Anorexia may be a disorder more of the metabolism than the mind,
according to a new paper that argues the disease is a sort of
cousin of diabetes. But this theory of anorexia as a
fundamentally biological disorder, rather than a psychological
one, is untested, psychiatrists warn, and patients with the
disease should not stray from proven treatments. The review of
past research on the topic, published in the June issue of the
journal Molecular Psychiatry, finds that certain genetic and
cellular processes get activated during starvation in organisms
ranging from yeast to fruit flies to mice to humans. The idea,
said study researcher Donard Dwyer, is that in people with a
broken starvation response, a few initial rounds of dieting
could trigger a metabolism gone haywire. In this theory, it’s
not stubbornness or a mental disorder that keeps anorexics from
eating, it’s their own bodies. The theory could explain why it
can be so difficult to convince anorexic patients that anything
is wrong with them, Dwyer told Li