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Binge-eating,
a disorder that can lead to obesity in young women, can
be predicted by looking at a girl's negative emotions,
including dissatisfaction with her body image, new data
confirms.
Only
certain negative emotions, however, were linked to an
increased risk of binge eating. "Heightened depressive
symptoms and emotional eating, as well as low self-esteem,
but not anxiety symptoms and anger, predicted binge
eating onset," says Eric Stice, Ph.D., an assistant
professor at the University of Texas at Austin, writing
in the current issue of Health Psychology.
Similarly,
not all types of social support were linked to binge
eating. Low peer support increased a girl's risk, but
low parental support did not have any effect. Teenagers'
risk of binge eating was not related to their age, ethnicity
or level of parental education.
Binge
eating, in turn, was linked to an increased risk of
becoming obese.
One
out of every four adolescents in the United States is
obese, and the incidence of obesity in this age group
has doubled over the past 30 years.
Stice
looked at more than a dozen measures of self-esteem,
depression or eating behaviors and found that they could
predict binge eating with 92 percent accuracy.
Based
on the results of this study, Stice suggests that it
might be useful for prevention efforts to attempt to
reduce girls' perception of the importance of their
appearance as well as working on their overeating tendencies.
The
study followed more than 200 girls enrolled in the ninth
or tenth grade at two unidentified private high schools
in northern California. The students ranged in age from
13 to 17 at the start of the two-year investigation.
Four percent of the girls are African American, 20 percent
Asian, 65 percent Caucasian, 2 percent Hispanic, 1 percent
Native American and 8 percent listed themselves as "other."
The
girls answered survey questions concerning their dieting
history, weight, height, emotional symptoms and social
support network.
At
the start of the study, 34 of the girls reported that
they had engaged in at least one episode of binge eating.
Of the remaining 191 students, 22 (12 percent) acknowledged
in a resurvey 10 or 20 months later that they had engaged
in at least one incident of binge eating.
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