Hair Strand reveals Eating Disorders- Study

Eating disorders, which are serious emotional and physical problems that can have life-threatening consequences on females and males, can be difficult to diagnose, often because either sufferers do not realize they have a problem or they try to conceal it.

But, a team of researchers at Brigham Young University (BYU) on Monday announced a major breakthrough in the treatment of eating disorders. According to the researchers, hair strands reveal evidence of a person's diet and can help doctors diagnose eating disorders.

They said that by examining the nitrogen and carbon found in the proteins of hair, the health experts can determine whether someone is suffering from eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, a serious, potentially life-threatening eating disorder characterized by self-starvation and excessive weight loss and other being bulimia, which is characterized by a secretive cycle of binge eating followed by purging.

In their study, the researchers compared the chemical pattern in strands of hair between 20 young women seeking treatment for eating disorders and 22 others with normal eating behaviors and after statistically analyzing the data found differences in nitrogen and carbon. The researchers said that the data enabled them to give an 80 percent accurate determination about whether a person had anorexia or bulimia.

The lead author and an assistant professor of integrative biology at Utah’s BYU, Kent Hatch said hair acts like a "tape recorder." Just as it can be used to determine if someone has consumed drugs or has been exposed to excessive amounts of mercury and lead, hair can reveal what someone has been eating, Hatch said. "Your body records your eating habits in the hair. So, we can use that to tell the nutritional health of an individual," he asserted.

Hair matures by adding fresh proteins to the base of the strand and pushing the strand up out of the hair follicle, a small tubular cavity containing the root of a hair. The make-up of the proteins is affected by a person's diet at that moment. And the nutritional state of each individual is influenced by his or her own diet standards. Thus, each strand of hair is a chemical "diary" that keeps account of day-by-day nutrition, the research team said.

Changes relating to the diet can be measured in head hair after a month of growth and the researcher are now looking at leg hair and beard growth as well, which could reveal symptoms of changes in diet in less than a weak.

The study, which promised a sound diagnosis at an earlier stage by using the new method, was published Monday in a journal, Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry.

Hatch concluded that the test needs to be refined before it could be used in a medical setting. And, intensifies studies are slated to possibly develop a test that can be used in clinics. "With further work, we hope to not only use the test as a diagnostic tool but be able to use it to help monitor a person's recovery," Hatch said.