de Zwaan

Bariatric Surgery and Eating Disorders: A Double-Edged Sword

Jacqueline 5 Comments

The high prevalence of eating pathology prior to bariatric surgery reduces the likelihood of what researchers have termed “optimal” weight loss post surgery. However, such weight loss is in part due to post-surgical complications like “dumping” (rapid gastric emptying because digestive systems cannot process the food) or vomiting that can develop into conscious efforts to lose weight. Conceicao et al. (2013a) describe, for example, one patient who deliberately binged and purged on foods that would make her vomit spontaneously.

These kinds of results raise a number of questions:

  • How prevalent are eating disorders (EDs) post-bariatric surgery?
  • What are the risk factors for developing an ED?
  • To what extent is the surgery itself a potential trigger?

PREVALENCE OF DISORDERED EATING AMONG INDIVIDUALS SEEKING BARIATRIC SURVERY

Researchers interested in bariatric surgery have explored how often those seeking bariatric surgery engage in disordered eating or have EDs. Prevalence rates vary between studies depending … Continue reading →

I Need How Many Calories? Caloric Needs in Bulimia Nervosa Patients

Tetyana 2 Comments

In the 1980s, a few studies came out suggesting that patients with bulimia nervosa (BN) require fewer calories for weight maintenance than anorexia nervosa patients (e.g., Newman, Halmi, & Marchi, 1987) and healthy female controls (e.g., Gwirtsman et al., 1989).

Gwirtsman et al. (1989), after finding that patients with bulimia nervosa required few calories for weight maintenance than healthy volunteers, had these suggestions for clinicians:

When bulimic patients are induced to cease their binging and vomiting behavior, we suggest that physicians and dietitians prescribe a diet in which the caloric level is lower than might be expected. Our experience suggests that some patients will tend to gain weight if this is not done, especially when hospitalized. Because patients are often averse to any gain in body weight, this may lead to grave mistrust between patient and physician or dietitian.

Among many things, this ignores the fact … Continue reading →

The Sobering Reality (and the Silver Lining) of Treating Anorexia Nervosa in Adults: A Randomised Controlled Trial

Tetyana 5 Comments

The challenges of treating anorexia nervosa are plenty; some of these challenges — like low prevalence rate and high treatment dropout rate —  make conducting randomised controlled trials aimed at identifying effective treatment methods really hard as well.

So I was pretty excited about the recently published randomised controlled trial comparing focal psychodynamic therapy (FPT), cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), and optimised treatment as usual in adult (a harder to treat demographic than adolescents) anorexia nervosa patients.

Reading the paper, I was pretty impressed with how good the study design was; I’m not going to go into all the nitty-gritty details, but if you have access to and the chance to read the paper, do it. You’ll appreciate, I think, the amount of effort that went into this.

THE STUDY

Patients were recruited from ten universities across Germany. They had to be adult females with a BMI between 15-18 and with … Continue reading →