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Hidden Eating Disorders |

How dangerous is being self-diagnosed when it comes to eating disorders? Janette Alonso, Licensed Psychotherapist, says some patients hide their eating disorders by having gluten intolerance or gluten free to lose weight, for example. She also explains how doctors can manage this situation.

Transcript

How often is an eating disorder hidden right so there are as you might hear nowadays the gluten insensitive or gluten intolerance there are a lot of patients and in these I’ve seen that do that that do pretty much self diagnose and say you know I’m gluten and tolerator I’m gluten free and and really what’s behind that is there a desire to again either lose weight they have body to satisfaction and so they want to eliminate certain food from their diet right they don’t have a diagnosed allergy it’s self diagnosed elf diagnosed okay now what are some of the red flags you look for patients that say that though that I’m taller I’m so intolerant or I can’t have that so when you’re doing an assessment and you hear that and you know number one that there is not an actual diagnosis you can see when when it began when did this begin you know what was what was the purpose behind that you know are they describing that they have negative body image are you seeing them maybe perhaps this is someone who’s at the same time an over exerciser so this is more tied into body image yeah okay yeah yeah so definitely you’ll see more of them the other eating disorders like we had talked about anorexia or whatnot kind of hiding behind that and nowadays it’s so easy to hide behind that rival Jenna I feel it’s almost like peeling layers when you meet a patient to see what is underlying right you know it you have to and this is why it’s important that these type of clients are seen by a therapist that specializes we use orders or even a dietician that does you you you know again you can easily fly under the radar and so you really have to ask the right questions and and have the knowledge that no I knowing that that exists you

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