The Los Angeles Times (5/27, Stein) “Booster Shots” blog reported, “Anorexia nervosa takes a tremendous toll on the body,” and that “includes brain volume, which may be reduced because of the disorder.”
Now, however, researchers at Yale are saying “those deleterious effects could be reversed when anorexics gain weight.” In fact, after looking at the MRIs of “32 adult women with anorexia nervosa” and 21 healthy controls, investigators noted that “when the anorexic women did gain weight, gray matter volume improved after several weeks, although it didn’t fully return to normal.” The “volume of white matter…also improved as the anorexic women gained weight,” according to the paper in the International Journal of Eating Disorders.