Do you believe in Pandas?
Anyone interested in eating disorders needs to know about Pandas. Your treatment providers should know about this enigmatically named syndrome.Does Strep Throat Trigger Serious Issues?
You may still not believe it applies to eating disorders -- many don't -- and may conclude that it doesn't apply to your child. But still, I think all parents should be told.
I don't know why people DON'T believe in it - it's almost like it's just a different type of post-viral syndrome from the usual CFS/ME, and that's mostly accepted by the medical community now. I wouldn't be surprised if it applied to me actually. My anxiety appeared as if by magic when I was four years old, alongside a whole host of tics, obsessions and rituals. Of course therapy focused on possible psychological triggers at that age, but there were none that I recall. Guess I'll never know now.
ReplyDeleteSo glad you posted this, Laura. My plate has been overflowing the past two weeks and I had that article set aside to write about.
ReplyDeleteI want to ps here. We know that the brain of a human does not fully mature until at least the mid twenties and some as late as the late twenties/early thirties. Meaning that all the connections, etc., etc., prunings, etc. have pretty much taken place. Thinking about the document that Dr. Julie O'Toole shared about cases of anorexia 300 years ago about which the writer postulated the illness was biological (consumption of another kind), suppose in fact ED's are caused by a microorganism like strep or even other microorganisms that disrupt the brain's "normal" development and interfere with things like the endocrine system. A lot to think about. I wonder if evidence of such infections lingers in the brain somehow to be found later? And also, I wonder if the late onset adults didn't really have some sort of earlier trend towards an ED but were able to turn it around until they were older and were dealing with a different kind of stress that triggered the illness. After all, think about heliobacter pylori. Stretching, I know. But still.....
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