Welcome to The Eating Disorder Institute

There are many kinds of meditation techniques available these days.  How to choose which one is the best for a person with an eating disorder? 

Are any methods better than the others? 

Meditation is a practice of focusing your attention for some time on specific emotional states, mantras (non-religious), breath, intentions, specific focal points, visualization, thoughts, or simply being aware of what is happening in the present moment.

But please don’t think because we used the word meditation that you have to become a Zen monk or some kind of guru who sits on top of a mountain in India some place.

We are also not talking about some weird religious cult or anything like that. We are talking about scientific techniques proven by modern day science. In fact we like to use the term Mindful Awareness as this is one of the secrets to beating an eating disorder.   

To choose the right meditation technique (Mindful Awareness) for an eating disorder sufferer let’s look at what kind of meditation are the most common nowadays.

1. Body-Centered meditation. This includes yoga, tai chi, pranayama, and gigong. All of them use gentle movement, deep breathing, stretching and being present in your own body.
2. Heart-Centered meditation. This includes Buddhist loving-kindness meditation and Christian prayer. These practices require a focused attention through repetition of phrases that reinforce loving intention and devotion. 
3. Mind-Centered meditation. This includes Buddhist Insight meditation, Hindu focus on the “Third eye” and Transcendental meditation. These are mantra-based meditations and can be learned only from an authorized master who gives a unique mantra for every student. 
4. Spirit-Centered meditation. This includes communion with God, Source, or Spiritual meditation. One example of this is “Centering Prayer” a technique in which your intention goes beyond the relaxation or health benefit. In this meditation you have surrender to God that is the Source of your Being.

Each meditation system has certain benefits and people with eating disorders can practice any of them if it is what they believe in.

But has previously stated we recommend a kind of meditation called Mindful Awareness.   

People with eating disorders need a special focus on resolving their issues like stopping urges to binge, purge or starve while meditating. This is important for them because until they learn to ignore, re-label, re-value, and re-focus their thoughts about food, weight and body image issues, they wouldn’t be able focus on anything else. That makes all the above meditation techniques except Mindful Awareness difficult for them.

First if they learn to concentrate by focusing on how to cope with their abnormal food and weight urges that this is much more helpful to them.

This special meditation can be done in an upright seated position either in a chair or cross-legged on a blanket on the floor, even lying down. The spine is straight yet relaxed. Eyes can be closed to better access a relaxed state. Then by listening to specific guidance (on a CD, iPod etc) telling them how to deal with their urges (binging, purging, starving, etc) they can reach their subconscious mine where the ED lives.

By listening and following the instruction while in meditative (Mindful Awareness) state they can benefit and over time learn to control the ED voices that keep them locked into their eating disorder.

The benefits from doing this special meditation are:

1) Reduction of stress and anxiety,

2) Decrease of urges to overeat and purge,

3) Improvement of food toleration in anorexics,

4) Improved confidence, calming the mind, clarity of thinking, 

5) Improvement in motivations, understanding of happiness and indentifying their purpose in life.

To get significant and life-changing benefits from this kind of meditation people should start with as little as 5-20 minutes a day practiced consistently over time.

Generally speaking, mediation (Mindful Awareness) can help enormously to improve mental, physical and spiritual health of people suffering with eating disorders.

To read more about mindfulness training for eating disorders go to http://www.meditation-sensation.com

Neuroplasticity is the ability of the human brain to change itself based on how we live our lives. Our brain consists of cells or neurons that are interconnected. It means that different life experiences and different behaviours are constantly changing the strength of these connections, by adding or removing connections, and by adding new cells.

“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.

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

Anorexia Recovery.

I have often been told by sufferers, family members and even other experts that anorexia can never be cured and you have it for life.

I want to refute this claim because it can be cured. People who normally make these statements do not understand or have even heard of the power of neuroplasticity on eating disorders.

