Pat Hartman | Childhood Obesity News

Another Facet of Mukbang, Continued

Pat Hartman December 10, 2020 No Comments

In the most recent installment, we described the comfort that many people find in the ASMR effect, and their ability to be soothed and calmed by certain sounds. The radical opposite of that is misphonia, a condition where people are seriously repelled by sounds, including those that others enjoy. Misphonia can be set off by a thousand things — the whimpering of a puppy; fingers or fingernails tapping on various surfaces; teeth sucking; psoriasis scratching; and the ever-popular eating noises.

Quite probably, children have run away from home, and husbands or wives have divorced their spouses, to escape someone’s eating noises. There are aural experiences that some individuals would willingly commit violence to eliminate. But other people willingly listen to sounds that would send a misophone into a straitjacket.

Mukbang + ASMR = obsession

For for some mukbang enthusiasts, hearing is the most important sense of all. Sure, the visual spectacle of another human eating is pleasant, but their favorite thing is exactly what would trigger misphonia in another — the sounds of slurping, biting, munching, sucking, and chewing. For this subset of mukbang fans, listening is even better than watching.

Journalist Dana Givens spoke with Rachel Herz, a neuroscientist and adjunct professor at Brown University Alpert Medical School, who attributes this pleasure to a combination of sensory, psychological, social, emotional, environmental, and even neurological factors.

As a result, quite a number of self-described ASMRtists make a more-than-adequate living by providing this service online. They each have individual gimmicks, although all involve sensitive microphones and binaural recording, resulting in a multi-dimensional experience that makes the hearer feel like they are right there in the room. There is, for instance, a specialist who creates exclusive, personal, one-on-one ASMR experiences for $150 per hour.

Another writer, Sue Quinn, quotes two more experts, both of them anti-mukbang. Mattias Strand, of the Stockholm Centre for Eating Disorders, said of a recent study,

We found that watching mukbang could certainly be problematic for people who already suffer from disordered eating, in that it could trigger binge eating or serve as an inspiration for eating too little.

Another professional who finds mukbang to be a destructive force is mental health expert Carolina Mountford, who employs such terms as “growing concern” and “trail of devastation” relative to the combination of eating videos and ASMR stimulation. She believes that any positive effects are far outweighed by the negatives, and says,

At best, this phenomenon risks promoting poor habits and overeating. At worst, it can contribute to the rising numbers of individuals with eating disorders, which are serious psychiatric illnesses, as well as significantly hampering the recovery of those who are trying to get better.

Any reasonable reader might think that by now, everything that could be said on this topic has been said — but that person would be mistaken. We are saving the best for last. There will be one more post about mukbang, then it will be gone from these pages — just as the actual fad, on some blessed day, might disappear.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “American Mukbang: Why We Love to Watch People Eat,” Thrillist.com, 02/27/20
Source: “Are noisy YouTube binge eating videos triggering more than just joy?,” Metro.co.uk, 09/11/20
Image by Surian Soosay/CC BY 2.0

Another Facet of Mukbang

Pat Hartman December 9, 2020 1 Comment

It would be so easy, at this point, to say, “Okay, that’s enough about the crazy mukbang fad. Let’s put it to bed.” Yet, the incredible fact is, we have not yet touched on every aspect of the subject. So far, we have examined the type of videos where the main point is to watch people stretch their mouths and stomachs by devouring monstrous heaps of food. Up to this point, we have referenced the senses of sight, smell, taste, and touch. So far, there has been no mention here of the involvement of sound.

But as it turns out, even eatertainment has more dimensions than were previously imagined. The reason for this is ASMR, or autonomous sensory meridian response. The internet offers a boundless number of audio and audio-visual experiences for people who enjoy this kind of mild, continuous stimulation.

Those who are able to benefit from the phenomenon describe low-grade euphoria, a sparkly brain, a sensation that is soothing but intense, tingles in the scalp and spine, a massage for the mind, and the weird frisson of musical chills. For people able to benefit from ASMR, it facilitates relaxation, meditation, and peaceful sleep.

Reporter Sue Quinn spoke with Dr. Emma Gray, who says ASMR can provide “relief from their mental health problems, including insomnia, anxiety, stress and depression.” The psychologist points to…

[…] hormones, including oxytocin, sometimes referred to as the “love” or “trust” hormone. These are responsible for the calming and positive impact it has on people helping them to relax and sleep.

