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Things are complicated when you’re pregnant. Your body looks different. Your habits change. For example, if you’ve been living with an eating disorder, you might find that it goes into remission during your pregnancy. On the other hand, if you’ve never had an eating disorder, you may be more vulnerable to developing one while you’re pregnant.
According to a study led by Carolina’s Cynthia Bulik, professor of eating disorders in the School of Medicine and the nutrition department in the School of Public Health, health care professionals should be on the lookout for unhealthy changes in eating habits in pregnant women, especially those women with lower levels of education and income.
To get their results, Bulik and her colleagues at Carolina and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health followed 41,000 pregnant Norwegian women who were part of a population-based study that examined several public health aspects — from environmental exposures in pregnancy to autism to eating disorders, Bulik said. The women enrolled in the study during their 17- to 18-week ultrasound, and some have been involved for almost seven years; researchers plan to continue enrolling women until the cohort is 100,000 strong.
“We need to be very vigilant across the socioeconomic spectrum to screen for the development of disordered eating during pregnancy,” Bulik said. “It’s possible that pregnancy is even more stressful for women with poorer social support and resources, meaning that pregnancy becomes more of a vulnerability window for them.”
The researchers were surprised to find that many women who had never had binge eating disorder developed it once they became pregnant. Researchers also found that the women who already had binge eating disorder were more likely to continue binging than they were to go into remission.
But what is binge eating disorder? And how is it different from feeding a craving or simple overeating, something most of us have done at one time or another?
The main difference, Bulik said, is that people with binge eating disorder tend to lose all control with their eating, quickly consuming inordinately large portions of food on a regular basis, even when they are not hungry. They eat until they are past the point of being full and, out of embarrassment, they often eat alone. Unlike people with bulimia nervosa, binge eaters don’t vomit or otherwise purge the food they’ve eaten.
According to a 2007 survey from Harvard and McLean Hospital, binge eating disorder is the most common eating disorder, and it affects some 3.5 percent of U.S. citizens. It is a dangerous harbinger of various health problems, such as obesity, depression, insomnia, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
What is unknown, Bulik said, is what effect the mothers’ binge eating disorder will have on the children. She and her colleagues will follow the 100,000 women and their children into adolescence to see how and if fluctuating nutrients during gestation affect a child’s birth weight, development, or eating patterns.
Other Carolina authors of the study, which was published in the August issue of Psychological Medicine, include biostatistician Ann Von Holle; Robert Hamer, professor of psychiatry; Anna Maria Siega-Riz, associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology; and Patrick F. Sullivan, professor of psychiatry and genetics.
Provided by Research and Economic Development.
Editor: Neil Caudle
Writer: Margarite Nathe