Let me ask you this: if you cut your arm and have to have in stitched does the open cut last all your life? No in gets better, you may have a scar on your arm the rest of your life, but you don’t have the wound.

Anorexia like all eating disorders is a manifestation of out of whack brain chemicals and faulty neuronal pathways in your brain. These can be reversed using neuroplastic therapies. Sure you will always have a scar to show for all your years of physical abuse, but the disorder will not be in control.

Neuroplasticity gives you the means to change your brain by applying simple methods to stop the urges from controlling your actions. As long as you apply them the urges will fade away until you have changed the way your brain functions and the anorexia will disappear.

We have put together this video that goes from suffering to health and this can easily be you.

 You lived in a deception
Your mind created once

But now is the time to stop it
For good, not just for a month

 You will become a person
Who lives in a richer world

Who eats to Live to Love and Hope
To thrive, progress and grow!

By Dr Irina Webster.

If you have any inspiring poetry or story about fighting Anorexia please send it to us and we will post it on the blog for you.

The Main Questions You Must Ask Yourself in order to Cure Your Eating Disorder.

We have already discussed what eating disorders are about. They are about coping, relationships, life-style, thoughts and feelings.

Sufferers become slaves to their disorder.  They do everything possible to be able to act out their compulsions (binging-purging, starving, overexercising, taking laxatives etc.)  The ED becomes a substitute for the most valuable things in their lives like friendship and lifestyle.

Think about it– would you have turned to an eating disorder if you had good coping strategies, were able to manage your emotions better and had good relationships with people? Probably not, because eating disorders are always caused by discomfort and discomfort comes from paying too much attention to the problem that caused the discomfort in the first place.

1st  question: What would you be doing right now, if you had absolutely no limitations, you were a billionaire, and you knew you could not fail?

2nd question: What would you share with the world, if your message were to be broadcast throughout all of the world’s television stations for 5 minutes? What would you say, what would your message be?

Did you answer these questions?  If not stop reading and answer them first… Why?
Because knowing the answer to these two questions are very important to conquer your ED.

As we know eating disorders are disorders of:
-     life style,
-    relationships,
-    coping ,
-    thoughts and feelings.

So basically what is holding you back from a better life is only a bunch of negative feelings and emotions that appear to be your eating disorder.  You really have to think of why this is, what good is it doing you to be held back by something that is not real and thoughts and negative emotion are not real.

They are just how you perceive them to be, ask someone else about these feelings and see what they think. The answer would probably be: so what, what’s the big deal, just laugh them off and get on with life. They are not trying to be mean to you or put your feelings down; they really are not such a big deal in the grand scheme of things. So why are you letting them ruin your life: it just doesn’t make sense?

But now let’s go to your answers for the questions above. Did you find the questions difficult? Or you just can’t believe in that they are possible? If this is the case, please open your mind, accept the possibility without the proof and discover the real you that hides in the shadows of your eating disorder.

Every experience we have had in the past, or will have in the future, always, without exception, has an emotional element attached to it. You got your eating disorder because you started attaching too many emotions to your body image and yourself in general. This emotional component took up most of you attention.

OK there may have been some really bad things that got you to where you are, but you can’t change the past. Is the person responsible for these bad things suffering?

I don’t think so?

So let me ask you this: why are you???

Don’t let these misguided misplaced feelings and emotions ruin your life: it is time for you to change and neuroplasticity will certainly do this for you.

Eating disorders are result of “plastic paradox” – when neuroplasticity goes off track.

Neuroplasticity has the power to produce a more flexible and productive behaviour and even completely change your life from bad to phenomenal success. But neuroplasticity is not only a good news story.  Sometimes it can produce more rigid and inflexible behaviours.

This phenomenon Dr Norman Doidge calls “the plastic paradox”.  In his book “The Brain That Changes itself” he said: “Ironically, some of our most stubborn habits and disorders are products of our plasticity. Once a particular plastic change occurs in the brain and becomes well established, it can prevent other changes from occurring. It is by understanding both the positive and negative effects of plasticity that we can truly understand the extent of human possibilities.”

