One and All

There's no substitute for competence. A cold manner with a real grasp of a subject and ability to apply reason to practicalities, is above, the same old, same old + bags of charm any day. Way above. An article on anorexia gives an insight as to how well meaning is not much cop without useful intent.

It reports claims of an addition to "ground-breaking" treatment for anorexia;

Adults with anorexia often have distinctive traits that lock them into a destructive relationship with food. But those same traits could help them manage their illness

"Manage their illness"? Why would anyone want to manage anorexia? I thought Kenneth Tong, possibly inadvertently, summed up the 'obesity cure' pretty well. Anorexia isn't a choice though, its an unusual response to what can be an attempted choice- sustained calorie restriction.

Incidentally, can we have a discussion about the death of cure, as an aim? Since when did the aim of medical science become "management"? Management was something you did whilst you were looking for a cure. What falls short of management? Management as the endgame strikes me as a desire to make money off sickness and disorder. It's throwing in the towel, in some cases, before entering the ring.

Anorexia has no real treatment, instead anorexics are made to eat until they recover weight. Basically [coerced] gainerism, like those who force feed themselves to get fat or fatter. Those surrounding the person act as "encouragers" that is people who literally exhort/support this dieting up the scale. You'll note this is the same pattern as the 'obese cure'-countering pathology with a counter pathology=balance. It's not only that stupid, it requires the false creation of fatness as a pathology in order to press it into this brilliance.

The reason enforced eating is amazingly effective in reversing anorexia- given it is not really a treatment-is in the nature of metabolic function. Hunger and its response-eating-is our natural default, its instinctive, literally a no-brainer. Deciding not to respond can be a direct conscious act. Anorexia is triggered by calorie restriction, according to the article, it also has a potential hormonal trigger. Any period of calorie restriction- including illness, stress-if that shuts down the digestive system and reduces hunger- can set it off. Presumably what weight loss gastrectomy can partially mimic the this digestive stasis in anorexics when the stomach is removed.

This goes along with the added momentum of going from pathology to health. Whereas starving fat [or any] people goes from where they are, to derangement, disorder using pathology, whether they start at health or not. That some can manage to lose weight and feel better is an advert for finding the proper way to do it. 

Not that this extent of success is deemed good enough for those who care about anorexics though, they expect far better than to have to fight an ailment for life, well meaning doesn't surpass ideological concerns/vested interests.

Across the field, psychologists, psychiatrists and dietitians have noted that positive treatment outcomes for adults with anorexia remain abysmally low. Less than half recover fully, another third show some improvement, but the rest remain chronically ill.

Read that first line again, that is what well meaning looks like. And if fat people had those odds? They'd be few fat people, we've spent lifetime chasing statistical insignificance in the form of a pathology.

Also, notice, this isn't costed. Nothing is too much for these precious folk.

The actual experimental treatment featured is based on the family therapy model pioneered at the Maudsley hospital. This version gets anorexics to nominate several people they love to cede complete control of their eating too. More than encouraging, they become the person's hunger.

This gives them no control whatsoever, despite; "Responsibility for recovery would remain firmly in each client’s hands..." That is supposed to produce "abysmally low" results. A potential client inadvertently summed the equation up beautifully;

“I need this to work,” she said. “I have nothing else to try.”

The old "rock bottom" cretinism.That's how people take out loans to get their stomachs cut out. They leave you with nothing and call it "personal responsibility." When exhausted by the failure of this, you then submit to anything on offer. You are not directing their 'science' or their preferred treatment models. The power these people have is as awesome as the power you don't have.

Peer Review indeed.

A real cure for anorexia would be to reboot hunger functioning. That would not only be humane but cost-effective and individualised in a way that would quickly become collective. What truly works for many of those concerned, works for society as a whole.

It could also inform the bringing down of heightened hunger. The denial of progress in one area tends to stymie it elsewhere. There's an on-going discussion among techno-pioneers, whether we should be scared about intelligent technology becoming more powerful than us and making us its slaves.

I used to think they were away with the fairies. But now I wonder. A real fear is the refusal to deal with the way the body actually works, this refusal to resolve issues. The giving up. The costs imposed by these inefficient and/or ineffective treatments, is what threatens to "bankrupt" health care, whatever the system.

The people who produce the science are the people in control of this denial and by the time they've finished with us, I'm wondering if we'll have regressed to such an inferior state that we'll be fit to be directed by our microwaves and mobile phones. How can we refresh, re-boot and put them on standby, but not our own functions that have merely got out of hand?

Imagine if every time any feature went wrong with your computer, that you couldn't do a damn thing about it? FGS, mentally speaking we will suffer by comparison. We probably already are.

If your computer freezes, you can reboot it. If you don't and run around trying to borrow someone else's. You can be said to have declined "personal responsibility". Because you had an option that was within your individual power, that will suffice to unfreeze your screen more often than not.

You don't have to regress to childhood and cede control to your family. Nor to wait for society to rearrange itself around restrictions that will disadvantage those most in control, who often don't want them but pretend to.

Unless and until anorexics or anyone else has that, their so called "personal responsibility" relies on chance, between the operation of the body's organisation and individual response at any one time, neither of which are direct individual or any other CHOICE. This model of denying individual agency, dumping a pretence of responsibility without power on the individual, blaming them for any failure, whilst professionals get paid for this, is curdling health care.

The doctor within is the greatest doctor, but it needs direct and intelligent manipulation. That probably requires real ground to be broken by the looks of it. Spare the flummery dressed in a shower of sub-biochemical jargon.