This might be a good place to mention that, in theory at least, anything that promotes general emotional well-being might reasonably be expected to provide a layer of protection against obesity. An awful lot of people eat in order to feel better, and if there are alternative ways to avoid anxiety and other negative emotions, it seems obvious that the ASMR effect would be beneficial, in the most general sense, in preventing obesity.

The amazing variety of sounds

It is deceptively easy to understand why the sounds of caregiving are important. They are connected with the earliest sensations of security, trust, and connection — in short, with being mothered. These are intimate sounds like hair-brushing, whispering, book pages turning, dry cereal being poured into a bowl. They may or may not be connected with actual life events. Someone can get the ASMR effect from the sound of an electric hair dryer, or of playing cards being shuffled and dealt, or ocean waves crashing against rocks, without any of those things having been part of their experience.

Actually, all-electronic versions of relaxing sound have been available for some time, in the form of white noise, pink noise, brown noise, etc. Some people need the sound of a running fan or air conditioner to sleep. Ancient humans slumbered to the monotonous yet captivating lullaby of rustling leaves, or rain falling on a roof.

Therapeutic sound is a spectrum, and some parts of it have been around for millennia. This might explain the safety factor. Out in nature, any kind of continuous sound tends to be reassuring. When an ongoing noise suddenly stops, the creature knows that something in the environment has changed, which means it might have to face down danger. Today’s humans probably harbor a visceral response rooted in that defensive reflex.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Are noisy YouTube binge eating videos triggering more than just joy?,” Metro.co.uk, 09/11/20
Image by Meagan/CC BY 2.0

Mukbang: New Problems, New Resources

Pat Hartman December 8, 2020 1 Comment

In describing the significance and effects of the mukbang trend, we have quoted ordinary people who recorded their experiences as social media comments. In the strictest sense, this kind of testimony does not constitute evidence, but it is the fertile ground from which evidence is born. Many professionals scorn “anecdotal evidence.” But that is where the information lives, that gets investigations started.

By derivation, “anecdotal” means “things unpublished,” which would include everything from what the Uber driver just told you to your own independent research findings that you compiled night and day for 13 years, because they are both equally unpublished. “Anecdotal” is a dirty word to some, but it is wrongly maligned. A scientific paper starts off with a section that explains what the researchers are trying to figure out, a quest that can originate with “anecdotal evidence.” Very often, it is from anecdotal evidence that hypotheses are born.

For instance, if researchers are testing the hypothesis that a certain drug relieves depression, how do they find out? By feeding it to a group of subjects, and then asking them how it worked. We have effective anti-depressants because a series of individuals each told their little anecdote — “Yes, it helped” or “No, it’s worthless” — to someone in a lab coat who wrote down the answer. Then, someone at a computer added up all the answers, and Voila! A batch of personal experiences, through being recorded and curated, is magically transformed into scientifically respectable data.

Mukbang science

This is mentioned here because some academics have been taking the crowdsourcing approach. Among them are a couple of Swedes, Mattias Strand and Sanna Aila Gustafsson, who say:

Over the years, however, netnography has increasingly been used as a strictly observational approach in health care research, not least for studies on sensitive topics where it may be difficult to negotiate access or recruit informants.

Relating to their paper on mukbang, they cite as precedents the work of other researchers who have used the words of Reddit.com members as raw material for studies of suicide, gout, and cannabis use, and advocacy for such eating disorders as anorexia. For readers interested in pursuing the subject on their own, there are at least 15 subreddits where discussions of mukbang can be found.

Other researchers have mined the treasure troves of experience reported in online communities to learn more about diabetes, weight stigma, and self-injury. Clinicians realize that multitudes of young people, while not officially diagnosed with eating disorders, nevertheless show “subclinical symptoms of disordered eating,” and this includes almost one-quarter of adolescent girls and as many as 15% of teenage boys.

