Compulsive eating...

Post Reply New Topic

Gosh, I hope I didn't seem insensitive earlier. This does sound far more serious than I'd first realised.

I really hope that some of the advice you've had on this thread has been helpful, and that you get to the bottom of this. It seems to me that it could be metabolic.

Hi Blink-

I was thinking about it earlier, and this may be totally offbase, but there is a disorder called Pica disorder. You can look it up on wikipedia. It is mainly for eating things that are non food items, but one of the things it mentions is eating raw foods. I have wondered if my son has this because he is constantly still at the age of almost 5 putting objects in his mouth. Yesterday I found him walking around with a small magnet in his mouth. It really scares me sometimes, and I can't leave him unattended for too long.

Anyway, it doesn't sound like your son is eating really gross things, but maybe this could be some form of it. As far as the Prader Willi, I think there are some other pretty distinctive characteristics that go with it.

In the meantime, in the last hour, my son has eaten a bowl of ice cream, a small container of jello, and is now eating watermelon! I still keep wondering too why he eats so much, but I guess I am fortunate that it hasn't got to the point of your son. I am going to keep my eye on it though. I hope you can get to the bottom of this soon. Don't worry about sounding defensive, this has got to be very frustrating for you,,,,,

Mgran - you're ok, not insensitive, I think I may be a bit hypersensitive around this topic lately because its been so prevalent. I appreciate your owrds of advice.

Kiley - on the topic of chewing, he has gotten a lot better but I do still have to watch him at dinner time, especially with meats. He will stuff the hugest piece of meat in there and has choked numerous times. Now he'll pick up a piece on his fork and if he knows it's too big he'll look at me to see if I'm watching before returning it to the plate to cut smaller, if I'm not watching he'll stuff it in, it's the oddest thing! He does chew more now then he used to but still not as much as he should - may just be a teen thing at this point though.

On the calories thing, I wonder how I wowuld go about getting him checked for that? He had chalasia when he was born and spent most of his first year vomitting but still gained quite bit, ate more than any other kid I've seen. He was chubby but never fat. I wonder if maybe there's an issue around proteins or calory absorption, hmmm.

Angelbear, before I posted I did search way back in the forums on this topic and came across something about pica and looked it up, I was wondering the same thing if this could be a form of pica. He doesn't eat non food items but has eaten or drank things he definately shouldn't have in the past (he's drank a partial can of coke from a recycle bin here and other potentially spoiled food, he's aware it may be bad when you ask hima about it but he says he's 'forced to' )

Mine loves jello and watermelon, too! I watched him eat eggrolls with maple syrup earlier, just about everything he eats has to have sauce or condiments of some kind! lol

He's at an age now where it's difficult to tell when new things come up if it's age related or AS related ( is he giving me attitude or just not conscious of his tone as well as the words he uses?? ) and some days I can tell if he's gearing up for a meltdown or just riddled with teenaged angst!

I'm reading a book right now that's got some good ideas for dealing with teenaged years - 'How to talk so teens will listen and listen so teens will talk'. It's a good read and I think some of it will definately help. Now if I could just get his dad to read it too!

I don't see how it could be anything else. If he is eating as much as you say, and not being active enough to burn through the calories, then he should be gaining weight. The fact that he isn't getting weight either means he is eating less then you think he is, using more calories then you think he is, or is losing some calories to an inefficient digestion.

I am not sure how you could test that. It is just basic biochemistry.

I am curious, when he says that he needs to eat, is it like an anxiety induced compulsion, or is it just hunger? Does your child know the difference between the two? Because if it is hunger, then that would probably be the bodies way of saying that it needs more calories, which would point to the hypothesis of an inefficient digestion. If it is a nervous compulsion then that would be different.

Thank you for your post, tracker. Yes, he is very active and outdoorsy, even in the winter months( we live out in the country ). I have often wondered HOW he isn't gaining a tonne of weight given what he consumes outside of regular meals and snacks. He is gaining weight but at a normal weight for his size/age, nothing abnormal. Even on the medication his growth has always been good.

When we talk about why he does it he says it's not because he's hungry, and I've asked about he feels both physically and emotionally before, during and after eating it. He says physically he feels fine but restless and when the thought gets into his head he has to act on it so it will go away or he gets more restless and anxious about it. He says he worries about getting 'caught' while he is eating it and he often feels gross while eating it because he knows it's a lot and he shouldn't be doing it, afterwards he says he often feels sick to his stomach and feels selfish because he knows he's eaten the entire thing and there won't be any for everyone else. He's very conscious about fairness and equality, sharing etc and when others are around almost always makes a point of offering to others first or offering half of something if there is only one left. He enjoys pleasing other people and having someone to share things with.