Let’s go back in time to when your eating disorder first got started. For instance, your trigger, lets say in the beginning of your ED you were being bulled at school for being slightly overweight or maybe your sport coach told you to lose weight in order to be fit for competition. You were very emotional about these episodes. You were thinking about it all day and night trying to find a solution to lose weight faster. As a result of your emotional thoughts you changed your behaviour. You cut down on the amount of food you ate, overexercised etc. You continued this routine for some time.

And what happen then? – As a consequence of your new behaviour you changed your brain, you developed new neuronal pathways which were then responsible for not-eating, purging, overexercising and taking laxatives.

When neuronal pathways are developing, they get activated even without your conscious awareness that it is happening. This is why the anorexic or bulimic person continue to starve, binge-purge, overexercise, take laxatives even though they know they should stop doing it.

There is saying: “Our life today is truly the product of our thoughts from yesterday”.  And eating disorders prove this saying to be extremely true .  This is because in the past you had a lot of thoughts about dissatisfaction with your weight – today you have an eating disorder.

But the good news is that an eating disorder is not a death or a life sentence. You can stop one by changing the structure of your brain and developing new neuronal pathways which will override the old ones.  And neuroplasticity will help you to do this.

Here is a visual example of how neuroplasticity works in the brain.

Basic neuroplastic change (restructure of the brain) occurs approximately in 3 weeks after starting a new regime.  Of course, stubborn habits and bad disorders will take longer than 3 weeks to change, especially if they are long standing ones. Also there are structural brain changes that can occur faster than 3 weeks. Usually these kinds of changes are influenced by extremely strong emotions like fear, anger,
or bereavement and can also occur by involve emotional trauma or a nervous breakdown. 

For example, look at the picture on the right. This is the kind of brain structure you may have now if you are a sufferer.  Let’s assume that these connections of brain cells is responsible for your binging –purging or starving yourself episodes. You see how the endings of the neurons are connected to each other.

Then after three weeks of trying to stop the binging-purging episodes using other behaviours (like listening to a nice music at the time of binging urges, watching a movie instead of binging, joining a fun club or group, painting or playing piano , doing a course and learning something , etc.) , you see the area in the brain which was responsible for binging-purging behaviour becomes more saturated with brain cell connections. It is because your brain has formed other neuronal connections on the top of the old ones.  Now, if you continue to perform these new constructive behaviours, the neuronal connections responsible for this behaviour will grow more and more eventually replacing the old negative behaviour pathways.

But if you choose to perform your bad behaviours instead (binging-purging or continue to starve) – the old negative pathways take over and the new positive pathways will fade away.

So if your are serious and really want to beat your ED then it is not impossible, we have developed a book at the Institute that will help you return to health.

Tips to Increase Neurogenesis (Growing New Neurons) in Adult Brain in order to stop your Eating Disorder.This is what neuroplasticity is all about.  Now, let’s look at 11 major principles of how we can facilitate the processes of neurogenesis (growing new brain cells) in order to stop your eating disorder. 

Neurogenesis  is  growing new brain cells (neurons).

By now you probably know that eating disorders are problems related to emotions, perception and specific neuronal pathways in your brain which related to eating disorder behaviour. And that in order to stop your eating disorder  you need  to create new neuronal pathways responsible for  good constructive behaviour to replace  the faulty neuronal pathways.

1. Learn everything you can about how the brain works. Even some basic understanding will help you to appreciate your brain’s beauty as a living and constantly-developing structure with billions of neurons and its connections. When you understand what happens in your brain while you binge-purge or starve yourself – you will have an idea of how to reverse it.  Until you understand this process you are like a blind person who is trying to find his way home walking through the debris in the wilderness.

