Binge eating disorder is described as having recurrent or frequent episodes of eating unusually large amounts of food in a short period of time with a feeling of being unable to control it.

Research in the field of eating disorders has come a long way in the past 25- 30 years. Professionals now know that stress, major life changes such as divorce, marriage, moving to college or getting a new job can all be factors that lead to binge eating disorder. It is how a person interprets situations and how they deal with stress that helps to avoid binging.

You don't have to be a victim forever with this disorder. You can take action and change your life. Here are 5 tips to start you on the path to recovery.

Healing Tip #1 - Reduce Stress

Stress is the number one reason we continue to binge. It is however, not usually the root cause of the disorder. Some kind of trauma usually sets the stage for an eating disorder and stress contributes to it. By reducing the negative stress in your life you can lessen the binge episodes while you work on the healing the root cause of your disorder. Here are some quick ways to reduce negative stress.

1. Try not to over-schedule your time. If you are saying "yes" to everyone who needs you to do a project because you can't say "no" then you have overscheduled yourself. You must learn to say "no". Consider outsourcing, having meetings to discuss plans and stating your opinions. Learn assertiveness training.

2. Avoid being a perfectionist. People don't expect you to be perfect and you shouldn't expect them to be either. Be flexible in your expectations of others.

3. Focus on what you want, not on what you don't want.

4. Exercise. Even if you walk around your block at a pace comfortable for you, this will increase your good hormones that make you relaxed and happy. You can clear your mind in just 10 or 15 minutes of exercise.

5. Treat yourself with appropriate rewards when you solve problems before they become bigger. By not procrastinating you can avoid stressful situations.

6. Use a breathing technique to lower your heart rate so you can think clearly. A quick lesson that you can use now is to put your right hand on your abdomen, right at the waistline, and put your left hand on your chest, right in the center. Without trying to change your breathing, simply notice how you are breathing. Which hand rises the most as you inhale? If your abdomen expands, you are breathing from your abdomen or diaphragm. If your belly doesn't move or moves less than your chest you are breathing from your chest. The trick to shifting from chest to abdominal breathing is to make one or two full exhalations that push out the air from the bottom of your lungs. This will create a vacuum that will pull in a deep, diaphragmatic breath on your next inhalation.

Healing Tip #2 - Stop Criticizing

You criticize yourself because you feel you are not good enough in some or many areas. Not being good enough, not having self-worth is 99 out of 100 times the root problem. It has nothing to do with food, control, money or relationships. If you don't feel good enough about yourself everything else falls short of your desired outcome. Think of how terrible that sounds when you say "I'm not good enough".

Write a list of what you think about yourself. Think of every negative thing you wrote on your list. You are essentially saying you aren't good enough. It's the bottom line; there's the problem. When you feel you aren't good enough that is exactly what you'll get. When you tell yourself enough times, over and over that you just don't measure up then you will eventually begin to truly believe that statement. Your subconscious will adopt that belief and pretty soon you will begin acting and thinking and saying things the way you are convincing yourself to be. This belief system needs to be challenged and changed.

Healing Tip #3 - Question your beliefs

Belief systems or the beliefs and values you carry are formed from other people's beliefs such as those from your parents, peers, mentors, religious leaders, teachers and society in general. Belief is the psychological state in which an individual is convinced of the truth of a proposition. Sometimes we just accept other people's beliefs without questioning whether we think they are right or wrong.

We grow up with beliefs that come from many different sources. They become very limiting and even though they may have served you well in the past, some of them do not serve you well any more and it's time to question them and clean house. Look at some of these limiting beliefs and ask why. Do they still hold true for you?

"My parents said it isn't proper"

"It's too hard"

"I don't have the time"

"I can't do that"

"My grandmother wouldn't allow that"

"I don't believe in that"

"I should never go against authority"

"Clean your plate at dinner"

"I don't have the skills"

Whatever we choose to believe becomes our reality. We think it is the truth. If you believe that you are too weak to overcome binge eating then that has become your truth or reality. But the belief is just a thought pattern dictating your current circumstances. You can choose whatever thoughts you want. You can choose to say "I live a healthy and abundant life." No matter what difficult situations you are facing it is only the result of an inner thought and you can choose what thoughts you want to have.