I have also wondered if he was able to identify the difference between hunger and whatever else it is he's feeling when it happens. A couple of times when he mentioned being hungry or 'starving!' I took the opportunity to ask if that was how he felt at night when he was taking food, so far he says he doesn't think so but nothing definitive.

It happens quite frequently, moreso when he is stressed out about something or when our home life is tense. I notice it happens more or is more severe when *I* am stressed and I guess that stresses him out on top of everything else. I try to destress on my drive home from work as much as possible but often times when I come through the door and the place is a mess (again!), the kids are fighting and pounce on me the second I'm through the door it's tough not to be stressed!

I think maybe the only way to know for sure about the calories is to expand our journal to include what he's eating and how much of it compared to his physical activity to see how much he should be burning off vs consuming. We do try to follow the Canada food guide as much as possible to ensure a balanced diet for both the kids, especially since I've gone back to work full time and noticed for a while that it was getting far too easy to slip into the fast food trap. I do try REALLY REALLY hard to make sure the kids are eating enough of everything they should be without being too strict and still allowing them desserts and treats on a regular basis so they never feel deprived of anything.

Thank you for the great thought provoking post, Tracker. I think I will definately add more detail to our journal and see if we can find out a link there.

Hmmm, it sounds like it is some type of OCD related thing. It seems like he just seems compelled to do it. As far as the drinking the coke out of the recycling bin, my son will eat things off of the floor. Of course he is just 5, but he should know better by now. I have told him hundreds of times that we don't eat food off of the floor. He will drop something and I will say "don't eat that--put it in the trash" He will look at me and then pick it up off the floor and put it in his mouth. He still trys to drink the water in the bathtub even though I have told him hundreds of times not to do that. The other day he bit into the skin of bananas that were still green and he tries to eat the green rind of the watermelon even though I keep telling him not to. I keep telling him that one day he is going to eat something really gross that is going to make him very sick. I just hope this gets into his head! It is so frustrating!

My son too shoves a lot of food into his mouth at one time. At school, they really worked hard with him on this and I did at home too, and he has gotten better about this, but I still have to watch him. He will try to shove a whole cheeseburger into his mouth! LOL!

I wonder too if it has something to do with not being able to feel when they are full. My son will have just eaten a meal and then 5 minutes later ask me if we are going to have dinner!

I just don't know. My son is still so young, who knows what will develop from here, but I am going to be aware of this. I just don't want him to do anything that is going to be harmful to him!! ! I am not as worried about him eating good food, but I just don't want him to put anything toxic into his mouth.

I have often wondered about tastes with my son as well, he definately favours things with strong flavours and always has. He loves lemons and lives and hot spicy food or things that are extremely sweet. Once when he was almost 3 he tried to drink from a bottle of nail polish remover at a sitter's house. Thankfully he didn't ingest much if any but definately had it in his mouth but the strangest thing was his lack of reaction to the taste, like it didn't bother him at all she said which I always found very odd.

We had to spend a lot of time working as well on not taking too big of bites and making sure he chewed well, it has gotten a lot better but can still be a challenge! He is definately more aware of it then he used to be and does well enough considering the way I've seen some kids eat who don't have AS!

As I have previously described, OCD is a specific disorder and being simply compelled to do something does not mean the person has OCD, as there are many types of obsessions and compulsions which are very different than those associated with actual OCD.

I thought of Prader-Willi syndrome too, because of the incredible quantities involved, but apparently that results in obesity, painfully overstretched stomach, is experienced as uncontrollable/desperate hunger, and extends to any kind of food so that the way your son selected particular foods for a long time would seem to rule that out.

As some people have said it may be some form of OCD ... and this could be part of it ... but I wonder if it isn't some kind of food intolerance, because of the compulsive addictive nature of it, which seems to have little or nothing to do with hunger, ( as it would in Will-Prader ).

A classic symptom of food intolerance is addiction to the food(s) in question.

I notice you said that you had experimented with excluding certain foods; which ones did you do this with, and for how long?

Gluten, ( present in wheat, barley and rye, and in traces in oats; hydrolysed vegetable protein is gluten, also in most modified starches, flavourings on crisps/chips, many prepared foods, eg. the tasty marinades/seasonings they put on chicken, the dextrose used to cure most ham/bacon, in most soups, breadcrumb coatings, some vinegars, etc ), and casein, ( present in almost as many prepared foods aswell as in all dairy products ), both contain food opioid peptides, which suppress our brain's natural appetite suppressants, alter our intestinal tract activity, and induce a pleasant euphoria, ( among other things ), and are also two of the most common food intolerances, ( 1% of the population have celiac disease, and between 10-15% of people have elevated levels of the gliadin-antibody to the gliadin which is in gluten ).

