What’s in a name? Let’s talk about “atypical anorexia nervosa.” (AAN) First of all, I hate the name and location within the DSM5. It’s embedded under “other specified feeding and eating disorders” (OSFED), which sounds like a technicality until you realize that many insurance plans specifically exclude OSFED diagnoses for any higher level of care coverage. Then it’s clear how important it is.

In Parts One, Two, and Three of this blog series, I talked about why managing MCAS along with eating disorders matters, how we diagnose it, and the essentials of treatment. In Part Four, I’ll consider how we continue to tune medication regimens depending on how symptoms go.

Melinda returns a month after starting MCAS treatment, which included really paying attention to and minimizing triggers, starting four medications, and working on her nutrition.

We start with a review of her medication list. I had prescribed over the counter levocetirizine (Xyzal) 5 mg daily (bumping up to twice daily if tolerated), pepcid 20 mg twice daily, cromolyn ampules (Gastrocrom) on a slowly increasing schedule, and montelukast (Singulair) 10 mg daily. Melinda notes that she got a really dry mouth when she increased her levocetirizine to twice daily and so stuck with once a day. She felt a surge in MCAS symptoms (specifically flushing and hot flashes, abdominal cramps, and itching which I name as “mast flu”) each week that she increased her cromolyn dose, but now she’s tolerating 2 ampules four times a day (about 30 minutes before meals when possible, and at bedtime) just fine. She has not noticed any surge in depression or suicidal ideation on the montelukast.

Now that we’ve reviewed why mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS) matters for those with eating disorders in Blog One and how it’s diagnosed in Blog Two, let’s turn to treatment. This blog will review essential concepts in treating MCAS, while subsequent ones will focus on care of more specific populations like those who do not respond (or not adequately) to initial care protocols, those with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), those median arcuate ligament syndrome (MALS) and superior mesenteric artery (SMA) syndrome, those with long Covid (LC), those with complicated digestive issues including small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), etc.

It was really exciting to hear back from so many of you after posting Part One (What is MCAS, and why should people with eating disorders care?). People replied from all over the world having realized this pertains to them or their loved ones. Most people’s outreach ended with, “So how do you diagnose it, and how do you treat it?” Part Two will address key issues in MCAS diagnosis, and Part Three will start to consider treatment. As the blog series continues, I’ll try to address specific crossover populations, like those with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) and MCAS, those with median arcuate ligament syndrome (MALS) or superior mesenteric artery (SMA) syndrome and MCAS, and more…

Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) & Eating Disorders | Part One: What is MCAS, and why should people with eating disorders care?

By Jennifer L. Gaudiani, MD, CEDS-S, FAED

I have been planning to start writing this blog for about the past three years, which was a year or two after I started seeing patients with mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS). But it took me this long, and my recent attendance at a great MCAS conference with all the key clinicians, to feel I had enough expertise to write about it. I’m still learning every single day! To my knowledge, there aren’t any other blogs out there about MCAS and eating disorders, but I’m totally convinced these two issues go together, sometimes in development of and for sure in maintaining an eating disorder (ED). Time to shine light on this and improve care!

With ever-changing recommendations regarding the evolving COVID-19 virus, it can be difficult to understand what you’re supposed to do if you test positive for COVID-19. Gaudiani Clinic nurse, Abby Brockman, RN, has summarized current recommendations in case you or someone in your life tests positive and must isolate.

In addition to an increased incidence of dental decay and disease, recurrent self-induced vomiting from either anorexia or bulimia nervosa can lead to multiple medical complications of the mouth and throat. The muscles of the upper esophageal sphincter, which acts as a gateway to the esophagus, become dysfunctional with chronic purging which more easily allows stomach acid and enzymes to reach the throat and mouth. This type of reflux is known as laryngopharyngeal reflux (LPR), and commonly causes symptoms such as…

While it’s well known that eating disorders affect your overall health, one facet that may be overlooked is the impact an eating disorder has on your oral health. In addition to your physician and healthcare team, partnering with a dentist throughout eating disorder recovery efforts can greatly increase the likelihood of long term oral health and stability, as well as preservation of the teeth and gums…

Many people are familiar with the concept of “gaslighting.” For those who aren’t, it comes from the 1944 Academy Award-winning movie “Gaslight” starring Ingrid Bergman, in which a husband slowly manipulates his wife into going insane. She sees, among other things, the gaslights in the house flicker and dim, but her husband tells her she’s imagining it…while he is the one deliberately causing the lights to flicker. These days, we use the term “gaslight” to describe someone invalidating another’s perceptions, whether deliberately or not, making the other question themselves and their insight in ways that are really psychologically harmful.

