Dogs with Binge Eating Disorder Suffer Longer Than Expected

Although anorexia and bulimia are arguably more talked about, binge eating disorder is actually the most common eating disorder in the United States. And as the researchers explain, this question seems to have been poorly understood. A five-year study by researchers at McLean Hospital (part of the Mass General Brigham Health System) found that the disorder — which affects about 2.8 percent of American adults, according to Psychology Today — lasts longer provided that. Indeed, 61% of patients still presented with complete binge eating disorder 2.5 years after diagnosis; this figure decreased only slightly after five years, to 46%.

“Often the clients I work with report many, many years of binge eating disorder, which seems very discordant with studies suggesting it was a transient disorder,” says lead author Kristin Javaras in a Press release. These studies, which indicated that remission could occur in one to two years, were generally small and focused on homogenous groups of young women with a BMI less than 30. In this study, 137 adults aged 19 to 74 were followed for five years; their average BMI was 36. “The bottom line is that binge eating disorder gets better over time, but for many people it lasts for years,” Javaras says.

The study, published Tuesday in Psychological Medicine, also found that relapses were common: of the 16% of individuals in remission after 2.5 years, a third of them had relapsed either with full blown binge eating disorder or presented with “symptoms clinically significant but below the threshold. at five years old. Javaras noted that studies that focused only on people receiving treatment (hers did not) found faster remission times, indicating that intervention can be effective. But no demographic characteristics emerged regarding how long individuals suffered from the disease. “This suggests that no one is less or more likely to improve than anyone else,” says Javaras. (More discovery stories.)