Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Click Here if you want to upgrade your account
If you were able to post but cannot do so now, send an email to admin at raypeatforum dot com and include your username and we will fix that right up for you.
Haagendazendiane said:Thanks, LucyL, do you happen to remember the name of the interview?
I haven't been able to find anything so far but LucyL mentioned that Ray discussed the thyroid/eating disorder relationship in one of the radio interviews. I have read (though not from Peat) that some people with anorexia nervosa will have impaired thyroid function from starvation.gretchen said:I read its genetic.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/mar02/genetic.aspx
http://www.scienceofeds.org/2012/04/03/ ... a-nervosa/
Has Peat written anything or discussed it in interviews?
Ditto. Anyone undereating severely, repeatedly, or for a prolonged time can get reduced thyroid function from that.Blossom said:I have read (though not from Peat) that some people with anorexia nervosa will have impaired thyroid function from starvation.
I'm no scientist but that makes perfect sense!tara said:Ditto. Anyone undereating severely, repeatedly, or for a prolonged time can get reduced thyroid function from that.Blossom said:I have read (though not from Peat) that some people with anorexia nervosa will have impaired thyroid function from starvation.
I wonder whether, for the subsection of the population with a predisposition to restrictive eating,
reduced thyroid function from dieting/malnutrition -> increased stress hormones -> feel energised
is part of what makes it such a dangerous vicious cycle?
That's a fabulous find!Such_Saturation said:I think there really is a desired appearance which escalates with time. Now for the outer aspect of the being to be banned from our lives would be senseless, since it is as crucial as all other aspects, but of course the healthy integration of aesthetics is not possible for a society which displays a sort of autism (from the gut?) in the evaluation of many aspects of the world. In fact a quick search finds some interesting thing on Wikipedia:
Relationship to autism
Since Gillberg's (1983 & 1985) and others' initial suggestion of relationship between anorexia nervosa and autism, a large-scale longitudinal study into teenage-onset anorexia nervosa conducted in Sweden confirmed that 23% of people with a long-standing eating disorder are on the autism spectrum. Those on the autism spectrum tend to have a worse outcome, but may benefit from the combined use of behavioural and pharmacological therapies tailored to ameliorate autism rather than anorexia nervosa per se. Other studies, most notably research conducted at the Maudsley Hospital, furthermore suggest that autistic traits are common in people with anorexia nervosa; shared traits include, e.g., poor executive function, autism quotient score, central coherence, theory of mind, cognitive-behavioural flexibility, emotion regulation and understanding facial expressions.
Zucker et al. (2007) proposed that conditions on the autism spectrum make up the cognitive endophenotype underlying anorexia nervosa and appealed for increased interdisciplinary collaboration . A pilot study into the effectiveness of cognitive behaviour therapy, which based its treatment protocol on the hypothesised relationship between anorexia nervosa and an underlying autistic like condition, reduced perfectionism and rigidity in 17 out of 19 participants.
Some autistic traits are more prominent during the acute phase of AN.
gretchen said:I read its genetic.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/mar02/genetic.aspx
http://www.scienceofeds.org/2012/04/03/ ... a-nervosa/
Has Peat written anything or discussed it in interviews?
Hugh Johnson said:Peat generally avoids purely genetic explanations. I recall his opinion being that genetics simply determines where the break occurs, rather than whether something breaks. The general toxicity of our lives is the cause.
That being said, while eating disorders most likely have physiological components, I don't think eating disorders can be separated from societal and psychological context, nor do I think can they be lumped together very well. If you compare binge eating and anorexia, they are very different.
Jordan Peterson has argued that anorexia is thinness becoming the ruling goal in a person's value system. While it is a valid goal, in a healthy person it must be subservient to other goals such as health, beauty or social status. Binge eaters obviously are different, and that may be due to conflicts in the goals of say weight maintanance and stress reduction via eating. Aother thing that recent research suggests is that orderliness, a subset of concentiousnes, which also posesses a stong relationship with sensitivity to disgust, is one main enabling factors of anorexia.
Anorexics tend to be strongly disgusted with their own bodies and possess incredible willpower. Orderliness is a good thing but too much can mean anorexia or genocidal tendencies on a societal scale.
I don't know this, either instinctively or intellectually. I suspect this might be more current fashion than instinct. 'Bonnie' was a positive word used to describe a chubby youngster. I certainly know people who were very round when young (babies/toddlers/preschool), and who grew to be lean and strong and healthy children and/or adults with a good appetite and lots of energy from that base. I also know thin children with lots of health problems. Some (but not all) eventually grew into fat adults.Hugh Johnson said:I personally believe ED's are also largely a concequence of a failed adaptation strategy to a toxic diet. People know instinctively that young humans are not supposed to get fat or feel like crap all the time. One way to reduce the effects is to eat less, but many people's psychology can't place that in the goal structure. Unfortunately they have no good solutions, like Peating, or even the ability to find them. Then EDs are one of the possible concequences.
tara said:But I liked Gwyneth's (youreatopia) speculation that the genetic variant that predisposes some people to feel energetic when they are undernourished can be a useful variant to have in the mix, rather than have the whole tribe just dozing round the fire when they are energy deprived. It could be good for the survival of the group if it has a couple of members who will go out and forage or hunt or do something to improve their situation. I don't know if it's true, but it might be, or there might be an epigenetic component, and it's a nice story.
Gwyneth Olwyn said:Why would a genetic predisposition to identify food as a threat have any merit in the human gene pool at large? Likely the most ingenious of theories on that topic is Shan Guisinger’s observation that its onset has possible overall value to community-wide survival in times of scarcity of food [S Guisinger, 2003]. Identifying food as a threat is not perhaps valuable to community survival, but it is perhaps the other accompanying traits along with that threat misidentification, that increased survival.
I have also written before of how non-eating-disordered individuals who restrict food intake basically hate the process and cannot persist. They feel foggy headed, tired, irritable, cranky, miserable, short-tempered and exhausted.
Along with misidentifying food as a threat, there are several mood-modulating and hyperactive impacts to food avoidance for those with restrictive eating disorders that non-eating disordered people do not experience.
While the rest of the non-eating-disordered tribe was listlessly and fractiously lying around the dying fires feeling sorry for themselves that there was not enough food to eat, the eating disordered tribesmate was feeling ready to take on the world.
She went out foraging. She felt calm, a bit buzzed and most definitely clear-headed. If she managed to score food for the tribe, then the tribe (and its genes) survived.
But what of this food-avoidant tribesmate who averted the tribe’s extinction? It is likely that the pressures she faced to achieve remission from her activated eating disorder were far greater than those faced by today’s eating disordered patients.
No meal would have been eaten alone in nomadic cultures of the day. Cultural pressures to eat your share, as the one who averted extinction for the entire tribe, would have been unavoidable. And in all but the most severe expression of the condition, she would survive to procreate and pass on her associated genotype (and its predisposition to identify food as a threat if her progeny faced famine).