Avalon Hills Blog

More and more men are talking about eating disorders and their struggle with them. Many of these men are also seeking eating disorder treatment for themselves. In the past, eating disorders have been previously and commonly attributed to affecting women. Although the numbers of males with eating disorders are lower than that of the females’, it is still noteworthy that the increasing figures for men are on the rise.

In Britain, somewhere around 1.6 million people are said to be suffering from an eating disorder, one out of every five of such people are male. This is according to Beat, a British organization dedicated towards helping those with eating disorders.  In addition, hospitals in the country have also reported a rise in the number of men being admitted to the hospital for eating disorders within the past 10 years.

We recognize that these are just figures and they may be very under or even over reported. What it does tell us though is that men talking about eating disorders are not as taboo as it once was. Previously, men rarely even talked about the existence of the problem, much less admit to the problem and go for treatment for the eating disorder. As a result, few of those with eating disorders are properly diagnosed and even treated.

One important step towards properly recognizing the existence of the eating disorder among men is to train and equip doctors to also recognize the symptoms of eating disorders in men.

Avalon Hills and Treatment

Avalon Hills is an eating disorder treatment center that concentrates on providing a residential treatment to help those with eating disorders. Although, we do not treat men as a part of our program, we recognize the importance of men getting appropriate eating disorder treatment also. We would be happy to provide resources and referrals for those seeking treatment.

Shocking new studies have been emerging over the last few years to report information about adolescents and eating disorders.  One such study was published by the American Academy of Pediatrics in late 2010.  AAP is a trusted organization of thousands of pediatricians that are committed to the health of all children.  The organization offers a wide range of information that is available to everyone.

This new study identified an increase of eating disorders in adolescents.  Anorexia and bulimia were the two most common eating disorders.  This study also identified two new groups that are being affected: young males and children under 12.  In fact, between 1999 and 2006 eating disorder hospitalization for children under 12 years old went up 119%.  It is clear that adolescents need more anorexia help and bulimia help.

The AAP has been urging parents, schools, and pediatricians to help decrease this problem.  They want all three groups to start trying to encourage healthy eating habits.  Displaying healthy eating habits, especially at home, can help an adolescent develop healthy eating habits and keep them consistent.

Not focusing on appearance and weight is also a good idea.  Since child obesity has become an important topic many children have started dieting.  This can sometimes lead to extreme eating habits that aren’t healthy.  Also, there are many statements related to weight loss that can be a trigger for an eating disorder.  Saying a child can stand to lose some weight is a popular trigger.

It’s best to try and stop an eating disorder before it ever starts, but this isn’t always possible.  Once an eating disorder has started, it’s important to get treatment.  Going to an eating disorder treatment center, such as Avalon Hills, will help.  At a center they will receive the eating disorder treatment they need.  This includes treating the mental cause of the disorder along with the physical symptoms.

This type of well-rounded eating disorder treatment programs at Avalon Hills will help the adolescent overcome the eating disorder.  However, the best thing to do is try to catch an eating disorder early or before it even starts.  It can be difficult to find a balance between under eating, overeating, and healthy eating.  The resources on the American Academy of Pediatrics’ website can help you.

At first glance, athletes that need eating disorder help don’t seem to mix.  Being active is a healthy choice that usually encourages a healthy diet.  However, there are athletes that can develop an eating disorder.  This type of eating disorder can be a little different from an eating disorder caused by other circumstances.

Quite a few athletes that develop an eating disorder do it to meet a specific requirement.  There are some sports that actually have a desired weight, such as ballet.  This is a common example because many ballerinas have been struggling with eating disorders for a while and have needed anorexia treatment.  It’s a serious pursuit that requires a petite body type in order to do certain moves.  Some people, men and women, are so driven that they start to starve their bodies to lose weight to get the ideal body type.

Not all athletes that develop an eating disorder participate in stereotypically female sports.  For instance, wrestlers may wind up developing an eating disorder.  This can be common because wrestling pays close attention to the weight of a participant.  Each wrestler is put in a weight class that they usually need to stay in.  If a wrestler is outside of that class they may be disqualified.

In order to stay within a weight class, a wrestler may go to extremes to shed pounds.  One way to do this is to not eat.  They may eat very little or not at all the day before the match.  Some wrestlers focus more on shedding water weight.  This can include wearing more layers than necessary.  Wearing these layers helps the person sweat a lot in order to lose water weight fast.  They will sit in a sauna fully clothed in sweats.  Wrestlers may even spit a lot to also shed some water weight.  Sometimes a wrestler will actually need to gain weight to stay in their class.  This can be a bit trickier than losing the weight.  Sometimes a wrestler will actually binge eat to gain weight quickly.  Both the behaviors to lose weight and gain weight put wrestlers at risk for seeking eating disorder treatment.

