4There have been rumors. There’s be

4There have been rumors. There’s been gossip. All Hollywood is shocked to learn that Calista Flockhart, star of Fox’s hit TV show Ally McBeal, is so thin. And we in the media are falling all over ourselves trying to figure out whether Flockhart has an eating disorder, especially now that she has denied it. Well, I’m not playing the game. If the entertainment industry really cared about sending the wrong message on body image, it wouldn’t need so many slender celebrities in the first place.But the fact remains that 2 million Americans—most of them women and girls—do suffer from eating disorders. In the most extreme cases they literally starve themselves to death. And those who survive are at greater risk of developing brittle bones, life-threatening infections, kidney damage and heart problems. Fortunately, doctors have learned a lot over the past decade about what causes eating disorders and how to treat them.The numbers are shocking. Approximately 1 in 150 teenage girls in the U. S. falls victim to anorexia nervosa, broadly defined as the refusal to eat enough to maintain even a minimal body weight. Not so clear is how many more suffer from bulimia, in which they binge on food, eating perhaps two or three days’ worth of meals in 30 minutes, then remove the excess by taking medicine to move the bowels or inducing vomiting. Nor does age necessarily protect you. Anorexia has been diagnosed in girls as young as eight. Most deaths from the condition occur in women over 45.Doctors used to think eating disorders were purely psychological. Now they realize there’s some problematic biology as well. In a study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry recently, researchers found abnormal levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter in the brain, in women who had been free of bulimia for at least a year. That may help explain why drugs have allowed a lot of people to stop swallowing in large doses of food. Unfortunately, the pills don’t work as well for denial of food. Nor do they offer a simple one-stop cure. Health-care workers must re-educate their patients in how to eat and think about food.How can you tell if someone you love has an eating disorder？ “Bulimics will often leave evidence around as if they want to get caught.” Says Tamara Pryor, director of an eating-disorders clinic at the University of Kansas in Wichita. Anorexics, by contrast, are more likely to go through long periods of denial.