• Question: What’s your knowledge or opinion on whether eating disorders are primarily caused from environmental or biological factors?

    Asked by anon-249998 on 14 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Paige Chandler

      Paige Chandler answered on 14 Mar 2020:

      That’s a very tricky question, thank you for asking it because it’s a topic that should be talked about.

      From my own work, behaviour (‘abnormal’ or otherwise) is a combination of biological and social factors. I work with mice who have genetic mutations, which cause changes in their behaviour. For example, we have found that my mutant mice ‘comfort eat’ – they are slowly gaining weight because they eat more, and we have reason to believe this is because they feel less pleasure than a normal mouse, and are trying to compensate using food.

      However, this is a small observed mouse behaviour, and so would be a gross oversimplification of a human behaviour. Unlike mice, humans are part of a very complex social system that also influences their behaviour. Evidence suggests that psychology is a complex interplay between our genetics and our environment. It would be difficult to say what is the primary cause, especially as there are many different types of eating disorder, and each patient is an individual case.

      Thank you for such a thoughtful question, I hope my answer made some sense!

    • Photo: Nuru Noor

      Nuru Noor answered on 14 Mar 2020:

      Really good question 👍 The honest answer is that I don’t know but having seen many people with eating disorders working as a doctor in gastroenterology – I suspect it is a combination of the two

    • Photo: M S

      M S answered on 16 Mar 2020:

      I think Paige answered this great!

      Overall I think it is a combination of biological, mental and environmental factors

    • Photo: Kate Mitchell

      Kate Mitchell answered on 16 Mar 2020:

      I’m not an expert on this, but my understanding is that both can play a role

    • Photo: Ioana Grigoras

      Ioana Grigoras answered on 16 Mar 2020:

      Hi, Lydia! That is a great question and one that I have wondered about myself.
      –
      I don’t work in the field, so I don’t know a lot about the biological factors at play. I imagine that there are definitely genetics factors influencing the brain areas involved in food regulation, satiety and pleasure produced by food consumption that play an important role in some types of eating disorders, but I don’t think that excludes environmental factors from being at the root of others.
      –
      Having grown up in Romania and living in the UK now, I experienced the perspective of two different cultures on what the ‘ideal’ body type is. In Romania, I felt there was so much more pressure to fit the pattern than there is here in the UK. I was buying a dress online a few months ago and I sent the website to a friend of mine in Romania and her first reaction was ‘there are normal women showing these dresses on this website’, because the ones in Romania are always a XS size. As someone who didn’t really fit their pattern, I would understand why those sort of expectations, along with the focus of social media of promoting a certain type of ‘beauty’ would lead to an increased number of people with eating disorders in the population.
      –
      Again, this is only my personal opinion (because you also asked for opinions in your question).
      –
      Later edit: I looked it up and found twin studies and one adoption study (siblings with similar genetic material, but potentially different environments) that would suggest that actually only the genetic factors would play a significant role towards the appearance of eating disorders. Then, I found some other studies that suggest that there is an additive risk on genetic factors and environmental factors leading to eating disorders. I expect that this is a question that is still debated in the field, as they look at different facets of eating disorders and environmental factors could potentially be different from country to country.
      –
      Thank you for this really cool question! I learnt something out of it too! 🙂

    • Photo: Sophie Arthur

      Sophie Arthur answered on 20 Mar 2020:

      Great question Lydia. I think the others have given you some great answers. In my opinion, I would say it is a combination of the two, like a lot of other things

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