So how do you know that your current beliefs or belief systems are the truth and really what you believe in? You question them. You can take every single belief you have and write it on a piece of paper and next to it write the word why? What evidence do you have to make that belief true?

Healing Tip #4 - Learn meditation and visualization

Meditating is the practice of uncritically attempting to focus your attention on one thing at a time. Exactly what that thing is, is relatively unimportant and varies from one tradition to the next. Often the meditator repeats, either aloud or silently, a syllable, word or group of words. This is known as mantra meditation. Focusing on a fixed object such as the leaves of a tree or flower can also anchor the attention. Many people find that a convenient and relaxing point of focus is the rising and falling of their own breath. You can use anything as an object of meditation.

It is important to understand that the heart of meditation lies not simply in focusing on one object to the exclusion of all other thought, but rather in the attempt to achieve this type of focus. The nature of the mind is such that it does not want to stay focused or concentrated. You'll notice that a host of thoughts will appear and seemingly interfere with meditation. That's normal. Just push those thoughts away and bring your focus back. Remember, what we resist persists. The mind is going to try to do what you are telling it not to do...you might say to yourself "I won't think of anything except for this flower" but your mind hears "think of everything "! It doesn't recognize a negative word such as won't or don't. Instead, you could say to yourself "I choose to think of this flower". Give it a try.

You can have great success with meditating using positive affirmations. A wonderful mantra is "I am young, healthy and wonderful" Get into your relaxation mode by doing slow deep breathing and then take it to the next level by using your mantra and focusing on that one particular thought. Say it over and over again with each deep breath you take. Try this for 10 minutes a day and when you are finished you'll feel like a million bucks. You will then truly believe that you are young, healthy and wonderful. Your mind believes it so it becomes your reality.

You can use whatever mantra you like. It can be a sound like OM or a word such as ONE, or a phrase such as "I am one with the Universe." Or you could repeat something special to yourself like the name of your favorite animal.

At first, your time will be spent on relaxation and not as much on meditation. Try to begin with five or ten minutes a day and work your way up as you are comfortable.

Let's begin.

1. Select a position that is comfortable for you; either sitting in a chair with your legs uncrossed, in a yoga style position sitting on the floor with "full lotus" style, or just sitting cross-legged on a cushion on the floor.

2. Try to sit with your back straight but comfortable and let the weight of your head fall directly down upon your spinal column. You can do this by pulling your chin in slightly. Allow the small of your back to arch if you are sitting on the floor.

3. Close your mouth and breathe through your nose. Place your tongue on the roof of your mouth.

4. Close your eyes and focus on the place where your body touches the cushion or the chair. What are the sensations there? Next, notice the places where your body touches itself. Are your hands crossed? Are your legs crossed? Pay attention to the sensation at these places of contact. Finally, focus on the way your body takes up space. Does it take up a lot of space? A small amount? Can you feel the boundary between your body and space?

5. With your eyes still closed, take several deep breaths and notice the quality of your breathing. Is it fast or slow? Shallow or deep? Notice where your breath rests in your body. Is it up high in your chest? Is it in the midsection around your stomach? Down low in your belly? Try moving your breath from one area to the other. Breathe into your upper chest, then into your stomach, then drop your breath into your lower belly. Feel your abdomen expand and contract as the air goes in and out. Notice how the upper chest and stomach are almost still. This "dropped breath" is the most relaxing stance to meditate from. However, if you have trouble taking deep belly breaths, don't worry. Your breath will drop of its own accord as you become more practiced in meditation.

6. Begin saying your mantra silently to yourself. Say the word or syllables over and over within your mind. When your thought strays, note it and bring your attention back to your mantra. If you notice any feelings within your body, note them and return to the repetition of your own special word/s. You don't need to force it. Let your mantra find its own rhythm as you repeat it over and over again. If you have the opportunity you can begin to chant or say aloud your mantra. Let the sound of your own voice fill you as you relax.

Note: If using a mantra is not for you, you can also try using your breath as a focal point.

Healing Tip #5 - Use positive affirmations

Positive affirmations are wonderful! They are what keep you going when you are feeling sorry for yourself or if those tiny voices that you hear are trying to sabotage your best efforts. You know them - "I can't do it. I'm not strong enough. I'm afraid".