Sugar/sucrose is a ( physical and emotional ) painkiller/analgesic ( very powerful anti-anxiety agent, but of course ends in a "hangover"/downer, sugar blues ), and is highly addictive. It was used by arab surgeons in the middle ages as an anaesthetic; a few grains was enough for an operation, and at the height of the arab empire warriors were given sugar before battles to induce fearless, painfree states in which could fight on far longer, far more ferociously, than otherwise. "Rocks" of sugar were used as bribes among the wealthy for a few centuries during the middle-ages before it became a cheap mass commodity as a result of plantations and the slave trade.

I also sneaked food as a child; I am a recovering sugar addict, ( sucrose free for six months now ), and used to take biscuits and dried fruit and chocolates out of cupboards after I was supposed to be in bed, tiptoing around downstairs so that my parents would not hear me, and later, when I got pocket money and cash presents for birthdays I used to spend it all at school-tuckshop, buying and consuming at least a couple of packets of biscuits etc aswell as third and fourth helpings of sweet sticky school puddings per day, and at weekends I would buy coconut ice and other high-sugar goodies on the market on the way back from getting my weekly dose of as many books from the library as I was allowed.

When I couldn't get, or afford, such sweet foods, I would turn to bread, ( and eat it by the loaf ), or pasta, or other cheap carbos, and add mayonnaise or cheese or bacon in large quantities. I almost never bothered with vegetables or "real" meat, only with exactly those foods which came with a dose of sugar or casein/dairy, or gluten ( eg. one odd one; fishfingers! ); my favourite foods for years were pizza, bacon cheeseburgers, and icecream in cones, because they contained all three.

And despite the amounts I ate I stayed slim, apparently in good health, except for frequent severe colds, ( but what's a cold, right? ! ), and headaches, and, if less frequently, absolutely crippling bouts of abdominal "cramping"/bloating.

But my body's adaptive powers ran out in my mid to late twenties when I began to experience increasingly severe mood swings, hallucinations, and eventually devastating depression and anxiety. I also began, at last, to put on weight.

I am addictive about almost all carbohydrates, aswell as dairy. Even rice will "serve" my cravings for that carbo repletion/comfortably numb feeling if, as for the last two and a half years, I am following a gf diet. I have also often been astonished by the extraordinary amount of time and effort I am prepared to put into "getting a fix", cooking/baking and waiting in order to be able to eat an "allowed" carbohydrate or dairy ingredient in affordable ( ie. when unemployed, as have been for much of my life, cannot keep ordering in takeouts! ), and palatable form.

It takes 3-4 weeks for casein, and its food opiod peptides, to leave the body, and up to 26 weeks for gluten, and its opioids, to leave the body, ( the liver takes longest to clear ), so withdrawal/cravings/bingeing on substitutes may continue for quite a time when excluding these foods, but if there is intolerance you should notice a significant difference in other things; disappearance of dark circles round eyes, better sleep, improved cognitive function, feeling of calm, etc, and other mood changes, from the fifth day after cutting out a food.

Obsessive compulsive behaviour around food doesn't have to be all chemical or all psychological; it may be a subtle and complex combination of the two, if for example have learned that feel "comfortably and comfortingly numb/safe/reassured/"happy" after eating certain foods may develop rituals/habits attached to those foods so that when experience painful feelings, are restless, anxious, etc go automatically for the biscuit barrel or seek out any food containing at least some of the "hair of the dog that bit you".

PS. Liking strong flavours, spices etc can be a sign of Vit B6 and Zinc deficiency, or "Pyroluria", and may be linked to food intolerance, ( particularly gluten-intolerance because of how it affects the intestine's ability to absorb certain nutrients ).

Good luck anyway, whatever it is.

.

PPS.

About the "night eating" and not eating much, or at least not noticeably more than others, at ordinary meals, especially lunch and evening meal;

Apart from the period when I was in the fourth and fifth forms at school when had the "right" to go up for more food, and also had a best friend who wanted second third and even fourth helpings of school puddings too, I tended not to eat more than others at meal times.