Going to extremes to achieve a specific weight can seriously harm the body.  Drastic weight changes can even 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.

If an eating disorder does develop it’s important to get help as soon as possible.  Seeing a professional will help a person change the habits and overcome the cause of the eating disorder.  An excellent eating disorder treatment program option is to visit a treatment clinic, such as Avalon Hills.

One of the most effective ways to receive help is through a one-on-one treatment program.  This type of treatment is focused on the one person in order to meet their specific needs.  As the treatment continues, a person will probably participate in group treatment.  A combination of these treatment styles is also effective.  The most important thing is for a person to get help if they’re suffering from an eating disorder.

No matter what age your child is, it’s important to start teaching them good eating habits.  With these habits your children will be healthier and have a positive relationship with food.  If a child doesn’t have strong healthy habits they may eventually need eating disorder help.  Of course, not all of these children will, but it’s more likely for a child or teen to seek anorexia treatment or bulimia disorder help, if they don’t have healthy eating habits.

The best time to start teaching your children about good eating habits is when they’re young.  However, it can be started at any age.  It’s just important that parents start the process before their children have developed several negative eating habits.  It’s not impossible to start at that point; it’s just much harder to get them to embrace the habits.  Teaching new habits is easier than transforming habits.

One of the best ways to teach your child, especially when they’re young, is to be a good role model.  The “do as I say, not as I do” approach is far from being effective.  When children are young they have a strong tendency to imitate.  If a parent tells a child to eat their vegetables while the parent eats greasy chips, the child is less likely to follow the instructions.

A parent should eat the healthy foods they want their children to eat, such as vegetables, fruits, fish, and other helthy foods.  Another important element of being a good role model is eating balanced meals.  A parent should eat balanced meals as often as possible instead of eating only the pieces of a balanced meal throughout the day.

There are several practices that can help a child of any age learn about healthy eating habits.  One is to have regular family meals.  This means the family sits down together and eats a healthy meal close to the same time every day.  Keeping up with a scheduled time to eat dinner can help the children understand that meals should be eaten regularly.  Having the entire family together also enhances appetite and comforts children.

It’s important that the family meals are home made.  Making a meal every night can be time consuming, but it’s better for everyone in your family.  Overall, home cooked meals are healthier.  Many restaurant or fast food meals have more salt and fat in them.  Your child will also get into the habit of making food instead of buying fast food.

Another option for parents is to involve their children in food-related activities.  These activities may include packing school lunches, making dinner, or grocery shopping.  All of these activities give parents the chance to talk to their children about eating healthy.  They can learn about the importance of certain foods in a daily diet.  While helping out in the kitchen, they can also learn about healthy cooking habits.

These ways of teaching children about healthy eating habits all require the parents’ presence.  However, parents aren’t able to be with their children every second of the day.  A great way to teach your children about healthy eating while you’re not home is to have healthy snacks around.  Stocking your pantry with healthy drinks and food will subtly teach your children.  They will get used to grabbing a healthy snack when they’re hungry.  As they get older they’re more likely to choose healthy snacks because that’s what they’re used to eating.

These are just a few ways to teach children about healthy eating.  It’s very important to teach your children healthy eating habits because it can help avoid the development of an eating disorder.  It’s better to avoid an eating disorder than to treat one once it’s firmly developed. However if it’s come to your attention that your child or teen has developed an eating disorder, there is help. Avalon Hills has the best eating disorder treatment for those that suffer from eating disorders and want to help.

Eating disorders can be very difficult to treat because they are so different from other illnesses.  Since they combine the mental and the physical it’s hard to know which one to treat.  Many people want to only treat the physical, but this won’t be successful.  Sometimes people want to use medication to help, but studies have shown that this may not be the best way to go.

Most medications have no proof that they will help as an eating disorder treatment.  For example, serotonin uptake inhibitors are often used to treat anorexia.  According to professionals, there isn’t any solid evidence to prove that this medication will help a person who is severely underweight gain or maintain healthy weight.

Certain medications can help a person move toward recovery.  A typical antipsychotic medication can sometimes show positive results as an anorexia treatment.  One study took a group with 16 people who had anorexia and gave them the medication with a control group taking a placebo.  By the end of the study the people taking the real medication were at the desired BMI.  However, these same people were also participating in an outpatient therapy program.  This makes it impossible to tell if the medication or the therapy really helped the participants.

Therapy, however, can provide evidence that it can help a person recover from an eating disorder.  For anorexia, family therapy has proven to be an effective mode of treatment.  During therapy the family is taught how to help the person that is suffering from anorexia.  It’s also beneficial for the person to be able to communicate with their family about the disorder.