You can use positive affirmations combined with a real feel of enthusiasm to achieve in your mind what you truly want. In a way it is similar to using the law of attraction or just positive thinking. By using these affirmations and repeating them over and over to yourself, you then begin to believe and feel that they are true. Don't allow any room for those pesky voices that say otherwise.

You can write out your own positive affirmations to go along with your goals. Write them 10 or 20 times on a piece of paper and say them out loud with enthusiasm and joy that they bring you. Do this for a few days and then pick another affirmation you'd like to use. When you say your affirmations out loud you believe what you are saying to be true. Affirmations that are used consistently become part of your belief system and always produce results. Remember, what the mind believes, man can achieve.

Quietly saying your affirmations to yourself isn't going to be very effective. You want to engage your subconscious mind. It is a fact that your subconscious mind will believe what it is told through repetition and reinforcement. By adding some excitement or enthusiasm and speaking out loud you are using more than one of your senses; therefore you intensify the impression.

"I now accept a wonderful new job."

"I approve of myself"

"I love myself just the way I am"

"I am totally healthy"

"I have a wonderful and new relationship"

"I am at peace and at ease with myself"

"I have all the clients I need"

"I have everything I need within me"

"I have a happy slender figure"

"I experience love wherever I go"

"I am in the process of positive changes"

"I deserve abundance of life"

"I deserve to have or be _____ "(fill in whatever you wish here)

"I am open to more good and more experiences than ever before"

"I am totally open to experience great relationships"

"I am grateful for my good health"

"I always work for great people"

"I am at peace with food"

"I am open to new streams of income"

"I am open to and deserving of compliments"

"I succeed at whatever I put my mind to"

"I am healthy, whole and complete"

"All is well in my world"

"There are plenty of customers who want my services"

"Abundance is for everyone, including me"

"Money comes easily and readily to me"

You might notice that some of the affirmations are difficult for you to say. That is where your resistance is. Question WHY you are resisting.

It is a fact that positive emotions create experience of Well-being. Pessimistic emotions, on the other hand, could induce a great psychological and physiological harm.

An outcome of negative emotions that has been in the news for a while now is emotional eating. It is not uncommon to see people consuming more than what they ordinarily would once they are under a lot of emotional suffering. This distress may have been caused by trauma, anxiousness, unhappiness, anger, loneliness, human relationship problems, or depression. In reality, an eating disorder is among the most visible symptoms of emotional disorders like clinical depression.

Emotional eating comes about when your emotions influence your eating habits instead of your stomach. Once you indulge in emotional eating, it is likely to add to your worries and your weight.

Emotional eating essentially means that you finish up eating without experiencing hunger. Individuals indulge in such behavior to attempt to comfort themselves, and turn over to food since it is readily accessible. Attempting to achieve freedom from such impulse it is like attempting to break free from a drug dependency - you have to draw a lot of effort to abandon the substance abuse.

Among the first steps that you must take to get over emotional eating is to try and distinguish between eating while hungry and eating for comfort. Learn to distinguish your hunger and recognize whether you are eating based on the demand of your head or your stomach. Eat only if you experience hunger.

Do not use eating to stamp down boredom and don't make snacking and sweets a habit, either. Remember, you are expected to 'eat to live' and not 'live to eat'. If boredom is something you are battling, employ different means of opposing the situation. Go out walking, visit a friend, or plainly pick up the tools and start a garden.

When next experience the urge to eat between meals, pick up an apple or a carrot. If you don't recourse to favorable comfort foods for a while, you will make a breakthrough in diminishing your urge for such foods with time.

Going to the gym will make you a lot more aware of your body and physical exercise boosts emotional health. While you might feel like eating afterwards you should assure that you select healthy foods.

Lack of sleep could head to lessened levels of leptin, the endocrine hormone credited for regulation of appetite by signaling fullness. Ensure that you receive decent relaxation each day.

If none of these work and you are ineffective to keep up your efforts, there could be a need to better your emotional health. Visit a counselor or psychologist to seek to unearth the reason of your binge eating, and research for leading natural remedies that are available with the reputation to provide help.

