NuVal

Last week while grocery shopping, a brochure caught my eye. It was for something called NuVal which sounds like some type of gimmicky product. After several days, I finally got around to reading it.

What is NuVal? Apparently, it is a new scoring system for foods. Currently, it is debuting at the stores Price Chopper, HyVee, and Meijer. The premise of the scoring system is to rate the health of food products based on a scale of 1-100, 1 having the least nutrition and 100 the most nutrition. The idea is that this simple system (like an at-a-glance) will help enable consumers to make informed decisions about the foods they buy as well as give an ability to compare products based on price and nutrition.

The NuVal scoring system is based on the Overall Nutritional Quality Index (ONQI) algorithm which considers over 30 nutrients and takes into account trans fats, quality of macronutrients, and the density of food products. The development of the NuVal system itself is headed by Dr. David Katz, an Associate Professor of Public Health at Yale University School of Medicine, along with 12 other experts in medicine, nutrition, and public health. Their goal is to havea NuVal score for the over 50,000 food products in an average store. One nice thing is that this is independently funded, so there is no promotion by manufacturers or other food companies.

In general, I think this is an interesting approach to take, much better than displaying calories on menus, billboards, etc. In the "Nutritional Insights" section of the website, it emphasizes that there are no "good" or "bad" NuVal scores--that it's just an objective tool. It makes the point that you don't have to buy the highest NuVal score, but rather that you may simply choose a product because you love it. That's actually an important statement for me to read as I have a tendency to base my food choices on the highest value of nutrition versus just taste. (post here on health versus instinct)

It will be interesting to see how this works and whether consumers catch on to using this system. There does seem to be more of an educational aspect here than just good calories and bad calories.

What is your opinion? Could this be a valuable tool for consumers and their food choices? Would/will you use this system?

Borborygmus

I happened to catch this word, borborygmus (pronounced bor-buh-rig-mus), in a recent issue of O! magazine. I don't read this magazine often, but secretly only bought it because there were some interesting articles on animals in it. And who says we don't buy magazines for content? Ha!

Anyway the magazine said the definition was "the grumbling noises your stomach makes." Well, immediately, I thought hunger. This is true to an extent, but after some quick google search, it's actually the sound produced from gas movement in your intestines. Bleh, that is nice to know eh? It's just that the growling is typically associated with the stomach, because it is usually louder.

The origin of borborygmus is Greek, translating as an onomatopoeia (a word that imitates the sounds it makes) meaning "rumbling." This Scientific American article explains in detail the mechanism of what is going on in your body. In digestion, there is a term called peristalsis. It is a series of wave-like muscular contractions which helps move food along within the digestive tract. Peristalsis increases with the consumption of food, however, it also occurs in the absence of food and when the stomach and small intestines have been empty for about two hours. Once this has occurred, stomach receptors respond by causing a reflex generation of waves of electrical activity (migrating myoelectric complexes) that leads to hunger contractions. This then leads to an intestinal "housecleaning" of sorts which causes the grumbling noises associated with hunger.

It is good to distinguish here that these are NOT hunger pangs which result 12-24 or more hours after the last meal. The borborygmus is more like a false hunger pang.

I bring this up, because I know for so many of us, it seems are bodies are constantly hungry. This is true after years of deprivation, and it is quite nuisance when it seems our bodies do not believe we have just fed it! However, I think a lot of what we are feeling too is this borborygmus, at least after initial refeeding.

I know the worst time this has happened is when I've been at therapy appointments and my stomach decides to growl loudly despite having eaten a short time ago. None of my therapists have ever said anything, but I always wonder if then, they question whether I have eaten or not. This borborygmus (it's nice to have a name to it) always makes me want to shout, "Really, yes, I have eaten, just an hour or two ago, I swear." And then, I just imagine some stare, eyes looking down upon me, like a schoolteacher looking over her glasses, saying "Uh-huh." Then, it makes me feel guilty for all the times I've lied about not eating, when really now, I just want to be believed.

