The Science of Eating Disorders

The Nature of Obesity

Obesity is currently defined as anyone who has a body mass index (BMI) that is 30 or greater and is considered a disease by many medical professionals who work with this population.

Some of the causes of obesity are glandular malfunctions, malnutrition, emotional tension, boredom, habit, and love of food. It has also been linked to food sensitivities or food allergies and may be the result of either binge eating disorder or compulsive eating.

Obesity results from a complex interaction between genes and the environment characterized by long-term energy imbalance. Hereditary plays a primary role in the development of overweight and obesity, but lifestyle choices can be the most influential. These include lack of physical activity, a diet high in fat, sugar, and low in fiber, smoking, and stress.

Obesity develops in a society characterized by sedentary life style, mechanization, and good access to abundant food. The average American is less physically active. We are attempting to lose weight or control our weight by reducing the amount of food we eat (dieting through restriction) rather than increasing our activity levels. Americans also now consume 15-20 pounds more fat each year than we did 100 years ago. Eating fat can make you fat. So can dieting. As we've heard many times, frequent dieting is related to weight gain. A Finnish study conducted in 1999 reported that dieters were several times more likely than non-dieters to experience major weight gain (considered more than 22 pounds) during follow-up.

Fitness and Metabolic Health

Fitness is not integrally related to weight, nor should it be limited to measures of cardiorespiratory capacity and endurance, which have dominated our ideas of fitness. A person's focus on blood pressure, blood sugar, and blood cholesterol levels is in response to a different concept of fitness. The above parameters (blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol levels) are the basics of a new definition of fitness which some call "metabolic fitness." Healthy bodies come in many shapes and sizes and we need to begin to view exercise and diet as more than just a means to an end (weight loss). People can be physically active, eat healthy foods, and not obsess about the numbers on the scale.

Hypercortisolemia

Cortisol is a hormone that the body creates in order to deal with stress and hypercortisolemia is simply the overproduction of cortisol. Basically, people who have hypercortisolemia are unable to shut off the stress response so they are constantly responding to stress differently than other people. High stress responses can come from many different sources such as traumatic events, busy lifestyles, or physically, emotionally or spiritually threatening situations. Stress responses are real and are typically out of the control of the person experiencing them.

The link between eating disorders and hypercortisolemia are best seen by examining the common symptoms present in both disorders: depression, anxiety, anorexia, bulimia, panic attacks, attention deficit, cognitive impairment, insomnia, hypothalamic amenorrhea, osteopenia, decreased immune functioning and decreased functioning of the intestinal tract.

At Mirasol, we treat the eating disorder as the symptom of a greater multidimensional stress related disorder. Therefore, we treat the whole person so that the psychological (high risk model of threat perception) and physical (hypercortisolemia) stress responses are brought to conscious awareness and treated through stress reduction modalities. This empowers clients to have the ability to gain control over their individual stress responses and to make life-long, sustained, choice-based change.

Insulin Resistance

Insulin resistance is an extremely important factor when considering overweight and obesity and their concurrent health risks. It is a precursor to diabetes which is one of largest health problems facing Americans today. The numbers of people with diabetes are at an all time high and are rapidly increasing!

Insulin is a naturally occurring hormone which is used to metabolize glucose, the body's major source of energy. When the problem is not with insulin production but with the ability to use the insulin effectively, it's known as insulin resistance.

Insulin resistance is a reduced sensitivity in the tissues of the body to the action of insulin which is to bring glucose into the tissues to be used as a major source of energy. When insulin resistance (or reduced insulin sensitivity) exists, the body will attempt to overcome this resistance by secreting even more insulin from the pancreas. When the pancreas is no longer able to sustain the increase in insulin secretion, diabetes develops. Insulin resistance describes a group of symptoms, including obesity, hypertension, lower HDL cholesterol, and high triglycerides, which can increase a person's risk for diabetes and heart disease. This group of abnormalities is interrelated. Experts state that 10-25% of the adult population may be insulin resistant.

If a person combines insulin resistance and the classic four features associated with aging (sedentary life style, smoking, stress, and genetic susceptibility), then the risk for cardiovascular disease dramatically increases.