Their thoughts can be found in freestanding forums and in the comment sections of many websites, including Dr. Pretlow’s own. Strand and Gustafsson also add,

The terms netnography, digital ethnography, and digital anthropology are sometimes used interchangeably. However, although the practical methodology may not differ very much, a key conceptual difference is that in a netnographic analysis, the online community under study is seen as a habitat in its own right…

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Mukbang and Disordered Eating: A Netnographic Analysis of Online Eating Broadcasts,” Springer.com, 04/10/20
Image by amika_san/CC BY-ND 2.0

The Epitome of Eatertainment, Continued

Pat Hartman December 7, 2020 No Comments

Why do people love to watch videos of other people eating? For one thing, there is the cheap thrill of witnessing mildly transgressive behavior and cheering it on. What some viewers admit to enjoying most is watching the mukbanger cram in huge, rude bites, caring not a whit about manners or mess.

Quora.com respondent Jocelyn Paz, a student of cognitive science and neuroscience, spills the beans about herself and people in her circle. Reportedly, viewing mukbang videos helps them to survive the rigors of weight-loss dieting. Such voyeurism brings a level of satisfaction, without setting up cravings.

But what about the authorities who make the accusation that mukbang encourages binge eating disorder? Paz says about that:

It’s been about 2 years since I’ve fully recovered from my eating disorder, yet I immediately knew that 4 years ago, when I was at my peak of anorexia, this would have been a regular watch for me… There’s something satisfying about these videos that make you not exactly crave the food, but rather, puts you in their shoes, which includes feeling as though you’re experiencing the same as them, sans feeling full.

The sensation of “ingestion without incorporation” is the holy grail sought by millions of dieters over several decades. In this context, “incorporation” has nothing to do with business or taxes. The corpus, in the original Latin, is the body. To incorporate is to literally take something in and make it part of the body. Food and drink, for instance.

People want to be able to ingest, to revel in the entire process of eating food, without incorporating it in the form of extra body fat. Everyone wants all the good smells, tastes, and sensations associated with the consumption of favorite foods. Nobody wants negative results. This can be a tricky area, where it is pitifully easy for people to kid themselves.

Should we have seen?

Despite all the editorializing that is done over the mukbang culture, some health care specialists wonder where, in these debates, any real concern about obesity might reside. Originally, no one connected the trend with the danger of promoting eating disorders. Then, a couple of years back, health officials in South Korea began to suspect that mukbang could be problematic, and government regulation was discussed. But even among experts, opinion is divided. There is ambivalence. The mukbang culture is called a double-edged sword. Of course, a case can be made against it. But how valid???

Some insist that binge-eating disorder (BED) is a psychological illness that a person either has, or does not have, and no amount of mukbang viewing can make a difference to their psyche or influence their behavior, one way or the other. Of course, the first question that comes to mind about that is, “If so, still, we are talking about adults. Maybe children are different. Does anyone really know what watching this stuff can do to kids’ minds?”

Some say that a person with BED is no more attracted to watching mukbang videos than a heroin addict would be to smoking a joint. And then, someone else comes along and suggests that, for a recovering eating disorder patient who was otherwise doing fine, watching these videos could trigger a relapse. The next Childhood Obesity News post will dive more deeply into these matters.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Do you think that eating shows, like Mukbang, encourage binge eating disorder?,” Quora.com, 11/02/18
Image by Photo and Share CC/CC BY 2.0

The Epitome of Eatertainment

Pat Hartman December 4, 2020 1 Comment

The first order of business here is to apologize for an earlier post, which asserted that a certain type of human does not exist. That was a misstatement. Further research uncovered the fact some mukbang stars are indeed obese — and even morbidly obese. But their activities seem to extend into a territory inhabited by fetishists known as “feeders,” and we are not going to cross the border and follow them there.

By and large, most mukbangers are of reasonable weight, and multitudes of fans love to join forums where they can speculate about what magical techniques or weird birth defects prevent the pros from blimping up. Do they vomit and/or use laxatives to flush the food out of their systems? Are they blessed with some type of hereditary privilege? Do they spend every off-camera minute working out? Do they fast for days before each challenge? Is digestion somehow prevented? Is it hyperthyroidism or hypermetabolism, or a tapeworm? Is it all editing tricks?

Researchers Mattias Strand and Sanna Aila Gustafsson found that some fans…

[…] engage in highly unrealistic hypothesizing about unnamed rare medical conditions in which a person’s stomach is said to expand to the extreme to allow for the ingestion of excessive amounts of food (the numbers six or even 66 times that of a normal-sized ventricle is frequently mentioned, apparently inspired by a pseudo-medical television piece aired on a Japanese eating show).

