Or they learn to be patients due to repeated hospitalizations and that causes them to identify with being sick/ill?
The actual study points to the infections, not primarily to the treatment, as the potential factor in increased eating disorders. This makes more sense and there is more research that shows this may be the case. (see research on PANDAS) The headline is misleading and might lead to people hesitating to treat infections, which would exacerbate the problem if infection is the key factor.
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@C Exactly my thoughts. As a child, I had numerous infections... I would get strep throat and sinus infections 8-10 times a year and went on to develop anorexia. I have always been very interested in the connection.. but I really do not believe it was the antibiotics that caused the anorexia but rather how those infections impacted my brain chemistry as a child. I am excited there is more research happening with this but I wish it was more clear that antibiotics are NOT the cause.
Everyone tells girls and women they look great after they’ve been sick. The worse the illness, the more days without eating, the more compliments you get! It doesn’t matter that you felt terrible, people feel compelled to comment that “you look amazing!”
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Everyone tells girls and women they look great after they’ve been sick. The worse the illness, the more days without eating, the more compliments you get! It doesn’t matter that you felt terrible, people feel compelled to comment that “you look amazing!”
Perhaps this should be flipped on its head. Maybe the determinative factors for developing eating disorders lead to an increase risks for certain infections.
Although a great fan of the microbiome I am reluctant to blame too much on it. Microbial determinism could be a slippery slope.
They definitely need to consider more hospital stays increasing the likelihood of the girls being sexually abused at the hospitals therefore increasing the eating disorder likelihood.
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Antibiotics are known to cause weight gain, This is the reason they are routinely fed to cattle. Perhaps being overweight is part of the reason why a girl would have an eating disorder.
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@JG
Antibiotics do not cause weight gain.
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Perhaps correlation is being mistaken for causation. Is it not possible that those infections and hospitalizations were partly due to an omnipresent and controlling parent and the only way the girl could feel powerful was to control her eating.
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@Leslie
OR to get any attention from a parent.
Fascinating. This links up with other Times articles about the effects of the microbiome on mood and behavior. I cannot wait until we can accompany or follow a course of antibiotics with a pill or body wash that helps us recover the "friendly" bacteria. And no, yogurt does not do the trick.
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I don’t think the relationship is as causal as they would like it to be. Exactly when, how and what the girls were they told about their weight? By being in the medical system they may develop a surreal awareness of their weight.
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Have they considered the link between increased healthcare utilization and likelihood of diagnosis? If these girls are seeing more doctors, they or their family may simply be more likely to go to a doctor for help with these problems. To me, this is more likely than any microbiome/ vagus nerve axis.
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@Andy, so what would that mean for the ones that are not diagnosed because they don't go to the doctor as much? They don't know that they are sick?
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@Marianna Correct. If you have ever seen a skeletal girl (or rarely, boy) look in the mirror and declare they are still fat, you'd realize that anorexia is a delusional disorder.
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People who willingly starve or throw up do so because they find it soothing and calming - or even euphoric. They have an altered brain chemistry that makes starvation feel like a high of sorts, and they get addicted to that high. The rest of us fail at mere dieting because we get cranky, experience headaches, and generally feel awful. So we quit. Which is the normal reaction. Perhaps this altered brain chemistry among future anoretics explains the frequent and recurrent infections among children who later become eating disordered.
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@Igr - I disagree with most of this. Why would the brain chemistry you mentioned explain the frequent and recurrent infections? Unless we're going with changes from stress and trauma discussed by other contributors Cathy and Phillyshrink. Most bulimics don't purge because it gives them a kick or it soothes them, they eat for soothing and calming, then get anxious/shamed and purge to avoid weight gain. With that in mind, the brain chemistry argument cycles back to what negative emotions they are "treating" by eating, which seems to fit the stress/trauma argument still better. From anything I've ever learned, an anorexic person is typically more driven by the delusion of never looking thin enough than how great starvation feels.
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@jwg I disagree. Having worked a great deal with the eating disorder community and having had an eating disorder myself, I can tell you that there are those who definitely feel a high from starvation and feel an incredible cathartic release from purging, independent of whatever emotions are stirred up by bingeing (which is why some anorexics purge but don’t binge.) I don’t know if the brain alterations that cause one to have these reactions to starvation and purging have anything to do with infections or antibiotic use, but it would make sense that powerful drugs like antibiotics, and powerful infectious agents like the kinds of things we treat with antibiotics, could alter brain pathways in unexpected ways. Developing brains are fragile. Genetics factor in to eating disorders, but so do many other things. Most anorexics know they are thin, at least in the eyes of others. But the physical and emotional feelings associated with thinness, lightness, and emptiness are powerful motivators, independent of any idea about not wanting to be “fat.” When I was 88 pounds (at 5’8”), I knew I wasn’t fat. It didn’t make me want to eat, to gain weight, or to stop losing weight.
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I know the microbiome is the "hot" topic in health, but what about the effects of repeated illness on a child's self-image or decreased locus of control, or the specific cause of repeated infections?
It is fairly well established that severe neglect and sexual abuse will both increase the incidence of repeated UTIs in young girls. Removing this type of infection from the list could tease out more information from these types of studies.
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@cathy exactly . If these women had chronic stress or trauma as children, they would have had a suppressed immunity to infections AND be at higher risk for developing eating disorders
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@Cathy Exactly. What caused these repeated infections? Strep, for example, is linked to a disorder known as PANDAS, one of the symptoms of which is severely restricted eating. It could be that the infection itself is causing this behavior, rather than the drugs used to treat it.
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