just other women who they consider to have the “ideal” body type.

It’s important to say that the study found a correlation, which does not mean it is grounds for causation.  This means the two are connected, but it cannot be said for sure that Facebook is causing the eating disorder habits.

The study noted that there are ways to help the problem.  Parents are very influential with this problem.  In the study, girls who had some form of parental involvement were less likely to develop the eating disorder habits and seek eating disorder treatment.  This involvement could include knowing what their daughter is doing online or having conversations about what she looked at online.  It is a way of supervising her web browsing without looking over her shoulder at all times.

However, if a girl is struggling with an eating disorder it is important for her to get help.  An eating disorder should never be ignored.  One of the best ways to get help for an eating disorder is to go to an eating disorder clinic.  Avalon Hills has a separate program that specializes in helping adolescent girls.  Their unique approach to eating disorder help works to improve a girl’s outlook of herself while also treating the physical symptoms.

A past article (http://j.mp/aqeV94) that appeared on KMBC.com tells the disheartening story of the parents of 21-year old Piper Wilcher’s battle against Blue Cross and Blue Shield for coverage. In her case, the insurance companies would not authorize for the recommended appropriate treatment (in her case-inpatient treatment), even though it seems to be the best avenue to a successful recovery. What was offered was some outpatient services, which have proven to be of limited value when not given at the appropriate time.

No matter how many times these stories are told, there is still a general reluctance within not only the insurance industry, but also the public in general to acknowledge that bulimia and anorexia nervosa are life-threatening illnesses. The National Institute of Mental Health has said that “Eating disorders, which include anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge-eating disorder, are complex and often life-threatening illnesses.” (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/science-news/2008/new-grants-will-further-understanding-of-the-biology-genetics-and-treatment-of-eating-disorders.shtml)

The Parity Act became effective on October 3, 2009, and for most calendar-year plans began January 1, 2010. The Mental Health Parity health care bill will hopefully provide the adequate and necessary options that will allow someone like Piper to access the care that they need. Basically “Parity” means that as of January 1, 2010 insurance companies must provide mental health benefits equal to other medical and surgical benefits. They must provide the same coverage for diseases like anorexia and bulimia as they do for physical ailments.

Some of the provisions of the new laws will not be phased in until 2014. And, as always when health insurance issues occur in the U.S. there are extenuating circumstances with regard to insurance parity. Avalon Hills is very passionate about not only treating eating disorders but also working with our patients and their families to access insurance benefits to provide funding for necessary treatment.

www.mentalhealthparitywatch.org is a great resource that has a lot of information about parity coverage. Additionally, you can contact Avalon Hills directly if you have questions on the applicability of these new laws to your situation or that of a friend or loved one.

For those of you who don’t know, National Eating Disorder Awareness Week is right around the corner. NEDAwareness Week is February 22-28, 2009.

This morning, The National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) promoted the 22nd annual NEDAwareness Week by ringing the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange.

In honor of the occasion- some dear friends of Avalon Hills; Susan, Christine and Charles Maccia attended and are photographed above. Avalon Hills is excited to see NEDA being recognized at this event.

To see the ringing of the bell you can go here: http://www.nyse.com/.

For more information about NEDAwareness Week you can visit the National Eating Disorder Associations website. http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/.