A recent study discovered that about half of the people that participated in family therapy were at a normal weight at the end of treatment.  These same people maintained their weight until their follow up a year later.  A percentage of these people even completely recovered from anorexia.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a good component of bulimia treatment.  After 12 to 16 weeks of the therapy, about 60 – 75% of participants have a significant reduction in symptoms.  This is very important because these results are more likely to last than any results that come from taking a medication.  Many people have symptoms return after trying to use a medication.

There are several ways to get help when it comes to eating disorders.  One of the best ways is to go to an eating disorder clinic.  These clinics have professionals that can help a person who is struggling with an eating disorder.  In patient clinics, such as Avalon Hills, often allow you to look at their eating disorder treatment program before actually going to the clinic.  This will help you choose the clinic that’s the perfect fit.

A recent study that was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry found results that discussed the idea of various the methods of therapy for eating disorders.  It found that people who have different eating disorders may exhibit different brain activity patterns.

These different patterns actually related to aspects of a person’s eating disorder behaviors.  A person seeking anorexia treatment showed that the person often shows anxious and inhibited behaviors.  On the other hand, a person needing bulimia help was often determined to be more risk-seeing and impulsive.  This also matches up with the compulsion nature of bingeing.

This study contained a sample of subjects with differing eating disorder diagnosis or no eating disorder diagnosis.  The sample had 30 people with either anorexia or bulimia. This specific study didn’t test any people with other types of eating disorders.  Then 16 people that didn’t need eating disorder help acted as a control group.

The actual study involved subjects pressing a button every time they saw a letter, except for the letter “x.”  This required the subjects to show restraint by not pressing the button.  While the subjects did this the researchers scanned their brain with an fMRI.  They found that subjects with bulimia had to use more brain power in order to not press the button when they saw the letter “x.”

These findings lead the researchers to believe that eating disorder treatment methods should be changed.  Since a person with anorexia proved to have more anxiety it may be beneficial to focus more on the anxiety during treatment.  Then, for a person with bulimia it would be good to treat their impulsive tendencies to help them overcome the eating disorder.  It’s a way of personalizing the treatment to help the person overcome an eating disorder.

The difficulty with changing anorexia or bulimia treatment based on a new study is the results aren’t enough.  One study isn’t enough to completely change the approach of an eating disorder treatment program.  Another study that studied brain activity showed some different results.  However, the amount of subjects and the ages of the subjects were very different from the first study.

Avalon Hills supports all of the ongoing research in the field. The Academy of Eating Disorders and the National Eating Disorder Association are great resources for those that may have questions regarding eating disorder treatment and how research is developing in the field.

We blogged about the Avalon Hills outcome studies because it is important that our incoming, current, and past residents understand how they are contributing to that goal. Understandably people are going to start asking, “Where’s the data?” We saw that coming.

Jodi -our diligent researcher – has been collecting data for over a year now.  Some of that time has been spent working out kinks in the system.  She’s also been working on figuring out what do we make of this data.  We could “cherry pick” one index or scale and use it to show how nearly everyone at Avalon Hills recovers, but that isn’t our style.

At present we aren’t publishing our data because we feel that we need more time to collect a bigger sample and to figure out a way of presenting the information in a way that is transparent and responsible. You’ve heard there’s lies, dang lies and statistics.  Well, we’d like to avoid being part of that problem.

We appreciate everyone’s patience as we continue to move toward transparent reporting of outcome data.  We further wish to thank the past residents that continue to support this effort through their participation in the 3, 6 and 12 month follow-up outcome measures.  We are determined to see that their commitment to the process of recovery will benefit girls and women years to come.

Outcome Studies

In June of 2007, Avalon Hills Residential Eating Disorder Program began collecting its initial outcome data.  There are several objectives that we are hoping to achieve through this research.

· Increase our understanding of eating disorders and co-morbid disorders.

· Demonstrate to ourselves in a more systematic way what we already know– our program has a positive impact on the lives of our residents.

· Work to continually improve our treatment and verify that we have succeeded.

· Contribute to the national data pool on treatment of eating disorders. By adopting a standard set of assessment tools we may soon be able to collaborate with other treatment teams across the country to improve quality of treatment.

· Demonstrate that residential treatment is a worthwhile investment, with the hopes of improving insurance reimbursement.

· Improve the ability of clients and their families to select the treatment option that is best suited to their needs.

We would like to thank all of the residents and their families who have and continue to participate in this process with us.  We recognize that this takes an enormous time commitment on their part. Their willingness to provide us with their responses up to a year after discharge is critical to our meeting the above goals.