My brain feels like mush. The cognitive affects of my ED are some of the most annoying for me to face. The physical stuff, I can usually manage. But not being able to think straight, or to read and feel the text somehow evaporate in the short distance between my eyes and my brain--this drives me nuts. Even the simplest of tasks, whether it's brushing my teeth or crocheting, leaves me feeling like this little guy here:
So what do you think a complete geek like me does when she gets frustrated and exhausted? That's right- she turns to PubMed.
I found this study on the reversal of cognitive markers of anorexia with weight restoration rather fascinating for both my current state of mind and current state of body. Granted, the authors studied adolescents on their first presentation for AN treatment, neither of which are true for me anymore. That being said, I'm not entirely sure that these reversals would have been different for longer-term patients, although they may have taken longer.
Like Ancel Keys found in the Minnesota Starvation Study, adolescents in the acute phase of AN showed slower sensorimotor responses to stimuli and were more affected by others' interference. Working memory, however, was not impaired. After weight restoration, the adolescents' performance on the first two tasks were significantly improved, and "relative to controls, they were significantly faster on attention and executive function tasks, exhibited superior verbal fluency, working memory, and a significantly superior ability to inhibit well-learnt responses."
So although eating right now is making me want to bash my head in (metaphorically speaking- my head is pretty darn hard and I would fear more for the wall than my skull), one of the advantages to eating is the reassurance that my brain will work better. If only I could get an off switch for the silly thing...
What helps you along in recovery? It doesn't need to be existential or even particularly significant, just what you cling to when the going gets tough.
So what do you think a complete geek like me does when she gets frustrated and exhausted? That's right- she turns to PubMed.
I found this study on the reversal of cognitive markers of anorexia with weight restoration rather fascinating for both my current state of mind and current state of body. Granted, the authors studied adolescents on their first presentation for AN treatment, neither of which are true for me anymore. That being said, I'm not entirely sure that these reversals would have been different for longer-term patients, although they may have taken longer.
Like Ancel Keys found in the Minnesota Starvation Study, adolescents in the acute phase of AN showed slower sensorimotor responses to stimuli and were more affected by others' interference. Working memory, however, was not impaired. After weight restoration, the adolescents' performance on the first two tasks were significantly improved, and "relative to controls, they were significantly faster on attention and executive function tasks, exhibited superior verbal fluency, working memory, and a significantly superior ability to inhibit well-learnt responses."
So although eating right now is making me want to bash my head in (metaphorically speaking- my head is pretty darn hard and I would fear more for the wall than my skull), one of the advantages to eating is the reassurance that my brain will work better. If only I could get an off switch for the silly thing...
What helps you along in recovery? It doesn't need to be existential or even particularly significant, just what you cling to when the going gets tough.