• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1004 0

P. Slade, “Towards a Functional Analysis of Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa,” British Journal of Clinical Psychology 21 (1982): 167–79. See M. Boskind-Lodahl and J. Sirlin, “The Gorging-Purging Syndrome,” Psychology Today (March 1977), 50–52, 82–85, for a survey of the rate of dieting just before bulimia starts. For two epidemiological studies linking dieting quite tightly to eating disorders, see G. Patton, E. Johnson-Sabine, K. Wood, et al., “Abnormal Eating Attitudes in London Schoolgirls—A Prospective Epidemiological Study: Outcome at Twelve Month Follow-up,” Psychological Medicine 20 (1990): 383–94; and K. Kendler, C. MacLean, M. Neale, et al., “The Genetic Epidemiology of Bulimia Nervosa,” American Journal of Psychiatry 148 (1991): 1627–37. Dieters are at least eight times more likely to get an eating disorder than nondieters.

22. I take my hat off to S. Dalvit-McPhillips, “A Dietary Approach to Bulimia Treatment,” Physiology and Behavior 33 (1984): 769–75. It is a shame that this paper has remained obscure.

23. See Fairburn and Beglin, “Studies of the Epidemiology of Bulimia Nervosa,” for a complete review of the cognitive-behavioral studies, and C. Fairburn, R. Jones, R. Peveler, et al., “Three Psychological Treatments for Bulimia Nervosa,” Archives of General Psychiatry 48 (1991): 463–69, for an exemplary outcome study. For a fine antidepressant drug study, see U. McCann and W. S. Agras, “Successful Treatment of Nonpurging Bulimia Nervosa with Desimpramine: A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Study,” American Journal of Psychiatry 147 (1990): 1509–13. The two outcome studies that explicitly compare drugs and cognitive-behavioral therapy are J. Mitchell, R. Pyle, E. Eckert, et al., “A Comparison Study of Antidepressants and Structured Intensive Group Psychotherapy in the Treatment of Bulimia Nervosa,” Archives of General Psychiatry 47 (1990): 149–57; and W. S. Agras, E. Rossiter, B. Arnow, et al., “Pharmacologic and Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment for Bulimia Nervosa: A Controlled Comparison,” American Journal of Psychiatry 149 (1992): 82–87.

24. C. Telch, W. Agras, and E. Rossiter, “Binge Eating Increases with Increasing Adiposity,” International Journal of Eating Disorders 7 (1988): 115–19. See G. T. Wilson, “Short-term Psychological Benefits and Adverse Effects of Dieting and Weight Loss,” paper delivered at the NIH conference “Methods for Voluntary Weight Loss and Control” (1991), for the argument that dieting may be necessary but not sufficient for bulimia.

25. J. Brody, “Study Defines ‘Binge Eating Disorder,’” New York Times, 27 March 1992, A16.

26. There is an inconclusive small literature about the effect of artificial sweeteners on weight gain. Some researchers have shown that rats gain weight with artificial sweeteners, but some have shown the reverse. It’s the same with human subjects. (See Appetite 11 [1988]: supplement 1.) No one has attempted the right study: a long-term follow-up of overweight people who are put on (or taken off) artificial sweeteners. It would cost about $5 million to do this study and find out if the $10-billion-a-year diet-food industry is a scam.

27. L. Craighead, A. Stunkard, and R. O’Brien, “Behavior Therapy and Pharmacotherapy for Obesity,” Archives of General Psychiatry 38 (1981): 763–68.

28. This study may prove to be a watershed, shifting the treatment of obesity from dietary (too ineffective) or surgical (too radical) to pharmacological. It was published in eight articles as “Long-term Weight Control: The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Funded Multimodal Intervention Study,” Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (supplement) (May 1992), 581–646.

29. This footnote could be a chapter in length, but I am going to resist. Rather, I will be selective and highlight just the best studies to guide the student of this topic as to why I come to the conclusions I do:

Enormous Obesity (100 percent above “ideal” weight): E. Drenick, S. Gurunanjappa, F. Seltzer, and D. Johnson, “Excessive Mortality and Causes of Death in Morbidly Obese Men,” Journal of the American