Loving parents want the best for their children -- health, happiness, contentment and success. So this story of a family in the UK whose daughter is battling an eating disorder broke my heart. What makes the situation worse is that the teenager blames her problems on her father, who is obese.

So often, as parents, we worry about the external forces that influence our kids. From TV shows, to dolls, to ads in magazines ... everything is a potential force that can sway our kids away from the values we'd like them to have. But the influences within our homes are even stronger. The examples we set -- with our health, our actions, our morals -- are more powerful than any external source.

The dad whose daughter has an eating disorder and blames it on him was obviously heartbroken. He loves his daughter and he wants her healthy and well. I hope, while recognizing that his habits did influence her, he realizes that her eating disorder isn't his fault. I so respect the way he's handling it, though. As his daughter is receiving treatment for her eating disorder, he's also seeking help for his obesity. While they're on opposite sides of the issue, I wish them both the best of luck on resolving their issues with food and getting to a healthy weight.

Source

Aaron Ferguson, a former accountant for Rachael Ray's TV cooking show, has filed a $1 million lawsuit after being fired. Ferguson has battled anorexia for about six years. While employed on Rachael Ray's show, Ferguson says others treated him with hostility because of his condition. He says that his supervisor made "vile, discriminatory, and hurtful comments."

Ferguson, who began working for CBS Television Distributions, Inc. in July 2007, says that he complained about the discriminatory language regarding people with anorexia, but the situation didn't improve. He was fired in October 2007. Ferguson feels he was terminated because he complained about wrongful treatment. Rachael Ray is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

If you know someone who is battling anorexia, bulimia, or other eating disorder, they need your support and understanding. HelpGuide has some information on eating disorders and how to best support loved ones who are battling the condition.

Source

There appears to be a gap in the health care system (ha! one among many...) when it comes to identifying eating disorders in boys and some ethnic groups. Obviously, boys and some foreign cultures don't display the same behaviors and symptoms as the "white females" the system was designed for, and so these patients inevitably "fall through the cracks." One example is the fact that doctors and clinicians are trained to pay special attention when patients express an interest in being "thin," but most boys will instead say things along the lines of "fit" and "healthy," and those terms don't set off the same alarms.

So it's pretty obvious at this point that some of the training in this area needs closer examination and perhaps even a complete overhaul. As news about the rising obesity epidemic in this country continues, the pressure for our children will only get worse.

Source

Researchers have found a link between individuals who are strongly right-handed (meaning they rarely if ever use their non-dominant hand to lead tasks) and distorted body image/eating disorders. Experts say it seems to have something to do with the fact that the brain processes body image mostly in the right hemisphere and right-handed people often have "decreased access" to that entire right side. No definitive word in the article on how this may help with treatment.

I don't like the idea of "decreased access" to any area of my brain (I need every cell I have!), and aren't the majority of us right-handed? How unfortunate.

Source

More and more older women are being diagnosed everyday with eating disorders -- it's not just a teenager's issue anymore. It's not clear why so many women in the their 30s, 40s, and 50s are now showing symptoms of anorexia and bulimia, but some experts think it may not necessarily be an increase in eating disorders so much as increased awareness and more accurate diagnosing of eating disorders. They say also say that in most cases the older patients previously had some kind of eating disturbance (when they were a younger, more typical age), suggesting there was an underlying problem the whole time that just finally came to the surface due to midlife stresses.

There is some good news, however: experts are reporting increased success with new team-based treatment approaches -- as long as family and friends are on board for support.

Source