Reasons why the BMI is bogus

This was on NPR's Weekend Edition. I thought it was fabulous! Everything is according to the BMI these days, and it drives me insane. Even when doctors, nutritionists, and other professionals know how bogus the BMI is, it still holds such authority. I get that professionals want a general statistic, but really ,couldn't they come up with something better than a formula dated to the 19th century! Yes, it is 200 years old!

To my delight, the Top 10 reasons why the BMI is Bogus

Personally, I really like 2, 3, and 4 best.

Are food and politics intertwined?

I just read this interview from Michael Pollan, author of the Omnivore's Diet and In Defense of Food, on alternet.org Pollan is a popular interviewee and never seems too shy to share his opinion (in good taste though). The interview discussed Pollan's thoughts about the politics of food and how food is viewed in his own home. I found a few interesting things he said about his once picky-eater son who has now embraced food.

But he basically found food scary and overwhelming. And so he controlled that by eating food that was as bland as possible. He was the same way about clothes. He didn't like any variety in clothing. So he wore black clothes for about eight years of his childhood. Ate white, dressed black. In both cases, in retrospect, he was trying to reduce sensory input. It was overwhelming. Smell was overwhelming, taste was overwhelming, colour was overwhelming. And he just had trouble processing.

He never mentions if his son ever had anything like autism which could explain part of this since overwhelming sensory input is a known trait. But I wonder how true this is for other picky-eaters who do not have a diagnosable illness. Is it about sensory control?

Later in the interview, Pollan says:

Kids' relations to food are complex. This generation will have its own neuroses, that's for sure. But it's very concerning that there are such high levels of allergies among kids nowadays. The reasons are as yet unexplained. But I've heard that it has complicated kids' relationships with food because so many have allergies, or think they do.

I've discovered cooking and gardening are great ways to get kids to reorient their relationships to food in a positive way. Kids will eat things that they'll pick in the garden that they'll never eat off the plate. Or they'll eat things that they've cooked themselves. Because I think a big issue for them is control. Food is really, I think, a primary political phenomenon. It is the first time you can control what you take into your body, and the first time you can say no to your parents and assert your identity. So I think food and politics are very intertwined.

I agree that helping gardening and cooking are good ways to help children develop a positive relationship with food, but I am unsure of his comment that food is about control. I know he is probably talking more from personal experience than about eating disorders and dieting here, but if we look at it in that context, isn't that one of the misconceptions---that food is about control? Are food and politics that intertwined? I think on a national/global scale, food and politics do mesh, but I don't know on a personal level. If it is as he says, I think a lot of us are actually trying to shed some of the identity we have placed on ourselves or as others have seen us.

What are your thoughts?

Another example of the skewed view of my body

Just when I was about to write a post about how I was struggling with body image and that perhaps I was at my set point, something bizarre happened yesterday. Here's a little back story. Within the past month or so, I've been having terrible neck pain. It's like my neck would rather be disconnected to my head right now as the weight of it feels so heavy. This is causing some headaches which I know is stemming from my neck pain. Along with this, I've also had several incidents of my left hand having numbness, especially after weed eating or dremeling my dogs' nails. Several times, I've woken up to a numb hand. I have no clue what has precipitated either of these things, and it has me a tad worried.

My doctor thinks it is just a pulled muscle in my neck and that my muscle in my arm is basically suffocating my medial nerve. She's hoping with physical therapy that will help release the muscle over the nerve in my hand which will help my neck as well. Though I know PT is expensive (and it is on an individual plan), I really don't have a choice since this really could get worse if I don't have treatment. (Hmm, I'm just thinking of the irony as I write this--how something physical with my body can prompt me to get help so quickly but when it is my head or ED, it takes me forever to seek treatment)

Anyway, that's the back story of why I was there. This Dr. doesn't know about the ED (yes, I know that probably isn't the best thing but I just never felt warranted to say anything since I only see her for orthopedic, muscle problems in relation to running). Being weighed is the first thing they do. At times, I've politely asked not to be, but other times, I hop on there out of curiosity.

Well, the last few weeks have been absolutely horrible body image. I was sure I'd gained more weight than I'm comfortable with since my exercising habits have been virtually non-existent (I realize this can be a good thing at times) and my eating has felt on the verge of bingeing.

