Anorexia Ruling Could Impact Coverage

By EMILY P. WALKER MedPage Today Washington Correspondent

Aug. 31, 2011

A U.S. appeals court has ruled that an anorexic woman's insurance company must pay for her treatment at a residential facility because of a California law that requires insurers to provide the same coverage for mental illness as they do for physical illness.

The ruling may have important implications for how insurance companies pay for treatment for patients with mental illnesses in states with strong mental health parity laws.

The case involves Jeanene Harlick, a 37-year-old woman from California who has suffered from anorexia for more than 20 years. In 2006, she began intensive outpatient treatment, but her doctors said she needed inpatient treatment, according to the written decision from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

For the whole story, go to:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/anorexia-ruling-affect-coverage-mental-illness/story?id=14419120

check out our articles in well known publications!

see our article in the LN Ladue News! 

http://www.laduenews.com/articles/2011/08/09/living/wellness/doc4e3adf2676493862303511.txt

and also the healthy planet magazine, page 13!

http://issuu.com/greensideupproductions/docs/healthy-planet-august-2011

A very interesting expert ED summary about sugar dependence!

Below I summarize a review by Benton (2010: The plausibility of sugar addiction
and its role in obesity and eating disorders. Clinical Nutrition 29: 288-303)
who reviewed 160 studies and found that  "None of the hypotheses based on the
animal model in respect of an addiction to sugar is confirmed for humans."

The hypothesis that sugar can also produce physical dependence in humans had its
origins in experiments on rats. Researchers had not fed these rats for twelve
hours and subsequently offered them unlimited amounts of laboratory food and,
optionally, a sugar solution.  They ingested large amounts of sugar when first
offered food, and this was classified as a "feeding frenzy". Measurements in the
animals had shown