Author: frivvy89

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Lizzy Earhart didn’t know much about Eating Recovery Center when she agreed to get treatment there in October 2020. She’d already received treatment for anorexia at another treatment provider in Denver, but she’d relapsed immediately after. But Eating Recovery Center was big, well-known. It seemed her best option. But the months she spent there reinforced her illness, the 21-year-old said, and the punitive environment left her with new trauma. If she didn’t comply with treatment, she wouldn’t be allowed outside the facility. Patients were lined up each morning to be weighed wearing nothing but ill-fitting mesh…

PHOENIX – Chita Gastelum, an immigrant who identifies as Indigenous and Latino, remembers coming to the U.S. and growing up with the American pressure to diet. “It’s like a culture shock,” she said. As a “curvy” woman, Gastelum found U.S. norms of “the way that you’re supposed to be accepted is completely different. I see the harm that it can cause in women, especially coming in from other countries and just trying to live the American life.” Eating disorders are on the rise in the U.S., including among teen girls. Attention still centers on women, who are most likely to…

Two new Colorado laws that address eating disorders are a big step forward for treatment and prevention in the state, advocates say. The laws limit the use of body mass index in determining treatment, ban the sale of diet pills to minors and create a new educational program within the state’s health department. “We’re excited for the movement that it’s going to create, hopefully, within the eating disorder treatment landscape here in Colorado,” said Lydia Rhino, the program director at the Denver-based Eating Disorder Foundation. GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SUBSCRIBE Lt. Gov. Dianne Primavera signed the…

An AI-powered chatbot that replaced employees at an eating disorder hotline has been shut down after it provided harmful advice to people seeking help. The saga began earlier this year when the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) announced it was shutting down its human-run helpline and replacing workers with a chatbot called “Tessa.” That decision came after helpline employees voted to unionize.AI might be heralded as a way to boost workplace productivity and even make some jobs easier, but Tessa’s stint was short-lived. The chatbot ended up providing dubious and even harmful advice to people with eating disorders, such as recommending that…

By Chelsea BaileyBBC News, Washington1 June 2023Image source, Getty ImagesA US organisation that supports people with eating disorders has suspended use of a chatbot after reports it shared harmful advice.The National Eating Disorder Association (Neda) recently closed its live helpline and directed people seeking help to other resources, including the chatbot.The AI bot, named “Tessa,” has been taken down, the association said. It will be investigating reports about the bot’s behaviour. In recent weeks, some social media users posted screenshots of their experience with the chatbot online. They said the bot continued to recommend behaviours like calorie restriction and dieting,…

An AI-powered chatbot that replaced employees at an eating disorder hotline has been shut down after it provided harmful advice to people seeking help. The saga began earlier this year when the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) announced it was shutting down its human-run helpline and replacing workers with a chatbot called “Tessa.” That decision came after helpline employees voted to unionize.AI might be heralded as a way to boost workplace productivity and even make some jobs easier, but Tessa’s stint was short-lived. The chatbot ended up providing dubious and even harmful advice to people with eating disorders, such as recommending that…

Getty ImagesA US organisation that supports people with eating disorders has suspended use of a chatbot after reports it shared harmful advice.The National Eating Disorder Association (Neda) recently closed its live helpline and directed people seeking help to other resources, including the chatbot.The AI bot, named “Tessa,” has been taken down, the association said. It will be investigating reports about the bot’s behaviour. In recent weeks, some social media users posted screenshots of their experience with the chatbot online. They said the bot continued to recommend behaviours like calorie restriction and dieting, even after it was told the user had…

Binge eating disorder is the most common eating disorder in the United States. Exact numbers vary, but according to the National Institute of Mental Health, nearly 3 percent of the U.S. population has had binge eating disorder at some point in their lives, more than double the reported numbers for bulimia nervosa and anorexia. Yet, the disorder is under-discussed and underrecognized by both the general public and those in the medical field, partly because many don’t know about the diagnosis or its potential severity.Often, people will exhibit symptoms for decades before receiving a diagnosis, said Cynthia Bulik, the founding director…

While having autism can come along with food aversions, it doesn’t mean you can’t have nutritious and enjoyable meals. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental condition that causes a person to experience differences in their behavior, communication, and learning. Autism affects roughly 1% of children worldwide, according to estimates from the World Health Organization (WHO).Research suggests that eating problems are common in autistic people — and many of these problems stem from factors like aversions to certain tastes and textures or strict food preferences.Below, we explore why autism can make it harder to eat food, and share some tips…

Introduction Binge eating (consuming an objectively large amount of food while feeling a loss of control) is a core component of bulimia nervosa (BN). Although loss of control may be more important than the amount of food consumed in understanding distress related to binge eating (Latner et al., 2007), people with BN have recurrent objectively large binge eating episodes by definition (APA, 2013), and consideration of binge size may help inform understanding of BN (Mourilhe et al., 2021). Accumulating evidence suggests binge size is an important marker of distress and impairment, particularly within BN. A recent meta-analysis found that caloric…