Quora correspondent Ken Morgan wrote of celebrity mukbanger Yuka Kinoshita:

She said that she has a problem with her gut. Because of this problem she can only absorb about 5-10% of the calories she eats. As a child she ate like normal but felt hungry all the time because she couldn’t absorb it all so you see her eat 10,000 calories she’s only digesting and absorbing about 500-1000 of those calories.

But, leaving the video performers aside for a moment, what do the millions of viewers get out of this strange preoccupation? Some say that watching people pig out is so repulsive, it makes them lose their appetite, which is the positive effect they are looking for. Others enjoy watching the spectacle of greedy feeding, and at the same time pride themselves on their real-life abstemiousness. For some, these extreme videos reduce the guilt connected with their own eating.

Some need the vicarious experience to “normalize” eating and turn meals into happy occasions instead of fraught ones. If a person has self-limited to only a certain class of foods, like plants, watching a mukbanger enjoy a vegan feast can put them in touch with the joyousness that is available to them. Some people, against all odds, like to watch mukbangs when they are fasting.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Mukbang and Disordered Eating: A Netnographic Analysis of Online Eating Broadcasts,” Springer.com, 04/10/20
Source: “How do people in Mukbang videos stay thin despite eating thousands of calories?,” Quora.com, 09/04/18
Image by Indi Samarajiva/CC BY 2.0

The Mukbang Origin Story

Pat Hartman December 3, 2020 1 Comment

On the fascinating topic of mukbang, journalist Heather Matthews points out that its enthusiasts prefer extremes of behavior. The great majority of fans want to see the “hosts” ingest not just enormous quantities of food, but specifically, mountains of greasy and calorie-rich junk. Matthews writes,

They’re not afraid of dips, sauces and other add-ons that bump up the calorie counts. They’re willing to eat vast amounts of diet-busting foods. From rich pastas to crispy meats fried in oils to white bread and processed snacks, they are willing to push things to the edge for our entertainment.

Eating videos seem to have first showed up about 10 years ago, in South Korea. They soon gained a foothold in the culture and then spread to other parts of the world. Apologists remind critics that the fad started with the benign intention to provide a social good. Many South Koreans live alone, unmarried, or otherwise un-partnered — which is seen as a breakdown of family values. One of those cherished family values is the sharing of meals. The videos that glorify binge-eating allegedly started with the noble intention of alleviating loneliness.

Writer Caitlin Sacasas offers the more purely altruistic theory that…

[…] it may have less to do with loneliness and more to do with enjoyment of seeing someone else’s enjoyment… It’s a simple joy to take happiness from watching someone else be happy.

Much like the aficionados who feel genuinely connected to podcasters like Alison Rosen and Marc Maron, most fans experience emotional closeness to their favorite mukbang stars. The personalities are the draw. Researchers Mattias Strand and Sanna Aila Gustafsson wrote that despite the weirdness and grotesquerie, mukbang performances “have nothing overtly cynical about them.” In videos studied by the team,

[…] the tone is friendly, intimate, and youthful… [T]his parasocial quality may not be truly reciprocal and the mukbang phenomenon as such could certainly be critiqued from an anti-consumerist point of view. Even so, the actual performance of mukbang eating is uniformly depicted as the host taking on and joyously conquering the enormous amounts of food rather than the food-as-commodity triumphing over the consumer.

Journalist Dana Givens quotes registered dietician Abbey Sharp, who believes that things have gone too far:

In her video she says, “what I do have a problem with is that Americans have appropriated this concept of mukbang to no longer be about companionship, but rather to these over-the-top, sensationalized eating challenges,” which in a clinical setting would constitute disordered eating.

Strand and Gustafsson mention the same unfortunate shift:

Interestingly, such eating contests have been described as combining the spectacle of the medieval carnival with modern ideas of consumerism and abundance. For example, the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest held in Coney Island, New York City, has been aired on live television to millions of viewers since the early 2000s.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Top 10 Untold Truths About Mukbang,” BabbleTop.com, 03/20/19
Source: “WTF is Mukbang and Why Should You Watch these Viral Korean Videos?,” FluentIn3Months.com, 03/22/19
Source: “Mukbang and Disordered Eating: A Netnographic Analysis of Online Eating Broadcasts,” Springer.com, 04/10/20
Source: “American Mukbang: Why We Love to Watch People Eat,” Thrillist.com, 02/27/2020
Image by Tony Fischer/CC BY 2.0

The Mukbang Mindset

Pat Hartman December 2, 2020 2 Comments

The most recent Childhood Obesity News post introduced mukbang, or the profession of overeating, but so far covered only the behavior, not the psychology. The motives of the performers, who in some cases earn lavish amounts, are not in question. Although potentially suicidal and hardly contributory to society’s greater good, performative binge eating is as legitimate a way to make a living as, for instance, stock car racing.

