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Eating and
Weight-Management:
A Summary of Collaborative
and Student Research Projects.
We are currently working on several projects aimed
at understanding the risk factors for human eating disorders mainly
among children and adolescents.
We hope this work will shed light on the developmental factors
leading to eating problems including binge eating, excessive dieting,
and purging behaviors as well as disturbances of body-image and body
weight, especially obesity. In
addition, this work may ultimately provide a basis for further studies
of the underlying neurobiology of these disturbances and to new
proposals for early interventions.
On Going Projects.
Native American Eating and Weight-management
Problems. This has been a major focus of much
of our work and the topic of an NIMH R03 grant. We have completed the collection of
data in a large survey study of kids in the Billings
and Hardin,
MT
school districts. About 1/3 of
the 2700 kids in this study are Native Americans. We assessed eating disorders risks,
using the McKnight Risk Factor Survey (MRSF-IV) and numerous other
measures of eating disturbance, body weight, and physical
activity. One paper describing
this work was recently published in the journal Body Image. Another
manuscript based on this work has been submitted for publication and a
third manuscript describing overall model of risk factors for eating
problems is in preparation.
Physical Activity and Eating
Problems. Several students
have taken part in projects examining the activity-ED connection,
including Jessica Klingler (Activity based
anorexia in rat) and Lacy Mathews (Athletics and eating problems:
analysis of existing data sets, including YRBS data). Activity data collected as part of
the NIMH R03 grant,
has only been partially analyzed.
Preliminary analysis indicates a slight protective effect of
involvement in sports activities, such that both greater time-spent and
greater relative energy-expenditure tended to reduce the likelihood of
dieting and purging behaviors.
Native American Attitudes about Body Weight
and Eating: Ethnographic Interviews. Several
students have been involved beginning with Michelle Calftail (summer 2001), Elizabeth Schwartz,
Ben Harris, and Lashanda
Hargrove (Summer 2002), and Elise Wagner (2003-04). The goal has been to characterize the
language used by Native adolescents to talk about eating and weight
management issues and to identify concerns about eating and
weight-management issues that are unique to Native adolescents. The original plan of this work was to
use focus group interviews.
However, it has been difficult to recruit participants. This work could be extended in
several ways, for instance, to include different age groups,
male-female differences, tribal differences, and specific contrasts
between Native and non-Native groups.
Native American Attitudes about Body Weight and
Eating: Implicit and Explicit Attitudes.
Mariam Stewart (IMSD, 2004) developed a
computerized implicit attitudes test aimed at examining differences in
attitudes towards obesity among Native and Caucasian youth and possibly
also between males and females within each group. She is using a computer program
provided by Dr. Keith Hutchison called “e-studio,” which
controls stimulus presentation and reaction-time data collection. An existing web-site at Harvard
University https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/
has a number of demonstrations of the IAT (Implicit Associations Test),
and how it can be used to measure bias or prejudice, including fat bias
(prejudice based on obesity) and cultural bias toward Native Americans.
Anyone interested
in this topic should check out this web site.
Social Support and Eating Problems
among Native Adolescents. Based on our prelimary data from the R03 project (see
below) Loren Chesarek and Sydney Eastman
(2003) examined existing survey instruments designed to assess social
support. After discussing this
with Prof. Clarann Weinert (College
of Nursing),
Loren collected data from students on the Crow reservation using the
Personal Resource Questionnaire, PRQ-2000, originally developed by Dr. Weinert to
assess social support among older rural residents.
Stress and
eating disorders. Several students have contributed to
this project including Melannie
Ehrlick (USP survey
project with the MSU track team, 2000), Rhea Papke (2001) who attempt to validate a “stress
thermometer” as a visual analog measure of stress and Maria
(Gilman) Hinton (2003), whose MS Thesis “Disturbed Eating
Attitudes as Predictors of Coping Processes and Macronutrient Preferences
in Undergraduate Females Under Stress” was an experimental study
in which stress was induced in college females (using an unsolvable
anagram procedure) prior to their reporting their stress-coping
strategies. Maria also recorded
eating attitudes and behaviors of these women and their macronutrient
food preferences. We hope to be
able to publish a portion of her these concerned with the relationship
between eating attitudes and macronutrient preferences sometime in
early 2005.
Food Insecurity: How does
Socioeconomic Status Influence Eating and Weight-management? Several students have been interested
in this question. Andrea Church
(2003) began investigating this problem and she and Wes developed a
tentative model of possible mediators between food insecurity and
obesity. Deb Rohm (2004) later
wrote an excellent review of the literature in this area as a paper for
Psy 470. Brett
Carter (now an MS student) has followed up by examining the WIN Rockies data for relationships between
socioeconomic status (family income or education) and obesity or
disturbances in body image.
Other databases with relevant information on this problem are
the Youth Risk Behavior Surveys (YRBS) and the Third National
Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III)
Public-Use
Data Files at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/elec_prods/subject/nhanes3.htm. Other existing databases may also
contain relevant information. An
interesting question is the extent to which socioeconomic status
affects body weight and eating attitudes among rural Montanans. The YRBS data for MT youth, may contain some relevant information on this
question.
Childhood Obesity Prevention.
Wes is currently collaborating with Dr. Lynn Paul (Health &
Human Development) on developing a new grant proposal to be submitted
to the USDA’s National
Research Initiative (NRI) program.
Night Eating Syndrome. Another MS student (Barbara Cooper)
is interested in the prevalence and controlling variables responsible
for NES. She is currently (2007)
collecting survey data on this question from college students in MT and
in China. Her plans for her thesis may include
a field research project aimed at intervening in NES behavior.
Publications.
Lynch, W. C., Heil, D. P., Wagner, E. &
Havens, M. D. (submitted) Body
Dissatisfaction Mediates the Association between Body Mass Index and
Risky Eating Behaviors.
Lynch, W. C., Heil, D. P., Wagner, E. & Havens,
M. D. (2007) Ethnic Differences
in BMI, weight concerns, and eating behaviors: Comparison of Native
American, white, and Hispanic adolescents. Body Image, 4, 179-190.
Lynch, W. C., Eppers, K. D., & Sherrodd, J. R. (2004).
Eating Attitudes of Native American and White Female Adolescents: A Comparison of BMI- and Age-matched
Groups. Ethnicity and Health, 9(3),
253-266.
Lynch, W. C., Everingham, A., Dubitzky, J., Hartman, M., & Kasser, T. J. (2000). Does Binge Eating Play a Role in
the Self-regulation of Moods? Integrative
Physiological and Behavioral Science, 35, 298-313.
Presentations.
Stewart, M. J., & Lynch, W. C.
(2004, July) Weight-related Attitudes of Native
American and White Adolescents. Poster
presented at the annual Leadership Alliance National Symposium, Chantilly,
VA.
Lynch, W. C., Havens, M. D., Wagner, E. C., & Heil, D.
P. (2004) Risk factors for eating problems among Native American and
Caucasian adolescents. [Abstract #020 of paper presented at the Academy
for Eating Disorders Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL]. International
Journal of Eating Disorders, 35(4),
379-380.
Eastman, S. J., Chesarek, L., & Lynch, W. C. (2003, October) Social Support Questionnaire among
Different Ethnic People. Poster
presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of
Chicanos and Native Americans in Science.
Lynch, W. C. & Barnes, K. (2000) Does eating reduce
psychological stress? Society for Neuroscience Abstracts, 26.
Klingler, J., Butler,
M., & Lynch, W. C. (2000, April). What makes Sniffy
run? Wheel running using a modified ABA
paradigm. Poster presented at the annual
meeting of the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society, Denver,
CO.
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