2. Take care of your nutrition. Your brain consumes 20% of all the oxygen, nutrients and energy you consume. If you are an anorexic and don’t eat (or eat little) your brain starves. It can not function properly and that’s why people with anorexia stop seeing a clear picture of reality that other people see. They see themselves fatter than they are, they judge others by the way they look and how skinny they are. And their starving brain is a big contributor to it.  The Brain can only function at its best when it has enough energy and nutrition to process the information.

3.  Moderate physical exercise enhances neurogenesis (production of brain cells). But eating disorder sufferers have to be careful not to over exercise because many of them already do overexercise. Always remember that when you exercise the spending of energy increases rapidly and body needs energy to burn. Energy comes from the food we eat but when there is not enough energy from food, the body starts consuming its own tissue as an energy source. Fat burns first. But if a person does not have fat (or has very little) like an eating disorder sufferer, the body start burning muscles and other body tissues.  And that is a dangerous process. It can lead to dystrophy and caxechia – the syndrome is what a person looks like who has just come from a concentration camp we have all seen the pictures. Please Remember: moderate exercise is great; I don’t mean running 10 miles a day. But you need to make sure that you have something to burn – not just burn your muscles and brain tissue as an energy source.

4.  Practice positive, future-oriented thoughts, until they become your mindset. Look forward to every new day in a constructive way. Find and follow your main purpose in life.
Stress and anxiety, no matter whether induced by external events or by your own thoughts, actually kills neurons and prevents the creation of new ones. You can think of chronic stress as the opposite of exercise: it prevents the creation of new neurons.

5. Get excited and thrive on learning and mental challenges. You have probably heard the expression “Use it or lose it.” And – yes it does apply to the brain also. What relation this principle has on eating disorders, you may ask. The answer is – everything.  You see, the brain of an anorexic – bulimic person is full of faulty neuronal pathways which are responsible for their anorexic-bulimic behaviours. There are pathways for binging-purging, for starving, for taking laxatives and diuretics, over exercising etc. When you start learning new constructive thing – like for example, how your brain works, its anatomy and physiology etc. – you actually will produce new neuronal pathways in your brain which will take the place of your old pathways and replace them.
Learning can be about anything you want to learn but it has to be good, positive and constructive. Something you can share with others and teach them to do the same. The more you learn this new thing the more it becomes your new mindset and the closer you became to eating disorder recovery.

6. Find a purpose. Aim high. As far as we know humans are the only self-directed organisms on this planet. This means we are the only ones who can make decision and exercise our own will.
If you don’t know what your purpose in life is – don’t worry. It will come if you keep focusing on finding it. And don’t forget to learn about how your brain works – it also will give understanding on how life has a purpose which is already created and imbedded in your mind.

7. Explore and travel. It has been proved that travelling to new locations forces you to pay more attention to your environment.  This will pull your attention away from your eating disorder and help you to develop new neuronal pathways in the brain – different from what the eating disorder has created.  It can also help to produce more good chemicals in the brain (neurotransmitters) which are responsible for your attention span. More attention will make your learning of new things easier.

8. Don’t succumb to the opinions of others. Don’t think that what is in the media, something said by your neighbour or what politicians say are true. Have your own opinion. Remember that media makes billion of dollars every week to program people’s mind by displaying woman’s body images that are impossible to achieve by any normal person. Most diets and other health care products which claim to improve your health don’t work or work on a placebo effect only.

 
9. Develop and maintain stimulating friendship. This is very important for eating disorder sufferers because generally eating disorder sufferers are withdrawn from others and prefer to spend time alone with their eating disorders. By
spending your time with good friends you take yourself away from the eating disorder. You will also develop different neuronal pathways which if exercised regularly can replace the eating disorder pathways.

10. Remember: Laughter is the best medicine. Spend more time laughing – it is healing and puts you in a different state of mind. I recommend you even to find jokes about weight and food , laugh at it and look at the funny side of it.  For example, when you see the funny side of being anorexic or bulimic you will change your attitude to your abnormal behaviour. Laughter also improves hormonal status in the body – which normally suffers in anorexic-bulimic people. Laughter also helps to release good chemicals in the brain which can change your brain for the better.

