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July 3, 2004

Eating disorders affect young teens who crave thin look

By KRISTEN MOCZYNSKI | News-Journal Staff Writer

A year into her eating disorder, a 17-year-old Ormond Beach girl could slide off a pair of size 0 pants without unbuttoning.

"My bones were sticking out everywhere," she said. "It's disgusting, it really is."

This college freshman, who asked that her name not be used, lost 40 pounds in a year. She remembers dieting at age 13 because she wasn't comfortable with her body.

"It just spiraled down from there," she said.

When news spread last week that 18-year-old Mary-Kate Olsen entered rehab for an eating disorder, the local teen was not surprised. She had seen a picture of the slightly younger Hollywood twin and had assumed she too had an eating disorder.

"They're just completely gaunt," she said of girls with eating disorders. "She's just not even healthy -- you can tell."

The 17-year-old said Olsen's admission will send a strong message to young girls.

"She's strong enough to go into rehab. It's a huge decision," she said. "That shows it really is OK to admit you have a problem."

Eating disorders are an "epidemic" with the highest mortality rate of all mental disorders. Complications from the illness kill 500,000 Americans each year.

What once tormented young women of college age is now hitting girls in elementary school. And experts report rising numbers of high school age boys struggling with the disorder.

"We're seeing it sadly affect younger and younger ages," Daytona Beach clinical psychologist Karen Samuels said.

Samuels, who has specialized in counseling for eating disorders for 25 years, applauded Olsen's courage.

"The more role models and spokespersons able to come out and say, 'This is not OK, I have lived in a tortured way,' . . . the more we can break the secrecy and shame," she said.

Eating disorders never have just one cause, experts say. Low self-esteem, family problems, psychological make-up and a desire to control things are just a few. They also stem partly from the conflict of promoting impossible images and a culture full of fast food and super-sizing, Samuels said.

"It creates this clash that is unrealistic," Samuels said.

The pressures are familiar to most girls.

"Thin, perfect, that's what everyone wants to be like," said 16-year-old Alyssa Maddox of Seville.

DeLand 15-year-old Jennifer Hightower sees the pressure to be thin at school when she hears girls say they're "too fat," -- even though they look great.

Anorexia and bulimia, the most common eating disorders, affect 10 million women and 1 million men, according to national eating-disorder groups. Anorexia is characterized by self-starvation and excessive weight loss while bulimia is a secretive cycle of binge eating followed by purging.

Anorexics are preoccupied with weight, food and dieting. They refuse to eat certain foods, make frequent comments about being fat despite their weight loss, and deny hunger. Bulimics often consume large amounts of food in a short period of time followed by frequent trips to the bathroom or the use of laxatives.

The Ormond Beach teen said she had her "safe foods" -- apples, chicken, veggie nuggets -- and would often go to bed at night thinking about what she would allow herself to eat or not eat the following day. She grew to hate food and still dislikes eating at restaurants.

After five months of limiting her food intake and excessive exercise, the 17-year-old's parents took her to a counselor. The girl realized she was not healthy and had a problem.

The following summer after she completed the eighth grade, she entered a rehabilitation hospital under her parent's orders. She was so weak she could barely walk and hardly had the energy to complete her exercises.

"It was hell," she said of rehab. But "it really saved me. I think I would have died had I not stopped."

The good news is most people who seek help for eating disorders do get better, psychologist Samuels said.

The average length of treatment for eating disorders is seven years of intensive medical, psychological and dietary care, she said.

"Recovery is always possible," she said "Healing is always possible."

Polly Cobb, director of client relations at Canopy Cove Eating Disorder Treatment Center in Tallahassee, said patients must first recognize they have a problem to be successful.

Canopy Cove focuses on an inpatient recovery model of treatment -- identifying the issues that contribute to the eating disorder and working toward resolving those issues. Adults often stay for at least 60 days while adolescents need more time to accept and fix the problem. The process is expensive -- costing between $20,000 and $40,000 a month -- and is rarely covered by insurance.

The 17-year-old said she will be in recovery for the rest of her life. She says she's at a healthy weight, although she won't look at what it is. She also won't look at the tag in her clothes. It's just too hard, she said.

"Life is so much better without the daily stress of having to worry constantly about the eating disorder and food," she said. "I never thought that was possible."

Did you know?

· Anorexia comes from the Greek words an and orexis, meaning without a desire or appetite for food.

· In the late 1600s, English physician Dr. Richard Morton became the first to formally describe in medical literature what he called "nervous consumption." He said a female patient was "like a skeleton, only clad with skin." He thought her condition was caused by "a multitude of cares and passions to her mind."

· Morton also provided one of the first documented cases of self-starvation in a male when he diagnosed the condition in a 16-year-old boy in 1694.

· In 1873, the same year the disorder was titled anorexia nervosa, it was further described by two prominent physicians -- Sir William W. Gull and Charles Lasegue.

· For many years, physicians believed anorexia was a form of tuberculosis or a hormone imbalance. By the 1930s, researchers began to believe that psychological and emotional stresses played a part in the disorder.

Compiled by News Researcher Megan Gallup. SOURCES: www.emedicine.com, Washington Post, Anorexia Nervosa and Related Eating Disorders, Inc., Staunton (Va.) Daily News Leader.

HICI Special Report — Weighing In: Does American Culture Encourage Eating Disorders?

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