- Sufferers turn sideways to enter doorway, even thought they don't have to
- Healthy women only swivelled when space was narrower
- Shows how anorexics believe themselves to be fatter than they are
By FIONA MACRAE
Mentality: Young women with the eating disorder turned side-on to get though a gap when it was 40 per cent wider than their shoulders. File picture
Anorexics make an effort to ‘squeeze’ through doorways even when they don’t have to, a study found.
Young women with the eating disorder turned side-on to get though a gap when it was 40 per cent wider than their shoulders.
In contrast, healthy women only started to swivel when the space was much narrower.
The Dutch researchers said their finding suggests that the disease’s effects on the mind run deeper than previously thought.
Anorexia accounts for around one in ten of the 1.6million cases of eating disorders in the UK, is much more common in females than males and usually develops in adolescence.
Sufferers try to stay as thin as possible by drastically cutting back on food and undertaking extreme exercise.
Long-term, it can cause health problems from brittle bones to life-threatening heart damage.
The Utrecht University researchers asked 39 young women to walk through a doorway like gap between two panels.
The gap was made wider and narrower and the women were told they were taking part in a memory test, to stop them from thinking too much about the size of the space.
Half of those taking part had anorexia.
They started to swivel to fit through the gap when it was 40 per cent wider than their shoulders.
In contrast, the other women only felt the need to squeeze when the wriggle-room was cut to 25 per cent, the journal PLoS ONE reports.
The Utrecht University researchers said the difference couldn’t simply be explained away by the women with the eating disorder not accounting for their extreme weight loss.
Previous studies have shown that anorexics believe themselves to be fatter than they actually are.
But the new research is the first to show that this belief affects the way they move – a decision that is largely made unconsciously.
In contrast, the healthy women only felt the need to squeeze when the wriggle-room was cut to 25 per cent. File picture
The researchers said: ‘The results imply abnormalities in anorexia nervosa even at the level of the unconscious.
‘The study shows that body representation disturbances in anorexia nervosa are more pervasive than previously assumed.
‘It appears that for anorexia nervosa patients, experiencing their body as fat goes beyond thinking and perceiving themselves in such a way, it is even reflected in how they move around the world.’
They added that the knowledge could be used to help make treatments more successful.
British research recently concluded that among teenage girls, eating disorders are now second only to depression as the most common new mental health problem they will be diagnosed with.
However, boys are not exempt, with increasing numbers being diagnosed, including some as young as ten.
Experts said that with the young under increasing pressure to ‘be perfect and look perfect’, the problem is now so severe it threatens the mental health of an entire generation.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2333069/Anorexic-girls-feel-fat-fit-doorway-Research-shows-sufferers-think-far-fatter-are.html#ixzz2UnG8uKIj
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