But what about the fans, who avidly devour the sight of their fellow humans devouring food (especially, for some reason, noodles)? Given an internet that features so many thousands of wellness videos, what is going on with this incredible profusion of un-wellness videos? Why are people compelled to surrender their consciousness to such a weird hobby?

Multifaceted mukbang

The moral aspect certainly attracts a certain amount of unfavorable comment, in a world where so many starve. When some observers see a highly-paid celebrity eat enough to feed a whole village, the word that comes immediately to mind is “obscene.” Mukbang invests the term “food porn” with fresh meaning. This phrase no longer describes only the masterfully produced photos of fancy dishes that grace the pages of upscale magazines, but something more.

On the most basic level, cinema history foretold that particular aspect of the mukbang culture. The 1963 film Tom Jones included a scene that gave critics plenty to talk about, and provided fans with inspiration to add a new dimension to their love lives. Similarly, pretending to be part of the action is one of the attractions of this present-day fad. Journalist Melissa Matthews described the rationalization presented by an interviewee:

While eating a reasonable dinner of chicken, rice, and beans, she watches her favorite YouTube star down two days’ worth of food.

Journalist Margot Harris quoted the sad defense mounted by another enthusiast:

[I watch] to live vicariously through them. I like watching them eat all the takeaway food I can never afford.

Some fans even tout an arguably therapeutic aspect to this strange brand of voyeurism. Mukbang star Kim Jungbum, age 16, confided to a reporter,

My friends tell me that they watch my show because they can vicariously eat the food through me and satisfy their needs when they are on a diet.

Neuroscientist Rachel Herz of Brown University wrote,

Someone with a binge eating disorder may start gorging on something. But at the same time, the vicarious experience of watching could resolve that urge for them to binge. It would depend on the person and how these triggers affect them.

Margot Harris wrote,

Some viewers even report that watching mukbangs helps mitigate personal issues with food, from curbing cravings to fighting patterns of disordered eating.

She cites a fan who lives vicariously takes part in junk food binges because it helps her stick to a more reasonable diet in real life. But another testimonial quoted by the reporter is more problematic in nature:

It was was one of the things that helped me with my anxiety about food. I always dreaded eating because I knew I would eventually throw up later. I’m always impressed by the amount of food they eat and it motivates me to eat more.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “These Viral ‘Mukbang’ Stars Get Paid to Gorge on Food—at the Expense of Their Bodies,” MensHealth.com, 01/18/19
Source: “A Beginner’s Guide to Mukbangs,” Insider.com, 03/02/20
Source: “South Korea to clamp down on binge-eating trend amid obesity fears,” Telegraph.co.uk, 10/25/18
Source: “American Mukbang: Why We Love to Watch People Eat,” Thrillist.com, 2/27/2020
Image by Alan Levine/CC BY 2.0

Extreme Eating — Disgusting, or Appalling?

Pat Hartman December 1, 2020 2 Comments

If you have never heard of mukbang (pronounced mook-bong), consider yourself lucky. We wish that we had not heard of it. Having been around — and gaining strength — for at least a decade, this is probably one of the most pathological phenomena affecting humans today. And, considering these crazy times, that is saying something.

The mukbang luminary is a professional binge eater. In a studio, or restaurant, or at home, he or she basically devours massive amounts of food while carrying on a one-sided conversation with the video viewer. The talk might be general, and of course, a lot of it is a verbal description of the food’s taste and texture. Or the mukbanger might zero in on one topic, like unsolved murders.

The professional consumer might specialize in a particular genre of food, like the popular seafood boil. Or there might be just one main dish, like a three-foot-tall hamburger, or a tabletop whose every inch is paved with junk food. The goal is to eat from 4,000 to as many as 10,000 calories in one sitting (although production techniques can yield various definitions of what constitutes a “sitting”). One fellow allegedly consumed 100,000 calories in 100 hours.

