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Comment by relative-energy | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad there's a label for this that's not attached to the previous connotations of "anorexia." I'm a guy who struggled with eating disorder symptoms for most of my life, and hid them for fear of attaching AN stigma to myself.

Last year I got serious about researching the biology of eating disorders, and I'm convinced now that in 40 years we'll think of anorexia and its cousins more like type I diabetes than a mental disorder.

For example: did you know that it's possible to induce self-starvation and hyperactivity (hallmarks of eating disorders) in mice [1]? It's been known to science since the 1950s, but this fact is curiously absent in popular understanding of eating disorders.

This new understanding led me to start a recovery project, and happily it's working out: I've finally got relief from the awful mental fixations (like those described in this article).

[1] https://relative-energy.tumblr.com/post/183390573416/activit...

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Oh this is interesting. This behavior is fairly common knowledge among cat people: if you have an adult cat that's being persistently hyperactive and displaying increased hunting/pouncing in a manner that's out of character for your cat, you need to take your cat to the vet for a checkup, your cat probably has dental problems and isn't eating.

What I'd like to know is why this reaction isn't more common among humans. I'm a fat person who's tried calorie restriction and all it does is make me tired and depressed. I suspect there's a good reason for that, and it has a lot to do with why I'm a fat person in the first place.

Calorie restriction is different to starvation (at least as usually used). When I'm actually starving, I do feel strangely energetic. Your body takes time to switch into starvation mode and during that time you do feel lethargic. IIRC it takes about 6-8 hours of not eating to enter starvation mode.

When I'm actually starving, I do feel strangely energetic.

You get the same effect without starving, just restricting carbs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketosis

This is a very strange way of using the word starvation. You're more closely describing ketosis, but even that tends to take quite a bit longer than 6-8 hours to be significant.

If you feed your cat, shouldn't it be obvious how much of it's food it is eating? Unless it's hiding the food somewhere.

> What I'd like to know is why this reaction isn't more common among humans. I'm a fat person who's tried calorie restriction and all it does is make me tired and depressed. I suspect there's a good reason for that, and it has a lot to do with why I'm a fat person in the first place.

There're interesting stories about people changing their weight after a stool transplantation, without changing their diet.

The bacteria in the gut seems to have a deep impact how food is utilized, even which kind of food is preferred and how you feel eating it, but it also seems to work the other way around, that the food effects the kind of bacteria in the gut.

It makes perfect sense to work this way, on one side you prefer food you can better utilize, on the other your body is able to adapt to the available food.

So changing the bacteria eating different food should also be possible, but the change might be quite unpleasant, you certainly won't feel that well, it might take some time and you need quite a bit of will power to get through.

Unfortunately the studies on stool transplants didn't replicate.

There's a great book about this called "The Diet Myth" by Tim Specter. IIRC he's a Professor of Genetics and specialized in twin studies and sort of stumbled into researching gut bacteria because he was fascinated by identical twins were one was obese and other was a healthy weight. It's mindblowing how little we know and understand about such an important topic.

Edit: If you're interested, this talk[1] he gave at the Boston Science Museum is what made me read his book.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEAdtGa549I

> Last year I got serious about researching the biology of eating disorders, and I'm convinced now that in 40 years we'll think of anorexia and its cousins more like type I diabetes than a mental disorder.

I needed an absurd long time to realize how food intolerances are increasing my anxiety and obsessiveness. I never had strong physical reactions shortly after the eating, but very subtile and delayed - sometimes even days later - reactions mostly on the mental level, which made it very hard to connect the food with the reactions.

That changed my thinking about certain kinds of mental disorders quite a bit.

I'm in the process of identifying various foods that have negative effects on my health. It's frustrating, because there is absolutely no research or literature out there that validates or corroborates my findings. Send me an email (listed in my profile) if you want to compare notes.

I can only say that it is pretty hard identifying the food if you still eat somehow normally.

It is easier to make hard restrictions for some time - one to two weeks - until all your symptoms are gone and than add one food after another to see if they introduce the symptoms.

Additionally, anorexia manifests in equal rates between societies which have almost nothing in common culturally, falsifying the hypothesis that it is caused by cultural factors.

Regarding "orthorexia nervosa", on the other hand, there is a perverse incentive in psychology to define everything under the sun as a disorder. I do not see right off the bat why this should not be thought of as being different from a specific manifestation of OCD.

OCD is already heavily mis-used. Attaching more meaning to it isn't likely to improve anything.

Where do you have it from? Anorexia rates change even within the same society.

"An analysis of many studies from Europe and North America revealed that rates of anorexia increased sharply until the 1970s, when they stabilized.Rates of bulimia increased during the 1980s and early 1990s, and they have since remained the same or decreased slightly."

https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/toolkit/parent-toolk...

The same page show differences in anorexia rates between countries too.

> but this fact is curiously absent in popular understanding of eating disorders.

No it isn't, the "Minnie Maud" model is dominant. (Minnesota, the soldier starvation experiment, and Maudsley, a protocol developed by a specialist London hospital).

? Google for one doesn't think "Minnie Maud" is dominant outside of non-scientific fad blogs and one trademarked business offering.

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Minnie+Maud%22

https://edinstitute.org/homeodynamic

Minnesota Stavation Experiment: https://www.google.co.uk/search?source=hp&ei=3E7cXIXhF9HxkwX...

Eating Disorder Maudsley Model: https://www.google.co.uk/search?ei=5k7cXIPmF9eO1fAPjZu_0AI&q...

Wikipedia has this for the Maudsley model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maudsley_family_therapy

These are the main two prongs of anorexia treatment: feed people (by force if necessary) but be careful to avoid re-feeding syndrome; provide family based therapy.

More recently there are moves to early intervention, which is safer, more effective, longer lasting, and cheaper. One model might be FREED. https://www.health.org.uk/improvement-projects/first-episode...

What is the difference between diabetes and a mental illness, and why would eating disorders be less mental than other disorders? In other words, why wouldn't all mental disorders be more like diabetes?

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