11. Love. Love more, learn about what love is and how you can feel love and be loved. Learn how to give your love to people and receive the love back. I am not talking here just about romantic love (although this is the love too). I am talking about love as a number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection and attachment.

Eating disorder sufferers don’t know exactly what these feelings are – and it is one of the reasons they have their eating disorders.  So start educating yourself about this topic and you will discover miracles.

The 3 main mechanisms of how neuroplastic changes occur in the brain?

Biologically it can happen in a few ways:

1. By sprouting new endings from the body of the neuron and connecting them differently to the different neurons.

2. Changing the levels of brain chemicals (neurotransmitters)
 
3. Growing new neurons  (this process is called neurogenesis)

Let’s quickly look through them one by one.

1. Sprouting of new neuronal endings will occur when you start doing new behaviors or new actions. These new behaviors have to be done repeatedly and regularly in order to sprout new endings.

For example, when you start regularly performing the act of binging, purging or starving oneself your brain cells (neurons) sprout new endings forming eating disorder pathways. These are then responsible for the binge, purge and starving episodes.

You continue because the urge is so strong as you have built these faulty neuronal pathways in your brain.

You may feel that it is impossible for you to stop these abnormal actions but the truth is that you can stop these bad actions by sprouting new neuronal endings and forming new neuronal pathways which can replace the old ones. The mechanism for sprouting these new endings (good one) is exactly the same – you should start performing new constructive behaviors regularly; ones not based on food abuse.

2. Changing the level of brain chemicals (neurotransmitters) – can also occur with different behaviors you do. Some certain behaviors we do because the level of brain chemicals remains too high or too low. 

For example, neurotransmitter acetylcholine gets produced when people start learning and paying more attention to things they are learning. 

Acetylcholine is your attention getter. It gets produced when you pay attention to things and you became more attentive and learn better when you have a sufficient level of acetylcholine being produced.  So, memorizing poetry, learning a foreign language, solving math problems, writing an essay, learning about how your brain works and etc. – all these activity will improve the level of acetylcholine in your brain.

People with eating disorders often can’t concentrate. It is because the level of the brain chemical acetylcholine is too low. But to improve it you must force yourself to focus and concentrate on something useful. Then your concentration will become better because by initial forcing yourself to concentrate you improve the level of this important chemical in your brain.

3. Growing new neurons. Recent research shows growing evidence that the adult human brain creates new neurons, a process known as neurogenesis. Now scientists have found that the areas in the brain where these new neurons grow can be stimulated by actions and neurogenesis occurs.  One of the most important areas where neurogenesis occurs is in the hippocampus.

The hippocampus is the middle part of the brain and it forms one part of limbic system. The hippocampus is directly responsible for memory and our emotions.

People with eating disorders most likely have a chemical imbalance in hippocampus. Eating disorder sufferers store lots of memories of hurts and dissatisfaction with themselves in hippocampus. And their bad emotions come from these memories.

The conclusion is that by growing new neurons in the hippocampus you may help stop your distractive eating disorder behaviour.

Now you are probably interested in how you can stimulate the processes of neurogenesis.

Our next article will explain it all.

3)  What are Neurotransmitters and How do they Influence the development of Eating Disorders?

Neurotransmitters are chemicals which facilitate the transmission of signal from one neuron to another. Neurotransmitters are released in synapses (or where the ending of one neuron connects to the endings of another neuron).

There are different types of neurotransmitters. Here we will look at the most important ones.

Acetylcholine:  Acetylcholine is a chemical which are involved in memory, learning and attention. When you learn something and pay attention to it – you stimulate the production of acetylcholine.

To maintain this chemical at a certain level you must keep your brain busy with attention requiring work. Study, read books, create something, solve puzzles, get a job where you can use your brain. Just do something that can stimulate the production of acetylcholine in the brain.

