Some of you may say, “How will I re-identify my behavior to stop my eating disorder?
I got this disease because I have an obsessive gene from my mother. You can’t eradicate this gene from my genetic makeup.”

No, you can’t eradicate the unwanted gene from your genetic makeup and we are not trying to do this. What we are trying to do here is to change your response to the thoughts and feelings your brain generates.

Our genes have two kinds of fundamental properties. One of them is something that is not in our control. We have a certain set of genes we’re born with that keep replicating themselves. 

But the other aspect of our genes is in our control and it can be turned on and off according to how we live our life. This we can do something about, with the help of neuroplasticity.

Our brains are ever changing over the course of our lives. And your brain’s map is going to be determined by what you do day by day. You can start out doing new things today and in three weeks time your brain’s map will be completely different from what it was when you started.

This is what we call brain plasticity (or neuroplasticity), and the human genetic inheritance includes brain plasticity. This process occurs throughout our whole life. Brain plasticity can be controlled and directed if the person is aware of it and if the person wants to change his/her brain.

 It is interesting to note that our genes get turned on and off all the time. Even when you go to sleep some genes are turned on and others are turned off and when you wake in the morning other genes join the game. Research has shown that our thoughts also influence these switches and this gives us a lot more control over our genes that we realise.

 Now, I have the highest regard for genetics, but now it is certain that some aspects of genes can be controlled by our will, life style and habits. Just the fact that the brain can change itself in accordance to what we do and how we think. This means we have to place a lot of importance in the power of free will over our lives.

So, the notion that an obsession gene (that caused your ED ) is controlling your life appears to be false. It is how you perceive and respond to the messages from the environment that controls your life.

If, in your environment you perceive yourself as fat, ugly, anxious or inappropriate and your response to this kind of perception is to starve or binge, purge, take laxatives or over exercising to feel better, then you are letting the environment control you.

 What you should be doing is working through them trying to overcome the false urge? This will make much more of a difference to your outcome than blaming a genetic predisposition for your eating disorder.

Go to http://www.eating-disorders-books.com for more information.

Dr Irina Webster MD.

The Cardiff University is putting together a Collaborative Working in Eating Disorders module to be studied as part of the School’s MSc in Advanced Practice by the university’s school of nursing.

 Although this seems a noble cause I do get a little concerned when academia and governments gets involved with the treatment or suggested treatment of a disorder. Academics are renowned for not being able to think outside the square and get bogged down with dogma, so will concentrate on the so called conventional approach to eating disorders.

Governments are even worse tending to back the established approach even if it does not work, they can’t afford any political backlash if they make a mistake. Plus it is always good to be seen as doing something in the eyes of the voters. So to save themselves down the track they also back the conventional approach.

From reading the article it seems apparent that the course will have its basis on the conventional approach to the treatment of eating disorders and this is worrying and will only produce much of the same thinking that is prevalent now. 

As an eating disorder specialist, author of two books on the subject and an ex-sufferer of anorexia and bulimia myself: I know the conventional approach is not that great. I myself did the rounds of therapists etc, to no avail for years and I was training to be a doctor, so you would think it should have worked.

 I am not the only person who has gone through multiple treatments only to find they did not work; I get emails everyday from people telling me the same thing.

Here are a few abbreviated emails.

 I am helping a young adult girl whom I have become extremely fond of!… At the age of 14 she became anorexic and eventually bulimic. She has been in clinics a number of times, but every time she just goes home things just continue where she left off…
Charleen SA.

My daughter is 22 years old and she was suffering ED for 2 years… For your information she has been treated in the ED clinic as outpatient, visiting the internist doctor and the psychologist regularly to no avail…
Li Australia.

My daughter has been in and out the eating disorder clinic in Minneapolis, Minnesota for the last 4 years. I’m tired of them, she continues to struggle…
D M USA.

I took her to our health care Clinic and they seemed to have a handle on the disorder and they seemed to be helping with all kinds of counseling, nutritionist, psychiatrist and nursing… but once home she “back-slid” back into binging and purging.
VF, GB.

