Through the influences of the social media and the fashion and music industry, to be considered beautiful today, a person is required to have four things: perfection, flawlessness, lighter skin, and slimness. Given this, just to be accepted in the fad, more and more people are putting their lives at risk by pushing their body too hard to undergo extreme dieting, which could eventually lead them to suffer from an eating disorder.
In the US alone, statistics show that about 30 million people are suffering from an eating disorder. With one death in every 62 minutes, eating disorder is considered the most fatal of all the mental illness, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. One of the most common eating disorder that almost 4% of women and 0.3% of men are experiencing is anorexia nervosa, where patients experience extremely low body weight and distorted perception towards their body.
In the recent study, which was published in Nature Genetics, the researchers found out another breakthrough regarding the study of anorexia. At the end of the study, they were able to discover eight genes that could be linked to mental illness.
About 16,992 people with anorexia and about 55,525 people without the illness were observed to gather information for the study. The people who participated came from 17 countries around the globe.
After the study, the results reveal genes that were more common only to the participants suffering from anorexia. These genes are those that control the body's metabolism, specifically those that manage the body fat and blood sugar levels, as reported by Body and Soul.
"There is something in those systems that has gone awry," explains Professor Janet Treasure, an expert from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London. With what they've discovered, the expert is now certain that the illness is not just of the mind, but also the body too.
Meanwhile, though the experts are still uncertain how these mutations work, they are considering these genes as the culprit why anorexia patients can starve in longer periods and have little interest of going back their old diet. "It's possible that when people lose weight with anorexia nervosa, they haven't got such strong drivers getting the set-point back to normal," the Professor explained.
With the discovery, Nick Martin, head of the QIMR Berghofer genetic epidemiology laboratory, claims the result could explain why some patients are still struggling to get back in their old shapes even after their medications. By knowing the root cause, it will not be possible for them to develop new treatments that could be more beneficial to those who are suffering from the disease.