Eating disorder sufferers have often a very low acetylcholine level especially when they give up their studies, job and other productive activities for the sake of their eating disorder. They normally explain this quitting as the inability to concentrate, being too weak and etc.

This all happens because the level of acetylcholine in their brain is low. But they can improve it by exercising their own will, going back to study  and beginning to  learn again and paying attention to something more useful and constructive than their eating disorder.

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter which produces a sense of well-being calm and satisfaction. Many scientists blame the lack of this chemical for eating disorder problems. Serotonin has a broad function in the brain. It regulates and moderates anger, aggression, body temperature, mood, sleep, human sexuality, appetite, and metabolism, as well as stimulating vomiting.

It is still not clear what exactly happens with serotonin in the brain of eating disorder sufferers, as it is difficult to measure. But we know there are many genetic variations in the serotonin receptors and the serotonin transporters in the brain.
It is most likely that a serotonin abnormality in the brain affects each person differently. Serotonin levels can be increased naturally by taking tryptophan rich foods found in meats and proteins.

Dopamine: Dopamine is a chemical associated with pleasurable activity. It is released when people do naturally rewarding activities like having sex or enjoying food. Some drugs such as nicotine, cocaine and amphetamines can influence the level of dopamine in the brain.

Dopamine is actually the culprit in many addictions such as drugs, food, and sex addictions. Dopamine also has other functions in the brain, including important roles in behaviour and cognition, motor activity, motivation and reward, inhibition of prolactin production which is involved in lactation, sleep, mood, attention, and learning.

Recent research has suggested that dopamine is also released in reward-anticipation activities and when people are motivated to do something. If you have ever wondered why you feel great after doing aerobics or playing sport, this is the brain producing dopamine. Just thinking about doing something pleasurable can produce a chemical ‘reward’ of dopamine being released in your brain.

Enjoyable learning and focusing on something you really like doing will stimulate dopamine production in your brain.
The release of dopamine triggers the desire to eat certain foods. The dopamine does not increase the pleasure of actually eating food but is released when the person sees, smells, thinks or dreams about food. Tasting enjoyable food also provokes the release of dopamine.

Dopamine plays an important role in bulimia and binge eating because these people often dream and think about food. And it is why when a bulimic or binge eater sees food she/he goes on a binge losing all sense of control.

Glutamate –it is believed that glutamate (or glutamic acid) is involved in cognitive functions like learning and memory. Many foods contain glutamate, including cheese, soy sauce, fish, eggs, poultry etc.

GABA is a neurotransmitter which is responsible for muscle tones. GABA regulates the growth embryonic and neural stem cells. Abnormal levels of GABA have been found in people with mood disorders.

Substance P is an important chemical which involves pain perception. It also participates in regulation of mood disorders, anxiety, stress, reinforcement, neurogenesis, nausea and vomiting. The vomiting centre in the brain contains high concentrations of Substance P. Activation of Substance P stimulates vomiting. People who use vomiting as a way of purging have abnormalities in the levels of Substance P.

Conclusion:  Neurotransmitters play an important role in the biochemistry of eating disorders. But… The level of most of these neurotransmitters can be moderated by performing or not-performing certain actions and behaviours. Replacing one behaviour with another can change the level of neurotransmitters in the brain.

Wilful action can produce extraordinary changes in the level of these chemicals.  For instance, if you wilfully stop your binging or purging episodes for at least 2-3 weeks and replace this behaviour with more productive ones, the level of neurotransmitters in your brain will change significantly and can become completely normal again. This works on the use it or lose it principle.

Always remember: your behaviour will change your biology. If you behave better – your biology improves, if you behave worse – your biology becomes worse.

What is neuroplasticity?

Neuroplasticity is the natural ability of the brain to change its own structure in response to new situations, new behaviours or changes of the environment. Neuroplastic changes occur in a few different ways: by changing the neuronal connections, by sprouting new nerve endings and even by growing new neurons.