These emails are very typical from people contacting me still searching for answers when the conventional treatments have failed.

There is a very good reason why this happens and why sufferers fail to get better after showing promise while in the clinic? Conventional treatment methods do not confront the disorder where it lives in the subconscious mind of the sufferer. They do not understand that an eating disorder is a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

But unlike the person who has to wash their hands 100 times a day, or the sufferer who has to check to see if the gas is turned off 200 times before they can leave their home. These people get nothing but pain from their OCD, whereas the ED sufferer actually gets pleasure from their disordered eating habits.

This extra element of pleasure adds a different dimension to the disorder and is most difficult to treat with conventional approaches used in clinics and by therapists. Sitting and talking to a therapist rehashing old hurts for hours is not going to help. This is a logical approach to a disorder that is not the least bit logical. After all why would someone purposely starve themselves to death and know they are doing it?

In my view there is really only one method that can beat an eating disorder and that is one that attacks the ED where it lives in the subconscious mind of the sufferer. To do this you have to use the power of Neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the ability to change the way our brain functions by how we think, feel and act.

With the use of specialized methods to promote positive feelings, emotions, action and pictures we can change the faulty neuronal pathways and negative programming that has occurred in mind of the sufferer. The beauty of using a specialized neuroplasticity approach to curing eating disorders is it can be used at home.

This is the place all ED sufferers fail and relapse back into their old habits, because the triggers that control their habits are all at home, they are not in the clinic or therapists rooms.  

 I believe that any university course however noble it may seem if it does not incorporate the use of neuroplasticity and a method to change the neuronal pathways in the brain will not help. This will only produce a whole new batch of conventional method thinkers to the detriment of the eating disorder sufferer.

To read more about Neuroplasticity is the key for eating disorder help go to http://www.eating-disorders-books.com

“Plasticity” relates to learning by adding or removing connections, or adding cells. According to the theory of neuroplasticity, thinking, learning, and acting actually change the brain’s physical structure or anatomy as well as functional organization, known as physiology, from top to bottom.

The brain’s plasticity exists from “cradle to grave” and the adult brain is not “hard-wired” with fixed and immutable neuronal circuits as was previously thought.

So, neuroplasticity is the power to produce a more flexible and beneficial behaviour for the treatment of eating disorders. However, these positive changes will only happen if you target the eating disorder in a certain way. These can be subdivided into 5 steps of actions that you should undertake to stop your eating disorder.

The 1st step: Believe that you can stop your eating disorder.
Do exercises to begin changing the way your mind works.

2nd step: Re- Identify.
Recognize the false nature of your eating disorder thoughts.

3rd step: Re-Symbolize.
Escape from loop thinking that feeds the eating disorder.
Loop thinking is when a thought like binging or starving oneself gets caught in a loop going around it the brain continuously and never being released.

4th step: Re-Direct.
Defeat recurrent thoughts that give power to the disorder.

5th step: Re-Evaluate.
De-value and ignore harmful urges until they start to fade away.

By following these steps you can clearly see that by directing your attention away from food, weight and body image, you could learn to focus on positive eating habits and overcome destructive negative thoughts. Doing this, you as a eating disorder sufferer will be able to make permanent changes to your own neuronal pathways and change your life.

To conclude, I want to say that the power of neuroplasticity can be a real “cure” for eating disorder sufferers. By eating disorder “cure” I mean that you achieve a state of mind where you can control your thoughts and feelings, instead of the thoughts and feelings controlling you. You can do this by influencing your subconscious mind.

The subconscious mind is your hidden level of awareness, where your automatism lies. This part of your brain controls all the things you have learned that are now automatic such as riding a bike, tying your shoe laces, and unfortunately for the sufferer the place where the eating disorder lives.

With the help of the 5 steps you will learn that it is possible for you to reach your subconscious mind and make certain positive changes that will turn your life around: at escape from your eating disorder.

Find eating disorders books go to http://www.eating-disorders-books.com