Looking back I think this was because of three things:

Most "normal" meals didn't seem interesting to me, they were mostly boring, ( read non-addictive ), meat/fish and vegetables or salad, and for some reason I hated bread and/with butter, which was the only way we were allowed to eat bread in our house, so I didn't eat much of anything at table/home beyond the regulation servings, ... except when my mother made my favourite desserts, macaroon cake, chocolate fudge pudding, etc, when I would eye the relative sizes of portions with a beady and covetous eye, and wish that I could have more. But, like your son, I didn't think much of "cake" in general unless it was slathered in cream/icing, full of fruit, and/or included marzipan or similar extras, eg. Xmas cake. I think it may have had something to do with the flour not being leavened/yeasted, as if this made it less appetising, ... or it may have been the egg in them; I have a feeling that egg ( another very common food intolerance, like corn, soya, and orange juice/citrus fruits ), doesn't agree with me either.

Anyway, most ordinary meals were simply not satisfying; I couldn't get enough of the things which gave me a buzz; exceptions were macaroni cheese, cheese rice, salads involving grated cheese, and fish baked with a layer of cheesy breadcrumbs on top, which I adored.

I was also eating so much at school, from tuckshop, etc, ( puddings, and chocolate bars, biscuits, etc ), that I wasn't ever really hungry anyway when it came to the evening meal.

And finally, I think I "knew" from age 9/10 when I first began sneaking food from the kitchen at night, that there was something "horrible" about what I was doing; I found the craving/"craven"/compulsive aspect of it unpleasant/disagreeable, and was ashamed of it, so I didn't want to do it in public. I would only really let rip on my "fix" foods in private; at night, or when I knew that my parents and sister were either out or occupied doing something and unlikely to disturb me at it, or in the school locker rooms over a book, or in the classroom with the biscuits hidden in my desk and scoffed surreptitiously.

A lot of people are addicted to carbohydrates, ( because have learned that can make painful feelings go away by eating certain things, literally ), especially sugar, and the ones in glutenous cereals and dairy products, which contain the food opioid peptides, and science is beginning to find out why.
.

Last edited by ouinon on 14 Jun 2010, 9:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

Maybe Ounion is on to something.....Sounds like he is very knowlegable and has personal experience with this.
Personally, I think I have an addiction to carbs myself, but not like your son.
It sounds like a very big challenge to get oneself off of these.

It sounds like he may be underreactive to taste, and maybe this is why he craves the strong spices and sauces. Many of those sauces and flavorings do contain gluten as well.

Well, it sounds like there could be a lot going on, but I really hope you can find a solution soon.

Could he have Bulimia? It's more common than you think among males.

Here are some questions to ask...

Does he eat at all in between these night binges?
Normal breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks in front of people every day?
Or does he restrict all day and scarf at night?
Does he skip days at a time of eating regular meals?
Does all his own money also go into food?
Do any jars, bags, or tupperware also go missing?
Does he take showers at night?
Does he return from school late with no/or a weak excuse?
Does he hide food?
Does he gather food for later?
Does he chew a lot of gum? Use up a lot of mouthwash?
Does he seem "health conscious" during family meals, choosing healthy foods to eat and skipping sugars and fats etc?
Has he ever asked you which foods make a person fat and which foods are don't, or something similar?
Does he exercise a lot, even in bad weather or when he's sick or has little spare time?

These are all signs of bulimia nervosa, which is a very secretive disorder. You might want to do some research about it , confronting someone who is bulimic needs to be done very very sensitively.

Thank you for the post, Vivienne.

He doesn't exhibit any of those signs but it's good to know what they are as I have a daughter as well who is very self conscious and I worry she'll be weight conscious as a teen. I didn't realize a lot of those were associated with bulimia. Thanks!

One other thing that can cause someone to eat a lot without gaining weight is hyperthyroid. I'd not thought of that but my youngest son's gastroenterologist is sending him for testing for that or hypthyroid, or some combination of the two (some thyroid problems can cause you to bounce back and forth between the two). Youngest son doesn't steal food and binge like that but does eat massive quantitities, and then has to stop because his stomach hurts, but he's bone thin and hasn't been growing very much. The gastro guy has found a few different problems contributing, and I think he's thinking that an immuno/endocrine/thyroid problem may be at the root of all of it, not good but better than unexplained symptoms.

Anyway, that's something else that can drive a person to eat massive quantities without gaining weight.

Also, some people wth celiac waste away no matter how much they eat because the damage done to the body by the gluten keeps them from absorbing the nutrients. (Though it's not universal - some people with celiac become obese and have a harder time getting diagnosed because doctors are only trained to look for thin celiacs.)

Also, type 1 or type 3 (LADA) diabetics can get really thin while eating a whole lot because their cells aren't accepting the sugars properly.