Neuro is for neuron, the nerve cells in our brains. Plastic is for “changeable, malleable, modifiable.” Without operations or medications you can make use of the brain’s amazing ability to change and transform your life in the direction you want.  This ability can help you stop bad habits, change your feelings and cure many diseases including the most insidious ones like eating disorders.

For the past four hundred years this new thinking was inconceivable because mainstream medicine and science believed that brain anatomy was fixed. The conventional knowledge was that after infancy the brain can’t really change itself and was fully developed, only at old age when the brain starts the long process of decline was it believed to change.

This theory of the unchanging brain put people with mental and emotional problems under a lot of limitations. It basically meant that if you had a problem like an eating disorder, you more or less have to suffer for a life of taking drugs and being sick.

This kind of thinking made people believe that real treatments for mental disorders are always biological and involve drugs and that psychological (talk) therapy is not biological and just merely talk, so would not work.

But now, we have important data from psychoanalytical therapies and neuroscience that shows that when patients come in with their brains in certain states of miss wiring (mental states) then after undertaking psychological (neuroplastic) interventions their brains can be rewired without drugs or surgeries. This proves that neuroplastic therapy is every bit as biological as the use of drugs and even more precise at times because it is targeted.

To prove this fact American psychiatrist Dr Jeffrey M. Schwartz (UCLA School of Medicine) did some amazing research on his patients who suffered different form s of obsessions and compulsions. His patients went through neuroplastic treatment called “Four Step Self-Treatment Method”.

Before and after the treatment his patients had a PET scan of their brain. The PET scan showed that after neuroplastic treatment there was reduced activity in brain’s caudate nucleus (the centre of the brain which gets overactive with patients with obsessions).

Obsessions and compulsions are the main components of eating disorders but in relation to food.

So, this research showed that neuroplastic therapy can biologically change the structure of the brain and help people to be free from their obsessions without drugs.

To understand how neuroplastic change occurs read the article “Structure of neuron and neuronal connections (pathways)”.

Dr Irina Webster.

If you really want to understand how the processes of neuroplasticity occur you need to start your learning process by looking at the structure of a basic neuron and how they connect to each other. To understand basic principles of neuroplasticity you need to know that neuron has:- A body which contain a nucleus
-Many endings – dendrites
- One bigger endings – axon

Axon is a very important structure for a signal transmission. It has a myelin sheath to make the transmission of a signal easier. The end of axon (axon terminals) connects to the dendrites of other neurons and through this connection signals go from one neuron to another.

When we think, feel, imagine or dream, all these processes happen because our neurons connect to other neurons in a certain way forming neuronal pathways.  Connection between neurons occur in synapses (see picture below) where the axon of one neuron connects to the endings (dendrites) of the other neuron. And the process goes on forming pathways.

So, a neuronal pathway is basically a chain of neurons connected in a certain way. For every behavior, habit, or action we have a certain neuronal pathway.  Regular thoughts and feelings also have special neuronal pathways in the brain.

When neurons connect in synapses, the production and release of special chemicals occur.  These chemical are called neurotransmitters. That’s why a signal transmission in the brain is called an electro-chemical transmission.  These chemicals (neurotransmitters) play a huge role in our emotions, feelings and mental states.
Faults in these chemical transmissions can result in different mental-emotional problems including anorexia and bulimia in susceptible individuals.

Dr Ian Frampton one of the authors, who is an honorary consultant in pediatric psychology at London’s Great Ormond Street hospital conducted in-depth neuropsychological testing on more than 200 people in the UK, USA and Norway who suffered from anorexia.  Dr Frampton and his team found that at least 70% of anorexic patients had suffered damage to their neurotransmitters, which help brain cells communicate with each other.

Luckily, with the help of neuroplasticity we can now influence even produce new neurotransmitters in our brains around the old defective ones.

Dr Irina Webster MD.