Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by unrealistic fear of weight gain, self-starvation, and conspicuous distortion of body image. The name comes from two Latin words that mean nervous inability to eat. In females who have begun to menstruate, anorexia nervosa is usually marked by amenorrhea, or skipping at least three menstrual periods in a row.
Eating disorder cutoffs miss some of sickest patients, Stanford/Packard study finds – Diagnostic cutoffs for anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa may be too strict, a study from the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital has found.
Review provides new insights into the causes of anorexia – individuals with anorexia have an imbalance between circuits in the brain that regulate reward and emotion. – New imaging technology provides insight into abnormalities in the brain circuitry of patients with anorexia nervosa (commonly known as anorexia) that may contribute to the puzzling symptoms found in people with the eating disorder.
Milkshakes Are Medicine for Anorexic Teens in Family-Based Outpatient Therapy. NIH-Funded Study at NewYork-Presbyterian/Westchester Compares Maudsley Approach With Family Systems Therapy. – Getting your teenager to drink a chocolate milkshake isn’t something most parents need to worry about. But this is just the approach used in one treatment for anorexia nervosa.
More people with eating disorders could benefit from new psychotherapy – talking therapies – which aim to release them from obsessive feelings. – Wellcome Trust researchers have developed a new form of psychotherapy that has been shown to have the potential to treat more than eight out of ten cases of eating disorders in adults, a study out today reports.
Young women with past anorexia nervosa show vastly different patterns of brain activity compared to similar women without the eating disorder.
– Even after more than a year of maintaining a normalized body weight, young women who recovered from anorexia nervosa show vastly different patterns of brain activity compared to similar women without the eating disorder, Walter H. Kaye, M.D., professor of psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and colleagues report in the December issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.