Who are these deviates?

They are young people of both sexes. Astonishingly, the one common trait of professional eaters is a lack of body fat. No famous mukbanger is obese. Some, especially the natives of Korea, are downright skinny, and one guy has a build that any male would envy. One used to be anorectic and after taking up his new profession, gained 80 pounds. Another star claims to keep his weight in check by exercising 12 hours per day.

If they are smart, they schedule regular checkups and lab tests. Regarding the status of their digestive systems, some give journalists more detail than most people would want, but true fans are there for it. Assessing one of the field’s stars, journalist Melissa Matthews notes that despite such massive consumption, he…

[…] really isn’t worried about his health because he eats plenty of greens outside of filming.

One thing is for sure — the performative eaters are not chewing each bite 80 times.

By the numbers

Sensible parents ask their ambitious offspring, “Yes, but this display of gluttony, how do you monetize it?” The star mukbangers have their own YouTube channels, with as many as six million subscribers. They are sponsored by restaurants and fast-food chains. They are paid for appearing in advertisements, and for their valuable endorsements of e-books and other products. One superstar makes more than $100,000 a year.

What about the O-word?

The South Korean authorities noted that around 26% of the nation’s boys were obese, and that the adult obesity rate had risen from 26% in 1998 to nearly 35% in 2016. A couple of years back the government made noises about putting mukbang in check, as part of a national anti-obesity regime, but not much seems to have happened on that front.

From the USA, Matthews quotes gastroenterologist Samantha Nazareth, M.D., on the effects these wildly popular videos have on the health of their viewers:

In a country with increasing amounts of obesity, this is not the correct message to send nor is this something to try at home.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “WTF is Mukbang and Why Should You Watch these Viral Korean Videos? An Explainer,” Fluentin3months.com, 03/22/19
Source: “These Viral ‘Mukbang’ Stars Get Paid to Gorge on Food — at the Expense of Their Bodies,” MensHealth.com, 01/18/19
Source: “South Korea to clamp down on binge-eating trend amid obesity fears,” Telegraph.co.uk, 10/25/18
Images by Keith Walbolt and Windell Oskay/CC BY 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — Massive Indirect Influence

Pat Hartman November 30, 2020 No Comments

The previous post ended with the sorrow of grown children unable to visit their father one last time, not because he himself had COVID-19, but because the contagious disease forced the hospital to curtail all visiting, for the greater good of everyone. Because of the virus, many a child has found a mother or father suddenly missing from their life without any opportunity for goodbye.

These are knock-on effects of the pandemic, truly disturbing side effects that darken the lives even of people who never caught the virus. A certain number of those people respond by developing mental/emotional illnesses, and a certain number of those people express that malaise by developing habits that facilitate obesity.

The Kaiser Family Foundation polled Americans — not just those with coronavirus, but people of all kinds, and found that:

Four in ten say such worry or stress has led to problems with their sleep, while one-third say they either have had a poor appetite or have been over-eating. Some also say worry or stress related to the coronavirus outbreak has caused […] increasing their alcohol or drug use (13%). About one in ten (9%) say coronavirus-related stress has led to worsening chronic health conditions.

When disrupted sleep patterns have people up in the middle of the night contemplating a bleak future, some of them seek comfort in food. Alcohol and drug use can lead to loss of self-control, and increased recreational eating.

That poll was from back in April, and since then, circumstances have only gotten worse. Among people stuck at home all the time, women are unable to escape from abusive husbands, and children have no recourse but to stay with abusive parents, day in and day out.

The families of health workers are under constant, unremitting stress. Health professionals are under enormous stress, to the point where there have been suicides. People like Megan Reeves go on social media to point out that nurses are necessarily assigned towards where they don’t have the training. They have too many patients on one shift, and not enough personal protective equipment.

It is especially devastating, psychologically, because they know they could be doing a lot better with the right equipment and more of it. They feel drained and defeated before the workday even starts. When they have to hold a phone or an electronic tablet so a dying patient can say last words to family members, nurses are psychologically gutted.

We aint’ seen nothin’ yet

Since, as journalist Jacob Stern points out, “psychological disorders can be slow to develop,” and since in the United States the virus is worse than it has ever been, no one should be surprised to see more and more mental and emotional health issues arise in the coming months. Including eating disorders.

