In this podcast we talk about the Adapt to Flee Famine Perspective of Anorexia evolution with Shan Guisinger.
The Adapt to Flee Famine Perspective puts forward convincing evidence for the case that Anorexia is an evolved genetic response to times of famine. A migratory response that makes people with the genetic predisposition for Anorexia respond to energy deficit by wanting to exercise more and eat less.
You can find out more about Shan Guisinger here: http://www.adaptedtofamine.com/
Paper on The Adapt To Flee Famine Perspective: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14599241
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Tabitha, this podcast episode was brilliant – I have been trying to recover for some time but have never been able to relate to the ‘pursuit of thinness’ explanation that most therapists and eating disorder resources seem to attribute anorexia to. This biological explanation really resonated with me and has finally given me a logical cause for my fears of eating, so thank you!! I would really like to learn more about this evolutionary perspective and how I can use it to motivate weight gain and lasting recovery. Do you have any recommended resources (e.g. books, blogs) that delve into this topic more, aside from Shan’s 2003 paper?
I liked this one on Animal Anorexia by N. Mrosovsky and David F. Sherry. If you Google it there is a free download
Awesome, I’ll look it up, thanks Tabitha. Do you have a page of other books or resources that you found most helpful during your own recovery?
Dear Tabitha, I am the mom of a 15 year old German girl with anorexia nervosa. Living in Germany means we literally live in the stone age concerning anorexia treatment. Most of the clinics and therapists in my country still are in love with Hilde Bruch and Salvador Minuchin concerning parent blaming and shaming and the opinion that anorexia nervosa is caused by bad parenting, over-controlling mothers, a cry for autonomy and so on. When I read the Adapt to Flee Famine Perspective it felt like an epiphany to me and it helped me so much in understanding the illness and understanding what kind of horrible enemy our child has to fight every single day. My husband and I succeded to get our daughter to 99% recovery within one year only with FBT and lots of books (all of them written in English by Professor Daniel Le Grange, Eva Musby, Carrie Arnold, and of course the great book by Laura Collins, the list goes on). We did FBT at home, no clinic, no therapist because here in Germany these people in my opinion are the greatest danger for recovery as they only make things worse due to their belief I mentioned above. I LOVE the Adapt to Flee Famine Perspective and I would like to thank Dr. Guisinger for this research so much. I am determined to contact many people here in my country to make this Perspective and the FBT method known because I am sure it will save many, many lives. Thank you so much for this great podcast! Kind greetings from Germany 🙂 Ina
I passed that “thank you” on to Shan Guisinger 😀
Dear Ina,
I’m also based in Germany trying to help (but not yet succeeding) our 16 year old daughter – all by ourselves, as therapists and medics were all counterproductive when we tried FBT. I wonder how you are doing now, one year later? I just read Tabitha’s book and wonder how I could explain Shan Guisinger’s Theory to make our daughter understand that she is in the middle of this migration situation?
Best,
Baja
I first heard you mention the Adapt to Flee Famine Perspective on your Youtube channel, and out of all the possible reasons I had come across to try and explain my eating disorder thoughts and actions/behaviors this made the most sense to me. And since discovering this and looking more into it and placing it into my current situation, I have been able to make more mental leaps and bounds in the past month than I have in the past 5 years. I will definitely be keeping this podcast as well as some articles on the Minnesota Starvation Experiment in my bookmarks for further study.