I am the proud father of a beautiful teenage daughter. My daughter is a 17year-old teenager who achieves top grades, has qualified for the National Honor Society, has ice-skated competitively for almost 7 years, is active in sports, volunteer activities, school clubs, and is a model for her younger brothers(3: ages 2, 6, 12) and sisters(3: ages 4, 7, 14). She is a leader and example for her small, though close, group of wonderful friends. There is once exception: my daughter struggles with Anorexia Nervosa. Her life has completely been devastated the past 2 years by this ugly psychological and emotional and physical syndrome.

My daughter was competitively ice skating and competing in amateur tournaments and skills competitions since the age of 11. She loved the sport and the training and the atmosphere and competition. She was loved by her trainers and coaches for her work ethic and passion and by the age of 14 had her eyes on qualifying tournaments in the next two years for Olympic placement. Her eyes were wide, though realistic, and she wanted the chance to make this dream a possibility.

At one competition she placed far below her expectations and when speaking with another skater who shared the same coach she was introduced to the idea that in two years her hips would widen, her calves and ankles would get thicker, and her nimble, athletic lightness and flexibility could be lost to puberty. This skater explained that almost all competitive skaters were using laxatives to control weight issues. As my wife and I learned later, this was the beginning of our daughter's demise in becoming diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa.

The struggle since has been a torment. My daughter has lost over thirty percent of her body weight. During her peak competition scheduling she weighed approximately 120 pounds and was competing at a master performance level. Her weight today is barely 75 pounds. She is struggling immensely with the understanding that if she does not eat, the consequences are potentially dire. As parents we have searched for every option, therapist, doctor, or source to help us. Aside from the expert medical professionals, one on-line source was particularly helpful. Here my wife and I found a wealth of information and guidance on the appropriate questions to ask, background information on Anorexia Nervosa and related disorders, and up-to-date research about the latest innovations in caring for, and seeking to help a child with Anorexia.

The road ahead seems long and difficult. Our daughter still has not regained the weight she so badly needs to become healthy and the longer she continues to deprive her body of necessary resources the greater the possibility of permanent or irreversible damage. The symptoms have been far reaching including: loss of menstruation, continual distorted self-image, erosion of tooth enamel, and bowel and digestion problems. and numerous other complications. We found statistics hat showed that twenty percent of those diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa will remain chronically ill! We hope our daughter has the strength and we can help her to find the sanctity and peace she needs to recover.

One of my children (who shall be nameless to protect the guilty) has tried everything to get out of handing in homework. Actually, they've all gone through that phase, so much for my brilliant parenting. And as a lecturer I know that I've heard all the excuses before!

Over the past few weeks I have heard all sorts of excuses from my clients:

I was celebrating and it had to be chocolate.

It snowed and I couldn't exercise (some allowance here - the weather has been weird. But the snow melts very quickly and what do you do the rest of the week?)

It snowed and I didn't feel like it. (Strange logic here - snow = winter = comfort food)

I forgot (forgot to diet? Forgot that when you have one bit of the cake you eat the lot? Forgot you have 60lbs to lose?)

I've been busy. Look, you'll always be busy. And you're going to eat the rest of your life. So eat sensible stuff. Otherwise you'll be too ill or too dead to be busy)

I was away with the family. (Family get togethers are difficult - it's so easy to overeat. But if you stick to the right food groups and the right quantities you can do it. Have one celebratory meal; don't over eat the whole way through the weekend.)

A sensible eating plan isn't technically difficult. Lean meat or fish, veg and salads, a little fruit. Any food that looks as if it grew on a tree or in the ground or grazed in a field or stream. You don't have to count calories or fat grams, weigh or measure foods and it does allow the odd celebratory meal or comfort fest.

But you do have to be disciplined and apply some common sense to your eating habits on a day to day basis. It is the consistent behaviour in your diet that makes the difference. Consistently eating well, you'll get away with the odd lapse. Consistently loosening your waistband, slumping on the sofa and troughing out when you don't need to will end in misery.

It's also important to identify why you are eating the food. Is it to meet your physical needs (hunger) or are you using it to deal with your emotions? You'll be trying to feed your emotional hunger if you eat when you are sad, lonely, frustrated or simply bored. You may even feel your emotions in your stomach and mistake that for physical hunger!

