Eating disorders are the result of brain plasticity

Eating disorders are the result of brain plasticity

What is brain plasticity? And how is it related to the development of an eating disorder?

Brain plasticity, or neuroplasticity, is the brain's lifelong ability to change based on new experiences. When we say “the brain’s ability to change,” we don’t mean something mystical or just “spiritual.”

What we are alluding to is the brain's ability to reorganize or rewire its neural pathways, resulting in certain desired or undesirable actions or behaviors. For example, in people with eating disorders, it is unwanted actions such as negative thoughts about their body image that lead to the development of ED. This could have manifested itself through starvation, overexertion, or binging and purging over a period of time.

When people start having bad thoughts and feelings about themselves, their brains begin to develop certain new neural wiring (or connections) to produce certain behaviors. As people continue to respond to pathological behaviors such as starvation, purging, over-exercising, etc., these neural pathways become stronger and stronger. Basically what you think is what you get.

You see every behavior we have or regular thoughts that we believe have developed certain brain maps and formed pathways. These new brain maps can take up a large amount of space in our brains until they all become powerful. Eating disorders take up a lot of space in the brain because they affect almost all aspects of the sufferer's life.

So when it comes to treating eating disorders, if it doesn't work to change the old neural pathways, it won't work. What needs to happen is for the sufferer to develop new neural pathways and build them around the old faulty pathological pathways that are their ED. As you start using these new pathways (the healthy pathways), they become stronger and stronger and eventually replace the old pathological ones (the old pathological ones will fade).

You see, when you realize that it is your brain that is causing you to do things in faulty ways, you will understand that you just need to make your brain work differently to produce behavior changes. And you can do this by focusing your attention differently when the ED urge hits you.

The brain's ability to change does not decrease with age or the duration of the problem you have. Many people think that it is easier to stop an eating disorder early when the disorder first occurs. and if you have had the disorder for many years, it is almost impossible to stop it.

This is not true and completely false. People can stop their eating disorders at any stage of the process because the human brain is plastic and changeable with every repetitive activity we perform. Now, changing your mindset is stressful, but it's not impossible.

The first is to come to the realization that what your brain is telling you may not be correct, so you don't have to act on it every time. Your brain is not your mind and you can influence it with better thoughts and actions.

Your brain is just an organ that sits between your ears. But your mind is what you do, what decisions you make, and what perceptions of yourself you give to others. Of course, this doesn't mean you have an abnormal brain, just the abnormal thoughts and behaviors that led you to ED. It has been proven beyond a doubt that your mind, your conscious behavior and your thoughts can change the structure of your brain.

In summary, eating disorders are the result of the brain's ability to change its own structure in relation to wrong actions and thoughts over time. Because you have changed the wiring of your brain to adapt to a particular pathological behavior in your brain map, you have developed an ED. You have reacted negatively to certain eating disorder triggers that you have built up around you over time.

You probably never would have developed an eating disorder if you had responded differently to these triggers. For example: If you didn't get upset when someone called you "fat" at school, or you didn't care when your ex-boyfriend dumped you for a skinnier girl or some similar event. You would probably never have an eating disorder now. But because you paid too much attention, you have to suffer for a long time.

But it's not all bad news. The good news is that you can change your brain for the better because your brain is plastic: just as you changed it when you developed the defective pathological behavior. Research has shown that with focused attention, mindfulness, and building new neural pathways around the old ones, you can change your brain and therefore your ED.

This is the only cure for eating disorders – to change your brain by changing your mind, to reverse your old thought patterns that got you into this mess in the first place.

Inspired by Irina Webster