Stern enumerates the five core elements of the intervention, according to disaster mental-health experts: calming, self-efficacy, connectedness, hope, and a sense of safety. All this is educational and interesting to know, but he goes on to say,

In disaster situations — and especially in this one — the people in need of mental-health support vastly outnumber the people who can supply it. So disaster psychologists train armies of volunteers to provide basic support and identify people at greater risk of developing long-term problems.

Let’s hope so.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “KFF Health Tracking Poll — Late April 2020: Coronavirus, Social Distancing, and Contact Tracing,” KFF.org, 04/24/20
Source: “This Is Not a Normal Mental-Health Disaster,” TheAtlantic.com, 07/07/20
Image by Navy Medicine/Public Domain

Coronavirus Chronicles — Side Effects Alarming

Pat Hartman November 27, 2020 1 Comment

Despite this being a new disease with less than a year’s worth of data on hand, we already have indications that the long-range outlook is a nightmare.

In previous posts, we compared the coronavirus to an iceberg. A small part of its mass sticks up from the water and is easily seen. Obviously, because of the pandemic, more Americans than ever are coping with food insecurity. It is also hard to miss the connection between food insecurity and the extreme behaviors that we know as eating disorders. Of course, many people already had a problematic relationship with eating. But in others, the exigencies of public safety have brought it out for the first time.

Then, there is the much larger bottom part of the iceberg, which contains the invisible secrets that have to be discovered one by one, like the uncanny compatibility between SARS-CoV-2 and obesity. Another huge amount of baggage in the lower portion consists of The Future. From the very start, some scientists homed in on the probability that the ensuing months and years would be worse in ways we couldn’t even imagine yet. The first thought that crossed their minds was, “If you think this is bad, wait till you see how it plays out one year, five years down the line.”

A perfect ice storm

Some even foresaw, specifically, the enormous problems that would result from the cumulative weight of two things: the pandemic, and the vast amount of mental/emotional illness that already existed. Whatever weaknesses, shortcomings, neuroses, and psychoses a person started out with, living under pandemic strictures and fears could only make them worse. The emotional wounds that cause people to act out in destructive ways would be re-awakened, and new damage would be inflicted.

Some scholars predicted that psychological stress would play a huge role in the COVID-19 story, and as the months went by and the evidence rolled in, they said, “Dude, I called it.” Others warned that the disease itself would not be as easily banished as everyone wanted to assume. “Until we know what it does to people 10 or 20 years down the line, we don’t know anything,” was their intuitive take — and they too were correct.

The ultimate aggression

The worst thing the virus can do is attack you, and the next worst thing it can do is attack someone you love. Either occurrence is like a boulder thrown into a pond. Ripples spread in every direction. People who don’t have the disease get affected. A man is admitted to the hospital for another reason, and dies without any family members around, because of the anti-COVID rules they are not allowed in. If not for the virus, he and his relatives would not have experienced that extra heartache.

In July, Jacob Stern, in “This Is Not a Normal Mental-Health Disaster,” reminded readers of the three-month reign of terror caused in Hong Kong in 2003, caused by the related SARS virus (for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) — and of its extended aftermath:

More than 40 percent of SARS survivors had an active psychiatric illness, most commonly PTSD or depression. Some felt frequent psychosomatic pain. Others were obsessive-compulsive. The findings, the researchers said, were “alarming.”

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “This Is Not a Normal Mental-Health Disaster,” TheAtlantic.com, 07/07/20
Image by Michael Coghlan/CC BY-SA 2.0

Another Facet of Mukbang, Continued

Mukbang + ASMR = obsession

Another Facet of Mukbang

The amazing variety of sounds

Mukbang: New Problems, New Resources

Mukbang science

The Epitome of Eatertainment, Continued

Should we have seen?

The Epitome of Eatertainment

The Mukbang Origin Story

The Mukbang Mindset

Multifaceted mukbang

Extreme Eating — Disgusting, or Appalling?

Who are these deviates?

By the numbers

What about the O-word?

Coronavirus Chronicles — Massive Indirect Influence

We aint’ seen nothin’ yet

Coronavirus Chronicles — Side Effects Alarming

A perfect ice storm

The ultimate aggression

Profiles: Kids Struggling with Weight

The Book

About Dr. Robert A. Pretlow

Presentations

Food & Health Resources