So ask the question before you eat - "If I eat now, what am I feeding, my body or my emotions?" If you don't deal with these feelings you'll have to use incredible willpower to stay on a diet. Look at your emotional eating patterns, decide now to be consistent in your eating habits, take one day at a time and consistently shed the pounds!

Life can be tough, and as we all know, it's even more complicated when trying to stop binge eating disorder. We are thrown obstacles and our drive can sometimes seem obscured. Even in these struggles, your goal needs to stay at the forefront of your mind so that you learn how to stop binge eating.

For me, in order to not give up when times got hard, I remain focused on what it is I truly want by setting up little "challenges" for myself. This really helps me because I know that if I can fulfill the challenge, I am strong and I can go on to really achieving anything that I want.

1. Challenge yourself to find something that makes you happy and do it.

What makes you the happiest?

Writing, reading, being with friends, talking on the phone, putting on an outfit that makes you feel fabulous, exercising, listening to music, singing, buying new makeup, getting your nails and toes done, scrapbooking, cleaning, organizing, sending a card to someone, looking at old pictures, playing with your pet, etc.

2. Challenge yourself to learn or do something new.

Is there a class that you've always wanted to take?

What about something that you've always wanted to know more about?

Do you want to make more friends in your area?

Do you want a new hobby?

3. Challenge yourself to focus on your future instead of your past.

When I struggled to first stop bingeing, it was so hard for me. I constantly thought of the past and my struggles and the fact that I was scared since I had binged for so long. I found that focusing on the good I would gain from overcoming binge eating disorder really helped me.

After a couple of successes of overcoming a binge, I slipped and found myself turning to food. I binged. After the binge, I couldn't stop thinking about how much of a failure I was. How was I ever going to beat a whole disorder when I couldn't even resist one temptation?

This is the hardest part because you will feel like you let yourself down. You've worked so hard and beat a handful of binges and then you fall down. Yes, it sucks, but you have to look to the future, pick yourself back up, and stop dwelling on the binge.

4. Challenge yourself to make a list of everything you want to do in your life.

It's really fun to create this wish list and very rewarding when you get to cross off items. Write down everything you want to do and accomplish throughout your life. Try to do these things when you beat a binge, as a reward if that will help. If not, try to cross items off monthly, annually, or just whenever you can complete the activity on your list.

5. Challenge yourself to vent out any stress, frustration, or anxiety.

While this is not true for everyone, the majority of binge eaters binge due to negative emotions. Bingeing is comforting to us so that we don't have to think about our stressful jobs and frustration with friends, family, and even ourselves. It's hard to change your habits of bingeing to something else. BUT, I challenge you to do so by having a plan. Having a plan in place is the key because you already know that you are going to do xyz when you are tempted to binge.

The next time you feel a binge coming on, pull out your plan and do it! If you need to go into your bathroom and take a bubble bath, do it! If your plan is to write in your journal about your feelings, do it!

You can't seem to make up your mind, you eat and eat and then you hide a purge or you starve yourself for weeks until you are at the lowest weight that you have ever been in your life. Anorexia and bulimia used to be considered the health problems of some confused young girls with troubled lives real or perceived. Lately doctors have found that more and more women are being diagnosed with an eating disorder of some kind. Other misconceptions about eating disorders are that people think that they are psychological problems that can be treated with medication easily and then the person is cured for life. Neither is true. In fact, this disorder is not easily treated and the person is left to deal with it affects throughout their lives. Doctor's believe that hormonal variations occurring near the menopause of a woman may be the reason the eating disorder developed such late in life.

These women see themselves as being overweight despite the fact that they are extremely thin. These women developing strange eating rituals or eat and regurgitating over and over again. Body dissatisfaction is the main focus of these women. For unknown reasons they can't seem to become comfortable in their own skin. They often believe that their behaviors are secret and no one notices or cares enough to pay attention. The idea that middle-aged women are having this problem is troubling to physicians as they work hard to try and prevent the disorder in young women. However, doctors can't be sure if the middle aged women that are receiving treatment are new to the disorder. The thought is that they had these problems when they were very young and as they got older realized that they should seek treatment. Complicating things is that these women are finding it difficult to locate proper treatment because for so long the focus was put on the younger woman. The women that are suffering from anorexia and/or bulimia many times suffer from perfectionism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety. Substance abuse issues also many times play a role in many cases of both younger and older women. The most memorable and recent case occurred with a South American woman, a 24 year old teacher weighting only 77 pounds at 5 foot 2 inch tall when she passed away.

