Eating
Disorders
Eating-Disorders Center Hailed as
First in Nation
March 25, 2004 - Ellen Hart-Peña wishes there had been hospital care for her
when she was setting running records and being the perfect first lady of Denver
- but binging and purging night after night.
"I wasted a third of my life with this disease," Hart-Peña said Tuesday at
Denver Health Medical Center's
new intensive-care unit for people with eating
disorders. "I could have helped myself sooner in a place like this."
Denver Health's Acute Comprehensive Urgent Treatment for Eating Disorders
center aims to treat the sickest of people with anorexia nervosa and
bulimia
nervosa.
Anorexia is a pathological drive to be thin. Bulimia is losing or maintaining
weight by vomiting shortly after eating.
The center is the nation's only in-patient facility for eating disorders that
is medical-based, rather than psychological-based, said Dr. Philip S. Mehler,
the center's medical director. The cost is $20,000 a week, and while insurers
are increasingly willing to pay for eating-disorder treatment, not all do.
Nationally, about 1,000 women die of anorexia each year, according to New
Directions Eating Disorders Center. That's about half of 1 percent of those who
have been hospitalized with the disease. In all, about 5 million Americans have
some kind of eating disorder.
Eating disorders are 10 to 20 times more common among women than men. Long
considered psychological disorders,
anorexia's and bulimia's medical
consequences have been ignored for too long, Mehler said. They include damage to
the esophagus, teeth and heart.
Still, the key to treating the sickest patients is to combine intensive-care
medical treatment with psychological care, Mehler said.
Dr. Kenneth Weiner, a psychiatrist at the University of Colorado Health
Sciences Center, will work with patients several hours each day.
"It's the classic bio-psycho-social disorder," Weiner said of anorexia.
"Anorexia is as inheritable as
schizophrenia."
If a woman's mother had the disease, she's 12 times more likely to get it as
a typical woman. It's often trauma, loss, separation, neglect or
self-esteem
issues that tip the balance. As Weiner put it, "Genetics loads the gun, life
pulls the trigger."
Hart-Peña is testament to what anorexia or bulimia - she had both - can do to
even those gifted with brains and athletic talent.
"I don't remember my graduation from Harvard," she said. "I don't remember my
wedding (to former Mayor Federico Peña). I don't remember setting an American
record for the 30 kilometers.
"I couldn't remember being there because I was so focused on getting my next
food and finding the nearest bathroom."
At their worst, eating disorders so weakened Hart-Peña that she could barely
run around the block. Her teeth became unhealthy, she had a constant sore
throat, her menstrual cycle went haywire, she felt cold, her memory suffered. "I
couldn't read what was on a piece of paper."
Hart-Peña said she seemed to have the perfect life. She was attractive, an
athletic champion. "But inside, that's not what it felt like. I was never quite
good enough."
It wasn't until she had therapy while pregnant with her first child that she
was able to overcome her disease.
The eating-disorders center will share space in the 24-bed medical ICU at
Denver Health, typically using four to six beds.
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