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Laura Shah was diagnosed with the disease at the age of 15
According to an international study, anorexia nervosa diet disorders are both in the mind and in the body.
Anorexia is considered a serious psychiatric illness.
However, doctors at King's College London have shown that wired changes in the DNA of some people were altering the way they treated fats and sugars and could make it easier to starve. their body.
Beat, a charity specializing in eating disorders, said these discoveries were groundbreaking.
What is anorexia?
It's a eating disorder that leads people to lose as much weight as possible by eating little and sometimes doing excessive exercise.
People suffering from anorexia often have a distorted image of themselves and may feel fat even if their weight is dangerously inadequate.
It is more likely to affect young women but can affect anyone of any age or gender.
In the long run, anorexia can damage muscles, bones, heart, fertility and can be fatal.
It can be treated and people can recover completely.
- Beat – Charity disorder of the diet
- NHS: Anorexia
What does anorexia look like?
Laura Shah, 23, of Suffolk, was diagnosed at the age of 15 and left school to undergo treatment.
She was brilliant and very powerful; she used exercise as a coping mechanism, but it was "getting out of hand".
She said the illness had had a "massive and rather horrible" impact on her family.
His mother had to leave his job to take care of him (his father was working abroad at the time) and this had created "many problems of trust".
She is much better now, but anorexia remains a challenge, including:
- go out to eat an appointment when "it's annoying not to be able to eat"
- listen to people at work talk about dieting, which triggers anorexic thoughts and behaviors
What did the study show?
The researchers examined 16,992 people with anorexia and 55,525 people without disease from 17 countries.
All their DNA – the blueprint of the human body – was analyzed for mutations in genetic instructions that were more common in anorexic patients.
The study, published in Nature Genetics, revealed some mutations also shown in other psychiatric disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, and schizophrenia.
But they also found mutations in the instructions that control the body's metabolism, especially those involving blood sugar and body fat.
"There is something about these systems that went wrong," Professor Janet Treasure, of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, told BBC News.
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The researchers – at King's and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – believe that anorexia should now be considered a "metabo-psychiatric disorder" because it is a disease of the mind and body.
How does the metabolism affect the risk of anorexia?
Researchers have not fully explored the role played by the genetic instructions they have discovered.
However, they suspect that mutations allow people to stay hungry longer.
When most people lose weight, signals in the body grow back, stimulating appetite.
"These are very important for controlling the weight set point," Professor Treasure told BBC News.
"It's possible that when people lose weight with anorexia nervosa, they do not have such powerful drivers who bring the set point back to normal."
What is the significance of these results?
"It's very important because it's hard to know what the anorexia disorder is," Professor Treasure told BBC News.
"There were fluctuations in our understanding
"Now we know that it is a complex mix of body and mind aspects that interact and cause this complex disorder."
Knowing that anorexia was a mixture of physics and mind could persuade patients to go for treatment, she added.
What do the experts say?
Andrew Radford, CEO of Beat, said, "This is a groundbreaking research that dramatically increases our understanding of the genetic origins of this serious disease.
"We strongly encourage researchers to review the results of this study and to think about how it can contribute to the development of new treatments so that we can end the pain and suffering caused by mental health disorders." # 39; s feed. "
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