You or someone close to you might be suffering from this condition. It is a very harmful thing to suffer from, and if you suspect that someone is having trouble with an eating disorder then you should immediately take action to intervene. Do it in a graceful way so that the victim knows that you are looking out for her best interests. But don't let it go on for any longer than it has to. Therapists are the most common way to deal with eating disorders, but there are also entire camps and seminars devoted to getting the victims back to regular eating habits.

The treatments include therapy, medication, and counseling and more counseling. Some others treatments tried are yoga. Studies have tried to link the two yoga and anorexia but studies were inconclusive and did not produce any significant changes in behavior or eating habits. Dissonance -based therapy which works as therapy and counseling aimed at the person's competing ideas. There are group meetings and other more intensive therapies for those with severely dangerous cases of anorexia and/or bulimia. Many women have been able to make positive life changes to battle their self inflicted disorder and go on to live healthier lives. It has been reported that these women will have to battle the urges and cravings to purge or starve themselves for the rest of their lives. Since no cures exist for this disorder it is the hope of therapist and people suffering anorexia and/or bulimia, that some kind of definitive preventive measures can be developed or found.

Our moods have a lot to do with our eating habits. Emotional problems, such as unemployment, divorce, or health problems can either decrease our appetite or encourage emotional eating. Even a simple change in our daily routine can sabotage our weight loss efforts. When we feel stressed or emotionally unstable we often look towards junk food for comfort. It has been well known that food serves as an excellent distraction from daily troubles. So what steps can you take to reduce your dependence upon emotional eating?

One way to stop emotional eating is to recognize true hunger. Often times when we are stressed, our hunger is only emotional. We are not really hungry but we still turn to food for comfort. This is why it is important to be aware whether your hunger is physical or emotional. For example, if you ate a couple hours ago and your stomach is not rumbling, then you are probably not hungry. Try to keep track of your meal times and judge for yourself whether you are in fact hungry.

Another way to reduce your emotional eating habits is to be aware of what triggers your hunger. Simply write down what you ate, how much you ate, when you ate, how hungry you were, and what emotional state were you in. By keeping track of these things you might be able to figure out some sort of an eating pattern. And lastly, try to look elsewhere for comfort. There are many different things which can just as easily occupy your mind. Try going for a walk, to a movie, or simply talk with a friend. So if you ever feel like emotional hunger has taken over your life, try to plan some enjoyable events for yourself in order to relieve some of the tension.

A recent image study of the human brain actually shows that a hormone that is known for its ability to trigger appetite can stimulate parts of the brain to make food appear more appealing.

Ghrelin, the name of the appetite hormone, has a pleasure effect on the human sense and creates a happiness associated with food similar to those who suffer from drug addictions. Ghrelin encourages people to continue eating after the nutritional reasoning is finished and the stomach is already full.

"For hundreds of years, people used to think that you eat only because you're hungry," says study author Dr. Alain Dagher, an associate professor with the Montreal Neurological Institute of McGill University in Canada. "But we found that the actual system involves a drive for food that is not at all related to hunger."

"The reason for this," he adds, "is that almost every animal, including us, until very recently was living in a world where there wasn't enough food, so that the big risk is starving to death. This creates a real pressure to eat. And obtaining food is risky. It requires effort and putting yourself at the mercy of predators. So you need something to get you out of your cave, and the only way that's going to happen is if the food is attractive enough to get you to overcome those costs and risks. And we've found a hormone that does this by acting on the pleasure and reward centers of the brain and making food you see seem more appealing and more desirable."

Dagher and his colleagues reported their insights in the May issue of Cell Metabolism. They analyzed MRIs of activity in the brains of 20 healthy men while they observed pictures of food and drink. This was done 3 hours after they had eaten breakfast so that they weren't necessarily full nor hungry; all men viewed an initial series of 45 images during which they answered questions about their mood and appetite.

