Lying in Weight: The Hidden Epidemic of Eating Disorders in Adult Women - Softcover

Gura PhD, Trisha

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060761490 ISBN 13: 9780060761493

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2008

Synopsis

A girl with an eating disorder grows up. And then what?

In this groundbreaking book, science journalist Trisha Gura explodes the myth that those who suffer from eating disorders, including anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, are primarily teenage girls. In truth, twenty-five to thirty million American women twenty-five and older suffer from serious food issues, from obsessions with calorie counting to compulsions to starve then overeat. These diseases often linger from adolescence or emerge anew in the lives of adult women in ways that we are only now starting to recognize.

Drawing on her own experience with anorexia, as well as the most up-to-date research and extensive interviews with clinicians and sufferers, Gura presents a startling, timely, and imperative investigation of eating disorders "all grown up," and offers hope through understanding.

About this title

About the Author

Trisha Gura, Ph.D., has written extensively for such publications as Science, Nature, Scientific American, the Chicago Tribune, Prevention, Child, Health, and Parents. She holds a Ph.D. in molecular biology and is a Resident Scholar at Brandeis University near Boston, Massachusetts.

From Booklist

Science writer Gura believes that the best estimates of people with an eating disorder--25 to 30 million, according to the National Eating Disorders Association--may be off by millions. Many more, she says, have what she calls "subthreshold" eating disorders. That is, their symptoms, for one reason or another, fall just outside the standards set by the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Which doesn't mean they're not overly obsessed with their bodies, or don't adhere to dangerous dietary and/or exercise practices. It does mean that these women may be ignored because they're usually older than 25, hence commonly believed immune from such illnesses as anorexia nervosa and bulimia. Indeed, Gura notes that when symptoms diagnosed as an eating disorder in an adolescent appear in a mature woman, they're often written off by physicians as something else and go untreated. The result, she fears, threatens the woman's health. Including steps for self-diagnosis and self-healing, Gura proffers helpful counsel to those willing to heed it. Donna Chavez
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About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0060761490
• ISBN 13: 9780060761493
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384