Being healthy is often associated with being an ideal body weight, no matter what it takes to get there. There is often a blatant disregard for proper nutrition in order to meet this goal.
Proper nutrition is extremely important at every age and every phase of life. One of the systems it affects most is the nervous system, including the brain, notes Rebecca Taylor, who holds a doctorate in counselor education and supervision and is an assistant professor of counseling who specializes in eating disorders and body image at Colorado Christian University.
“An adolescent’s brain is not fully developed yet, so malnourishment and dieting can have grave impacts on the brain developing normally. As an individual moves into young adulthood and adulthood, we may see that their body is responding poorly to past nutrition maltreatment,” she said.
“Similarly to adolescents, when we consider nutrition in seniors, we know that it greatly promotes or inhibits brain functioning depending on if we use food to nourish our bodies and brains or deprive the body and brain from what they need to function well.”
She added, “As seniors are often presented with cognitive decline, memory loss, muscle atrophy and other medical complications, it is important to continue to nourish the brain through food and rest and body movement.”
Spectrum
One of the results of the idea of weight loss at all costs is the spectrum of eating disorders.
When the term “eating disorder” is mentioned, a person’s first thought is often anorexia or bulimia — lifestyles that either greatly restrict eating or involve throwing up after eating in order to lose weight. It is also most often associated with teenagers and looking extremely malnourished.
However, eating disorders aren’t simply a young person’s issue.
“Eating disorders are absolutely a concern in the geriatric population,” Taylor said. “Oftentimes individuals can go their entire lives with a subclinical eating disorder or an undiagnosed clinical eating disorder. However, when they reach an age where their body is declining and they do begin seeing weight loss, they may feel like they are ‘finally succeeding.’”
This perceived success can cause many age-related issues such as a focus on body image and calories, loss of enjoyment in activities, memory problems and other symptoms often attributed to getting older.
The National Institute of Mental Health writes in “Eating Disorders: About More Than Food” that eating disorders affect people of all ages, sizes, races and genders.
“Even people who appear healthy, such as athletes, can have eating disorders and be extremely ill. People with eating disorders can be underweight, normal weight or overweight. In other words, you can’t tell if someone has an eating disorder by looking at them,” the article says.
Signs
Knowing the signs of an eating disorder is the first step to getting someone with this condition the help needed.
According to Taylor, the main signs to watch for are:
- Rigid behaviors around food.
- Counting calories.
- Obsession with food.
- Overexercising or compensatory behavior after eating.
- Shame around food.
- Rapid weight loss or frequent fluctuations in weight.
- Body image preoccupation.
Malnutrition can lead to anxiety, depression and social isolation, all of which are factors in suicidal thoughts and impulses, thus making suicide an indirect consequence of this condition.
In addition, the malnutrition of eating disorders often leads to issues within relationships because it “isolates the individual into themselves and creates secrecy and mistrust,” Taylor said.
Treatment
Treatment options range from support groups to full-time inpatient programs to hospitalizations. Dealing with family systems and attitudes about food are an important part of recovery. It’s also important to fight the isolation the one with an eating disorder faces by providing meal support.
For teens and young adults, Taylor suggests a calm, private setting where concerns can be shared. A good conversation starter is, “Hey, I notice you are pretty anxious around food and don’t see yourself physically the way I see you. Would you be open to talk about that?”
For those worried about aging parents or grandparents, Taylor said to “ask curious, compassionate questions about their relationship with food and their body.”
She mentioned an individual whose 85-year-old mother had always been overweight and lived in a very diet-focused world. She is now very thin but still makes comments about the number of calories a food has and how she shouldn’t eat this or that.
The daughter was very worried about her not getting enough nutrition.
Taylor’s advice was to ask her about the difficulties regarding changing foods in order to combat the diet culture message she may have gotten throughout her life. Ways to help are not being on or talking about diets, listening before giving an opinion, collaborating with medical teams and trying the same foods doctors and nutritionists recommend to her.
The goal is to encourage her that getting the nutrition needed is more important than staying on a “diet.”
“There are many who are suffering who do want support but do not know how to ask for it. However, what an individual needs is always unique and specific to them,” Taylor said.
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