Immediately after the first viewing, 12 of the men received two injections of ghrelin, while the other eight men did not. The men then viewed a second set of 45 images after their blood was taken to observe the levels of the hormone in their bodies. It was concluded that more of the men who received grehlin injectionsreported hunger after looking at the second set of images than those who did not.

The increased hunger response correlated with an increase in brain activity in a broad range of brain regions associated with reward when viewing images of food and non-food "pleasure-related" items. The men who did not receive the ghrelin expressed no change in hunger over the course of the two viewing sessions and were less likely to remember the food imagery they saw following the viewings.

The researchers suggested that the findings could ultimately lead to treatments for obesity based on a disruption of the ghrelin hormonal effect.

"The problem today is that we have this evolutionary imperative to eat, but we now live in an environment where you don't have to spend any energy to get food," he noted. "Which means that it makes sense to think of appetite as a kind of addiction. So, if we want to address the fact that obesity is now the number one killer in the world, we're going to have to tackle the problem in the same way that we tackle cigarette smoking."

But Dr. Barbara B. Kahn, chief of the division of endocrinology, diabetes, and metabolism at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, also spread caution that relating ghrelin-fueled overeating with drug addiction may be a disservice to the public.

"This study provides us with new information about additional ways in which this particular hormone may work," she said, "And overeating and drug addiction may converge on some of the same neurons. But other pathways are also involved. And from a biochemical point of view, the two are not the same thing. Drug addictions are much stronger. So to suggest that they are the same makes people feel that they can't do anything about overeating. That it's out of their control. So, I don't really buy that the parallel," added Kahn, "There may be aspects of overeating that may be related to aspects of addiction. But overeating is not just another addiction."

In the future, it may be valuable to have your grehlin levels checked or altered, but for now we'll just have to live with good old self-discipline and awareness.

Personnel suffering from eating disorders have more than a few options in seeking treatment, once they identify and admit they have a disease. According to the Center for Eating Disorders and Psychotherapy in Worthington, the best selection is family and friends.

Even as many females suffer at from anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating in any case one during their lifetime, what manifests the intermittent bouts with one of these disorders into a full-blown disease is still the subject of much debate.

Many hospitals provide a service where people can take part in treatment ranging beginning meetings with professionals to inpatient treatment. Depending on the intensity of the disease and the readiness of the patient to participate, determines which treatment option is utilized.

The National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) is the considered to be the biggest non-profit organization in the United States and works to put a stop to eating problem as also to provide referrals to patients suffering from anorexia, bulimia as well as binge eating disorders and, as well people who are taken up with body image and issues pertaining to weight.

The ultimate goal of the association is to eliminate eating disorders and to achieve this, the association has committed itself to expanding the public understanding of this disease as well as enchanting preventive measures and promoting way in to quality treatment for those who have been afflicted with eating problem as well as giving support to families through education, advocacy and in research.

The association tries to provide the needs of the national community in the course of programs that it provides, as well as products and services that are of superior quality in sustaining the elimination of eating problem. In order to make the mission become more fruitful and productive it has developed prevention programs for a large many different audiences, and has published and circulated educational materials in addition to operating the country's first toll-free helpline for eating disorders information as well as referral.

Help Must be Sought After in Order for it to Work

One of the toughest parts of having someone seek out help at a Center for Eating Disorders is their capability to recognize that they are suffering from a serious illness. Anorexia nervosa sufferers generally don't see anything wrong with how they look. Their fear of gaining weight is more often than not unfounded, that may not be the image they see when they look into a mirror.

There are many times when an intervention with family and friends may be essential before a person with anorexia or bulimia be converted into willing to accept that a problem exists and seek treatment. Nevertheless, an intervention should not be staged without the benefit of advice from a professional.

How and Where can I Contact an Eating Disorder Association?

One of the best way to find an association that is near to you is by using the Internet, since the speed and efficiency of the Internet will allow you to be able to quickly and easily find accurately what you are looking for, and thus will narrow down your search dramatically.

Keep in mind not to get frustrated in your search, and remember that seeking help is significant and that you should not feel ashamed or disappointed in yourself for doing so. You should understand that there are many people out there who are suffering just as you are, and so you should by no means feel alone. Recovery is a serious and decisive step in you getting better.