Anorexia

I would like to talk to more people with anorexia. I need to learn more about it.

It seems to be a comparatively modern condition, along with widespread infertility and obesity and this makes me suspicious about its’ origins.

I do not believe it is always vanity or anxiety about keeping up with their peers that makes girls starve themselves to death. Could anybody be that anxious to emulate the pathetic, skeletal drug addicts that yo-yo in and out of “rehab” to mince up and down the cat walk at their agent’s beck and call? Is this a life, or is it a nightmare?

Professor Derek Bryce-Smith studied the condition and wrote a book on it. He put a lot of it down to Zinc deficiency. People who are seriously Zinc deficient lose their sense of smell and taste. This presumably makes food less attractive. A more marked deficiency will take away the appetite completely. As in other circumstances our biochemistry tends to influence our reactions. So if the thoughts of food are nauseating not eating will seem the more attractive option.

My favourite anorexic has often said to me “I don’t really like eating” or “slimming doesn’t bother me”. However, things had not got too serious, and once she could persuade herself that, for fertility purposes, eating was a necessity. Down the years there were four healthy babies, all over 7 lbs. (Interestingly on each occasion she was surprised / disappointed they were not bigger!)

My mind wonders over the whole problem in a random sort of way. Most health problems seem to spring from the previous generation. Are the mothers of the anorexics second-generation on the pill? Are they heavy drinkers or smokers? Are they allergic/coeliac/malabsorbing? Each of the above could mean the girl (and it is almost always girls) could have been born very Zinc deficient.

Again, as with obesity, has some appestat mechanism in the brain been disturbed, damaged. i.e. is there some brain thermostat regarding intake of food that in the anorexic is permanently switched to off, whereas in the obese person is permanently switched to on?

Here, mercury springs to mind. In an experiment in Australia, ewes had some of their teeth drilled and filled with mercury amalgam fillings. At middle-age, they all became obese. Sheep hold no strong views on weight gain either way, and they were fed on the same food – grass – that they normally ate.

The same type of study was performed on mice with the same results.

The contraceptive pill is another source of unplanned weight gain. Probably not merely in those that have taken the pill themselves, possibly in their daughters and, to a lesser but unknown degree, in those who drink the tap water that has been subtly altered by all the extra hormones voided by millions of women every day into the biosphere. Are at least some of the poor girls who become anorexic subjected to these types of pollution from an early age, and have learned to their horror that if they relax and eat normally the weight just piles on relentlessly?

My guess would be, there are a number of different types of anorexia. Finding out more about it will be helpful for all of us.

Forcing people to eat when it makes them vomit cannot be helpful. Finding out from the girls themselves probably will be. Meanwhile, looking at a hair analysis and seeing if there are high levels of a toxic metal, or very low levels of Zinc or Manganese - or other minerals – will be informative.

How are we going to restart you ovulating? Real meals, Zinc etc. and reflexology.

We should study this together. How much can you manage to eat? How big would you like to be? How big would you like your baby to be? We need to get it all right.

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