Author: frivvy89
It was barely a month into the pandemic when Dr. Tracy Richmond, the director of the Eating Disorder Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, knew something bad was happening in young people.Richmond said her team was getting an unusual number of requests for help with eating disorders in mid-April 2020. “By summertime,” she said, “we were bursting at the seams.”Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreakThe problem is not limited to the Boston area. The National Eating Disorder Association reports a more than 53 percent increase in call volume to its helpline since the start of the pandemic. Just over a third…
I was speaking with one of my wonderful and beautiful clients about all her body has been through. Between childhood abuse, chronic illness, fertility treatments, multiple children and a life-long eating disorder- her body has been through a lot. I was sitting there in total awe of her, thinking how damn strong she was and how amazing it was that she was still alive. I was overcome with this love and gratitude for her body, for the fact that it had carried her for so long and continued to stay alive and keep her here on this earth. I just…
A child who is gender fluid, transgender, non-binary, or otherwise gender creative may need special treatment for their eating disorder. The fact is that the intersection of eating disorders and gender identity can be a bit tricky, and it’s best to get specialized, trained care. This can be challenging, so I’ll walk through some of the things to think about.The letterDear Ginny, Our child, who is non-binary, has been attending a day treatment program for an eating disorder for the past three weeks. They say they’re fine, they’re cured, and the treatment is not helpful. According to them, eating disorder treatment…
Demi Lovato’s new YouTube documentary, Simply Complicated, is out now, and in it, the singer gets super candid about living with an eating disorder.Demi says simply that food is “still the biggest challenge in my life.” The former Disney Channel star struggled with disordered eating as recently as this year.“When I was in a relationship with Wilmer I went three years without purging and when we broke up that’s one of the first things I did,” Demi says in the documentary. “The less I have to think about food, the easier it is to go about having a normal life…
This also means I won’t speak like this in my classes. I may talk about body parts in relation to which muscles to engage, how it can help with other types of movement you do, or where you might feel something, but not to what the aesthetic results will look like. You might hear some F-bombs (from me or my music), but I truly feel this is far less detrimental than what I have heard about bodies in classes before.3. I avoid labeling food and exercise as good or bad.I don’t label foods as good or bad or how someone…
Francisco Romo-Nava, MD, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at UC, associate chief research officer for the Research Institute at the Lindner Center of HOPE and a UC Health physician scientist, says little is known about how the circadian system in these patients impacts their eating patterns. “The circadian system makes it possible for our body to adapt to day and night periods, which has profound effects on physiology and behavior beyond regulation of sleep and wake cycles,” he says. “The most powerful signals that synchronize our circadian system are the presence of daylight…
How can I make people like me? Why Don’t People Like Me? And What Can I Do About it? What has always been generally accepted in the thinking about eating disorders is that they are about “control.” But what does that mean? Is it about controlling food? Not really, food is just the symptom. What control means at its core in eating disorders, is trying to control what other people think about you. We stop focusing on the people who love us and start to hyper focus on the people who are judgmental, critical and spend our time trying to…
It’s fairly common for a treatment team to ask people not to run during eating disorder treatment. This can be complicated since many times being athletic is a major part of a person’s identity and social life. The decision to pull a child from sports should never be taken lightly. But sometimes it is necessary to keep the child safe.The letterDear Ginny,My son was recently diagnosed with bulimia and is now in treatment. He seems to be doing well, but he’s really angry that his treatment team says he’s not allowed to run during eating disorder treatment. He fell in…
(Image: Adobe Stock/Illustration: David Chrisom, Boston Children’s) As the COVID-19 pandemic has worn on, it has led to a secondary epidemic of eating disorders among children and teens. In January, the National Eating Disorders Association reported a spike of activity on its help lines. And treatment programs are having trouble keeping up with the requests. “We have seen a huge increase in new-onset eating disorders in our teen population here in Boston and in talking with our colleagues nationally,” says adolescent medicine physician Dr. Tracy Richmond, who directs the Eating Disorders Program at Boston Children’s Hospital. “Outpatient care centers are…
Where even to begin? So much has happened, and yet…nothing is different. Or maybe it is. It’s hard to tell most days. Maybe some day soon I’ll share what exactly has been going on in my life for the past two months or so, but I simply don’t have the energy or will to do that right now. I don’t have the energy for much beyond the bare minimum lately. I wake up, go to work, come home and crawl into bed. I’ve spent so much time in the same position in my bed for the past however many months…