So, let’s apply this to the experiences of individuals with eating disorders in the doctor’s office…

Hypermetabolism is a phenomenon seen during the journey towards recovery from anorexia nervosa. When a person is actively restricting calories, the metabolism becomes very slow. With very little food coming in, the body is already having to ration available energy towards life sustaining functions like pumping the heart, breathing, consciousness, movement, etc. The body is in energy conservation/hibernation mode at this point, doing everything in its power to keep the body alive in the face of starvation. When a person takes steps toward recovery and weight restoration…

Trauma-informed care for me starts with asking permission. This can look like asking permission to do a procedure, asking permission to talk about a difficult life event, or asking permission before starting a physical exam. However, the key to this is being prepared to stop if I am not given permission, even if I think completing the task is beneficial to the patient. Allowing the patient to maintain full autonomy of their body and mind while in a doctor’s exam room is vital. It’s amazing how much I can learn about someone by just actively listening, without interruption, to their lived experience. Being able to bear witness to another’s story is truly a privilege and can be healing for both storyteller and listener. Allowing genuine time to get to know my patients (and them me) allows us to build a trusting and solid patient-physician relationship. Once I have a good sense of who my patient is, I can create a medical plan that aligns with them as a whole person and not just a diagnosis…

My path to the Gaudiani Clinic came about in a very serendipitous way. Starting back in my pre-med days, I went to Florida State University and received my undergraduate degree in Nutrition and Food Sciences. Most of my classmates were dietetics majors, and I developed huge respect for them; I always thought it would be awesome to incorporate a dietitian in my future medical practice for this reason. I went on to do medical school at Florida State University and did not know which speciality I wanted to pursue until the end of my third year. I enjoyed all my rotations and wanted to continue a broad training so I chose family medicine. I interviewed at 15 residency programs across the country and matched my first choice at Saint Joseph Hospital in Denver, CO. My residency was challenging with a lot of time spent on the obstetrics and intensive care unit floors in the hospital. Our clinic was very busy, broad spectrum, and cared for an urban, underserved population. After residency, I joined a Denver medical group and practiced outpatient primary care for 2 years. At this point in the story, you are probably thinking, “I don’t see anything about eating disorders yet.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has rocked our world. It’s caused unprecedented stress and anxiety, contributed to record high unemployment, cancelled life celebration events like weddings, funerals and birthday parties and made us all feel uneasy about our futures. Unfortunately, what has also come up in response to the pandemic from the dieting, “wellness” and social media industries is the “COVID 15” with inappropriate memes disguised as comedy demoralizing certain bodies and body changes…[read more]

With various states starting to ease quarantine recommendations, the question is: what will actually make alterations in quarantine medically safe, or at least safer? These are the criteria I’m using for my family (appreciating our privilege that we can work and do school from home safely and comfortably) and for our clinic…

Updated from the medical literature[i] and CDC[ii], we now have a more extensive list of common symptoms associated with COVID. An affected individual may have only a few of these…

As an outpatient internist who specializes in eating disorders, I regularly talk about weight goals in anorexia nervosa treatment with patients, families, and professionals. This is a critically important topic. Its complexity cannot be overstated, but I wanted to blog about some of the key themes I consider in hopes that it will help guide and clarify. I’d like to start by saying that I will make no distinction between individuals with the DSM-5 diagnosis of “anorexia nervosa” and those with so-called “atypical anorexia nervosa.” The latter have anorexia nervosa that doesn’t happen to result in a visibly emaciated body. I protest on grounds of sizeism: we don’t differentiate “low weight depression” from…

The CDC recently updated its recommendation regarding the widespread use of masks when in public spaces. Previously, the CDC advised against the use of masks except in those who were actively ill. Last week the CDC announced that in addition to social distancing measures everyone should wear a cloth face mask/covering when out in public.

The medications chloroquine (CQ), hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), and azithromycin have been in the spotlight lately as possible prophylactics and/or treatments for COVID-19. CQ and its derivative HCQ have been used in the prevention and treatment of malaria while azithromycin is an antibiotic primarily used to treat specific types of bacterial infections. HCQ is also used in the treatment of autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus. None of these medications are presently approved for or have evidence for efficacy in the fight against COVID-19.

Suddenly lost your sense of smell? This may actually be a symptom of COVID-19. Anosmia is the formal medical term for the loss of sense of smell. Doctors around the world have started to notice that a sudden loss of smell even in the absence of other symptoms can be a presenting symptom of COVID-19.

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot lately, and many concerned patients and their families have asked me the same. The short and purely scientific answer is that we just don’t know, because we don’t have data.

However, these are my thoughts on the topic from a medical, whole-person, social justice-oriented perspective. On the whole, yes, I feel that individuals with eating disorders of all body shapes and sizes are at greater risk for a severe/dangerous version of COVID-19.

Here is our update on what we feel is important to know about COVID-19 at this time. We will try to send these updates daily, or as we learn more information that we feel is helpful to pass along.

As you are aware, cases are increasing throughout the United States including the Denver metro area, but we are here to help you stay informed and safe during this time of uncertainty.

