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 both of the NIH grants listed below.  We recently published one of our first studies in this area (see Lynch, Eppers, and Sherrodd, 2004).  Julie Maertens (2004-05) is currently working on a MS thesis that will attempt a meta-analysis of approximately 30 published studies that have included NA participants, in an attempt to identify significant moderators, including such variables as age, gender, type of eating disturbance, etc.  We have just 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.  Publication of the results from this study is a high priority.  Based on these results and the cooperation of two schools on (Lame Deer Public) and near (St. Labre Indian School), we have proposed to extend this study.  The new study, which is described in our recently submitted R01 proposal to NIH, will follow the same children prospectively from grades 4-11, in hopes of identifying and predicting eating disorders and obesity before they become serious problems.  The entire study will also involve the parents and families of these kids and will gather data on family dynamics, health status, physical activity, and diet as well as psychosocial risk variables.

Physical Activity and Eating Problems.  Several students have taken part in projects examining the activity-ED connection, including Jessica Klingler (Activity based anorexia in rats, see below), Amanda Stang (proposed EDE-Q survey plus interviews of undergraduates), Poppy Toeckes (proposed EDE-Q survey plus actigraph monitors of undergraduates), 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 (below), has only been partially analyzed, mainly because of the difficulty of validating the instrument used by Prof. Dan Heil (MSU-HHD).  A partial analysis of these results as preliminary data in support of our R01 proposal suggested that, among 9-10^th grade students at Hardin High School, there was 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.  Further analysis of the R03 data, from 11 other schools that took part in the study, is needed.

Native American Attitudes about Body Weight and Eating: Ethnographic Interviews.  The original plan of this work was to use focus group interviews.  However, it has been difficult to recruit participants and also to come up with an appropriate set of topics or questions that will elicit useful information from participants.  As a result we have only had modest progress.  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.  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.  We have available an SPSS “content analysis” program known as “Text Smart” that can be used to help analyze focus group data.

Native American Attitudes about Body Weight and Eating: Implicit and Explicit Attitudes.  Mariam Stewart (IMSD, 2004) is currently developing 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’s (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 (2004) is currently following 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, which we have (see MTH2.sav), may have some relevant information on this question.

Predictors of eating and weight management problems among rural Montanans.  Wes is currently collaborating with Dr. Linda Hyman (VP for Health Sciences at MSU) and several other investigators on the development of a new “exploratory grant” aimed at eventually creating a “Center for Rural Health Research and Policy.”  As a part of this project, we are planning to propose a new study that would gather data on the problems of obesity and diabetes in Montana and the availability of health services to deal with these problems in rural areas.

Manuscripts in progress or unpublished.

 Lynch, W. C., & Eppers-Reynolds, K. (2004). Eating Attitudes Test (EAT):  Revised Factor Structure for Adolescent Girls. Manuscript submitted for publication.  This manuscript is based on data collected in 1998 from ~2000 kids in MT.  Based on a sample of ~700 girls in grades 5-8, we have proposed a best-fitting SEM model for the Children’s EAT (ChEAT) consisting of 5 factors.

 Hinton, M. D., Steinmuller, P., & Lynch, W. C. (2004) Do eating attitudes predict food preferences as measured by the macronutrient self-selection procedure?  Manuscript in preparation, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT.  This manuscript will focus on selected aspects of Maria Hinton’s masters thesis data, as suggested by the above tentative title.

Klingler, J., & Lynch, W. C. (2000) The influence of body weight on wheel-running in activity based anorexia. Unpublished manuscript, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT.

 Lynch, W. C., & Weidener, J.  (1999) Can We Predict Which College Students Are Likely To Have Eating Problems? Unpublished manuscript, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT.

Publications.

 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.

Funding.

 Lynch, W. C., Heil, D. P. and Havens, M. D. NIMH, #R03 MH062050-02.  “Athletics & Eating Problems in Native & Caucasian Youth.”  06/01/02 – 05/31/04 (plus 1yr no cost extension).  $140,000.

 Lynch, W. C., Smolak, L. and Havens, M. D.  NIH R01, pending.  “Predicting Weight-Management Risks in Native Adolescents.  3yr. proposal.  $888,825 total.

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