The scale read much differently than I'd expected, and I was shocked. My only comment that would have even referenced this was my therapist's when she said how "I looked smaller," which I only brushed off to having my hair in a ponytail. So this number doesn't make sense to me. I've been eating A LOT, not exercising, my clothes don't feel any differently, and I have felt absolutely huge.

I don't know how to feel about it. Do I feel better that I'm not at the weight I thought I was? Do I feel worse that I still have such skewed body image and that my brain and body are still so disconnected?

The parallels of ED and sleep thinking

I know I wrote about sleep in my last post, but I have a few other thoughts. For me, my relationship with sleep is similarly parallel to the ED. Here is an example of ED/sleep dialogue which has dominated my thinking at various times:

ED
I really don't need that much food. I can get by on X calories just fine.

Eating too much food will just cause me to get fat.

I don't need to eat.

SLEEP
I really don't need that much sleep. 4-5 hours is sufficient.

Sleeping too much will make me fat and unproductive.

I don't need sleep.

Obviously, all of these statements are illogical, black and white thinking. Although I am able to see that now, sleep is still one of the hardest issues for me. Part of it is due to years of intentionally depriving myself of sleep. Another part is habitual. Yes, I dare it, but the Internet probably keeps me up too much. I've heard that your brain has to really focus on those pixels which just keeps you awake (unless you do indeed crash at the computer--a tell tale sign, you're not getting enough sleep)

Much like the ED, my thoughts and behaviors about sleep sway back and forth between knowing the health implications and having too much of a laissez-faire attitude. It's like never exactly allowing myself to reach a full potential, but instead just enough to tiptoe by...until the next major blow.

Sorry for the downer kind of post. I don't think my head is in such a good spot lately. :-(

To sleep perchance to dream-sleep and eating disorders

Lately, I've been thinking about sleep and the impact an eating disorder can have on it. Prior to my trip, we had a lot of bad weather here with rain and thunderstorms just about everyday. Some of these storms occurred in the early morning which would suddenly wake me. Then, I was up, the dogs were up, and neither of us could get back to sleep.

What just occurred to me was how my sleeping habits have changed since the introduction of an ED. Before ED, I was always a very sound sleeper. I could sleep through anything--thunder, lightning, rain, loud noises, etc. The house could have been robbed, and I would never have noticed. However, after ED began, I became a very light sleeper, waking up from subtle noises. In some ways this was good. If the dogs made a whimper or movement, I could wake up and let them out. At other times, this backfired, especially when all I wanted to do was sleep.

I also noticed that I've conditioned myself to wake up at about the same time every morning despite what time my head actually hits the pillow. This isn't an unusual phenomenon. Many people condition their bodies similarly unknowingly. This was made especially evident while I was in Pensacola, practically waking up at my usual time.

This made me think about the general question of how sleep effects eating disorder individuals. Does an ED affect the number of hours of sleep your body needs? Does it change a person's sleeping habits? What role does starvation have on sleep? Does weight restoration and recovery impact sleep quantitatively or qualitatively?

There's no doubt that sleep deprivation affects hormones and metabolism. Recent research has shown sleep deprivation as one reason for the increase of obesity worldwide. This article gives a thorough look at sleep deprivation, hormones, and metabolism.

But most of us have already heard about this, the rest of the research on sleep and eating disorders is scant. However, in sleep-wake studies, both those with anorexia and bulimia reported significant sleep disturbances on self reported questionnaires. A few other studies show that weight restoration helps those with anorexia in both slow wave, deeper, nocturnal sleep as well as qualitative sleep. (Studies here and here) In an interesting older study of the relationship of weight gain and sleep in 10 anorexic individuals, it confirmed how sleep changes during the weight restoration process through the use of EEGs..

It is my hope that there will be future studies on eating disorders and the role of sleep. I think it is a neglected area of research with important factors involved.

Has your ED affected your sleep/sleeping habits? Do you notice a difference in sleeping habits between periods of your eating disorder, i.e. at your worst period versus in recovery?