A recent tabloid captured the common wisdom about anorexia nervosa. In an interview, actor Christina Ricci blamed the pressures of success for her prior struggle with the disease. The headline flashed, “Ricci: Hollywood made me anorexic.”
But did it? True, anorexia is characterized by compulsive dieting or exercise to get thin. And the pursuit of thinness in contemporary culture—particularly in Hollywood—has become a seemingly contagious obsession. Yet there is thin, and then there is emaciated. Crossing over that line means a loss of a basic survival instinct—to eat in response to hunger—that culture should not be able to touch.
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Add Comment>This brain region is part of a circuit that contributes to planning and evaluating long-term consequences. It may connect asceticism to reward in an anorexics brain. The finding is consistent with anorexics tendency to live in the future, planning for all contingencies, and to largely disregard the present.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think this is the key statement. Women have been subject to extreme selective pressure to plan for the future. In general, mothers are concerned about their children's futures and constantly anxious about it.
So appears to me to be just an instance of redirection of those traits.
Additionally, women have been subject to pressure to eat less and work very hard for their families. It makes complete sense that they would have circuits that reward them with feeling good under extremely dire conditions. Women have lived in those conditions for millenia - as far more the norm than our current civilization.
I cannot thank you enough for this comprehensive and up to the minute piece. It is so rare that this topic is discussed without the tired old ideas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBravo!
I think seeing anorexia as an addiction makes it more understandable.The authors did. But they also stated that a major sign of the disease is the distortion of the bodyimage. Besides mentioning it the authors don't explore the biological underpinnings in their article. And defining anorexia as addiction without taking in account the near psychotic bodyimagedistortion is like a football game without playing the ball.
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george
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This is for my science coursework :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am a recovered/recovering anorectic (and have a twin sister who never really succumbed to the disease). The battle through recovery was probably worse than the disease itself, though I pressed on because I was thinking of the future, not the present. (It's therefore interesting to me that those who are susceptible to anorexia tend to live in the future.) I still have difficulty fighting urges to starve, even a decade after I began my recovery. It's not exactly encouraging to discover that I may just be wired for starvation, though I will say that my efforts to combat perfectionism and 'living in the future' through therapy have helped a great deal. CBT does work for me, but it's never easy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've been battling anorexia for approximately two and half years which began when I was 22. This article identifies the many personality traits that I exhibit - e.g. perfectionism, planning ahead, obsessive compulsiveness - however another major behavior which drove me into this illness (as well as keeping me from fully recovering) is the desire of control. I find my need to control the whats, whens, and how much of the food I eat is the main factor behind this addiction. In short, I'm addicted to control. The argument can be made that my life was a little out of control when my anorectic behavior began thus I needed something to control such as my food. Future studies should involve the how the brain responds to the desire of control specifically for anorexics. I find that the necessity to control is influential in many addictions too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs I wrote in my book : "Colour Eating without Heating", (see youthevity .com), "Perhaps all our eating disorders, from anorexia to bulimia, may be found to have their origin in the desperate balancing act of a nutrient-deficient body system to find an equilibrium, be it through avoidance, as in the case of anorexia, or through non-stop craving and bingeing as in bulimia."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have overcome anorexia twice in my past. I have come to realize that it has nothing to do with your actual body image but with your sense of control. When things are going well in my life I find that I am not obsessive about what I eat, my weight, etc. But when things are hectic I am frantically trying to get the pounds off!! Its a disgusting cycle but I try to learn to control myself better.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisErin Pondo