Recently I wrote about the traditional model for treating Anorexia, which is a moderation model, versus my approach, which is abstinence (avoiding polluted foods altogether and eating only clean foods that nourish the body.) I pointed out how much easier it is to get someone with Anorexia to eat clean foods during re-feeding than it is to get them to eat processed/polluted foods. I also pointed out that they enter recovery sooner and are much less likely to relapse when the foods they eat nourish their minds and their bodies.
In reality, when you force someone that is Anorexic to eat polluted foods during residential treatment, their eating disorder sometimes morphs into something new. It’s called Bulimarexia and it is the new kid on the block when it comes to disordered eating. It is also one of the most difficult eating disorders to treat. It is like the worst of both worlds, restricting with bingeing and purging, or two different types of addiction competing with each other.
Why am I calling them addictions? The latest research indicates that the Anorexic becomes addicted to restricting. Well guess what? The Bulimarexic is addicted to restricting as well as to bingeing and simply cycles back and forth, often with a vengeance. So there is the addiction to restricting alongside the addiction to bingeing on certain foods, such as those loaded with sweets, and/or damaged fats. Some Bulimics and Bulimarexics, are also addicted to the act of bingeing, which is often used as an escape from the pressures of life and to the act of purging, which provides a sense of emptiness and/or release. Complicated, right?
If we have someone that is addicted to restricting and also addicted to bingeing on polluted foods, abstinence is the only thing that makes sense. What the research cited earlier teaches us is that addiction is all about the part of the brain that fires up when we ingest certain things and that if we want to get over one addiction, we must give them all up, because if we don’t they simply trigger each other. In other words, if you are addicted to cocaine, and you try to substitute sweets (sugar), you are more at risk to keep using the cocaine. Or if you are bulimic and alcoholic and you try to give up the bulimia, but not the alcohol, you are more likely to relapse when it comes to the bulimia.
When it comes to traditional treatment for Anorexia, we actually have treatment centers encouraging the substitution of one addiction for another. That’s right, I said it. Traditional residential and Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) centers seem to drive this new and very intractable form of eating disorder, Bulimarexia. The residential and IOP centers do it by insisting that the patient learns to eat “all things in moderation.” That includes fast foods and processed foods. The problem is that U.S. foods, especially fast foods contain a number of addictants, such as high fructose corn syrup, an excitatory neurotoxin, hybridized grains that have been shown to be highly addicting and table sugar which is 90% GMO and has been found to be as addicting as Cocaine. They are also loaded with Canola Oil, a trans fat and a GMO, and various forms of MSG, an addictant used to fatten lab rats for over 100 years.
The typical residential treatment program insists that their “graduates” must be able to eat a “Big Mac, fries and a coke” or they are not ready to go home. That is actually a quote from the director of a residential treatment center that I interviewed. My staff and I conducted 15 such interviews with well-respected residential treatment centers around the country and the consensus was that if the patient couldn’t do fast food, they were not sufficiently over their fear of foods to warrant discharge.
That’s the stated rationale anyway. But I think it may also be a matter of increasing profits. For example, I have had several meet and greets with residential treatment centers recently hoping that I would refer to them. When I ask about the quality of their food, if it is all organic, they look at me as if I have two heads. “We could not possibly justify the expense” one young woman candidly explained to me after I pushed on the value of clean food when it comes to recovery.
Really? They can’t afford clean food? They charge $1500 per day/per patient! For that $10,500 per week, the patient sees a licensed practitioner once for a total of 50 minutes and maybe a psychiatrist for a few minutes for a med check. Given that these centers keep the cost of professional help to a minimum, you’d at least expect the food to be top shelf and loaded with best that nature has to offer, right? Not happening.
When the Anorexic patient goes into residential treatment, she is forced or strongly pressured into eating polluted foods. A percentage end up with symptoms of Bulimia or Bulimarexia as a result. I currently have a patient that wouldn’t eat the food and ended up being fed boost 6 times a day for 13 days in a row. When I got her as a patient, she hadn’t had solid food in weeks.
“Well, Dr. Norton,” I can hear some of you saying, “Boost is actually really good for you.”
Okay. Let me challenge that perception. What is the problem with Boost? It is a recipe for addiction and obesity. Here are the ingredients in a Boost according to the label information on the Boost website:
Does any of this look like food to you? It doesn’t to me. Of the first three ingredients, two are sugar which has been shown to be as addicting as cocaine and both are likely GMO, both reasons that this drink can encourage food addiction. Most of the proteins have been denatured, rendering them a form of processed L-Glutamine, aka MSG, an excitatory neurotoxin that causes addiction and obesity. The fats are hydrogenated and/or GMO. Hydrogenated fats, or trans fats, are dangerous to the vascular system and GMOs have been shown to cause weight gain, among many other problems. Canola oil is one of the most dangerous fats on the market. Soy is an endocrine disruptor. The cocoa is processed with alkali which removes the benefits of the cocoa (antioxidant value). The milk protein is a denatured protein, which renders it a form of MSG, an addictant that is also fattening. There are several vitamins listed. The problem is that they are likely synthetic and genetically engineered. Do we really want a person that is deathly afraid of food and unhealthy weight gain to “eat” this stuff? And furthermore, are we really accepting that at $1500 a day in residential treatment, that the best re-feeding protocol for this patient is a $1.32 boost drink six times a day? I mean, you’d think that for $1500 a day someone could make my patient a smoothie with something real in it.
Still think it is an overstatement that U.S. foods are designed as binge foods? Is moderation, or all things in moderation still a good idea?
Let me know what you think on twitter @drrenae
-Dr. Norton
#GetSunEatCleanBeWell
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