Rethinking anorexia: Biology may be more important than culture, new studies reveal sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/r…
Very interesting piece. Like all psychiatric disorders, anorexia is quite heritable, so vulnerability has some biological basis. But how it is expressed may depend on cultural context and experience
But is it an issue with body image and social competition or is it a compulsion around appetite and starvation (as framed in the piece)?
The sex difference would seem to support the former, with stronger social pressure on females. This may shape the manifestation of an underlying psychological/neural make-up
There is genetic overlap in risk between anorexia and OCD: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30087453/
So, are there then lots of males with this same genetic vulnerability, who manifest symptoms in a different way? (Note that OCD is itself a bit more common in females, while tic disorders are much more common in males)
