Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/C8ANzjGPrRr/ Nearly two-thirds of binge eaters continued to suffer from this dangerous disorder 2.5 years after the initial diagnosis and about half of them still have it 5 years later.  Harvard psychologists at the McLean Hospital followed 137 adults in the community suffering from this disorder over a 5 year period. Previous retrospective studies, most of young women, had shown that those with this most prevalent American eating disorder either recovered from it much faster or had it linger much longer.  In this prospective study, subjects of both gender with ages from 19 to 74 were seen at 2.5 and 5 years.  It demonstrates that 61 percent of them had uncontrollable eating habits at the first visit and that an additional 23 percent had abnormal eating patterns that failed to meet the strict criteria for binging.  At 5 years those numbers were 45 percent an additional 33 percent.  Most discouraging was the observation that 35 percent of those in remission at 2.5 years