You probably already feel overloaded with information on the 2019 coronavirus disease, but the medical team at the Gaudiani Clinic wants to make sure that our patients, providers, and general community have the latest, most up-to-date, and most accurate information about the coronavirus. Today, we are going to go through general information about what is known right now about this coronavirus, but please know that this information may change quite rapidly as we learn more about the virus so stay tuned to our social media feed and website for updates.

Many athletes from recreational to professional go through periods of higher training volumes in order to enhance performance. (1) These high intensity periods should then be followed by periods of lower intensity and lower volume of training. This practice of high intensity cycles followed by lower intensity cycles is called periodization.(1) Periodization is one way to optimize performance while reducing risk of overtraining. Athletes that maintain high training volumes year-round and/or do not incorporate adequate rest and recovery into their training cycles are at risk for over training syndrome (OTS). Recovery is an essential part of any training program. Recovery involves not only physical recovery such as days off from training, but also good hydration, nutrition, sleep, and mental recovery. Today, we are going to do a general overview of OTS including terminology, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. Keep in mind that OTS can happen to any active person not just high level or elite athletes!

For someone like me who likes to get things right the first time, “hindsight is 20/20” has never been a particularly comforting phrase. I like to imagine I have some control over my life, that I can anticipate how something might go, and that my efforts have an impact on the outcome…

The story of how I came to be a physician with a specialty in eating disorders is really one of chance. Like many doctors in training, I learned little about eating disorders, particularly the medical aspects of them, while in medical school. Then I decided to pack my bags, move from sunny Florida, to sunny (surprise, it is really sunny here too!) Denver, Colorado for my internal medicine training and that single decision altered my career path to what it is today. This, however, is not a story about how I came to have this expertise, but rather a reflection on the gratitude I have for working in this field. For those who do not know me well, I also love pop culture. In the fashion of David Letterman, here is my top 3 list of reasons I love working in this field…

Type I diabetes mellitus (DMT1) is an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks cells in the pancreas that are responsible for making insulin leading to insulin deficiency. (1) Therefore, DMT1 treatment always involves the administration of exogenous insulin. Before getting into the rest of the blog, let’s review some basic physiology around insulin. After every meal, blood sugar or glucose levels rise. As our cells need glucose for energy, the pancreas releases insulin, which functions to “open” cells to let glucose in. In DMT1, the lack of insulin leads to a rise in blood glucose levels and essentially starvation of the body’s cells. Our body also likes to keep the level of glucose in our blood within a specified range. Blood glucose that is too high, called hyperglycemia, or too low, called hypoglycemia, can cause dangerous medical complications both in the short and long term. Now that we have covered some of the basics, let’s shift to focus on eating disorders in those with DMT1.

Dr. Elissa Rosen specializes in treating athletes, from the recreational to the elite. She writes about all things RED-S (Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport) and loves discussing the many issues athletes may face when balancing physical health and their sport. Here is a round-up of some of her most popular blogs focusing on athletes…

Today’s blog is geared toward what would be helpful for coaches and other sports team staff to know about relative energy deficiency in sports (RED-S). A key component in prevention and earlier recognition of athletes with RED-S is increased awareness by coaches and other professionals that work with athletes. (1) To start, let’s define what RED-S means and how the word came to be. The term RED-S was coined by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to describe the physiologic and performance consequences of under fueling in athletes. (2) RED-S literally means what the term spells out in its name – insufficient nutritional intake in an athlete leading to too little energy for both general life and sports demands. So now that you know the basis for the term, let’s dive into more important details to know about RED-S.

Kidneys are able to perform remarkably complex functions in order to maintain homeostasis in our bodies. One of the major functions of the kidneys is to filter our blood in order to balance electrolytes, maintain optimal fluid levels, and excrete toxins. While this process is exquisitely fine-tuned and complex, the kidneys also must be treated well in order to function well. Many things can disrupt kidney function including medications, dehydration, and imaging contrast materials to name a few. In certain types of eating disorders, kidney failure is more common. For purposes of this blog we are going to talk about acute kidney failure (now better known as acute kidney injury), generally defined as developing over 48 hours or less, and chronic kidney disease, which develops over greater than 48 hours and many times over a period of months to years.

Electrolyte abnormalities are frequently seen in eating disorders associated with purging behaviors. (1) Electrolytes are minerals found in the body that can also be measured by blood tests. Our body is quite particular about the amount of electrolytes it needs to function properly and has different organ systems, such as the kidneys, that are designed to help maintain a narrow range of electrolyte levels in the blood.

 All types of purging behaviors including vomiting, laxative use, and diuretic use can be associated with both dehydration and abnormal electrolytes. The mode and frequency of purging behaviors can certainly impact the type and degree of electrolyte derangements. With the exception of low sodium in the blood, or hyponatremia, restrictive only eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa restrictive type, are generally not associated with electrolyte abnormalities or dehydration (unless extreme restriction of fluid is part of someone’s restrictive eating disorder behaviors).