Health

Nourishing Mind, Body and Brain – the role of Dietitians in the treatment of eating disorders

10 Apr, 2024

What we eat has a profound impact on both our physical and mental health. This is particularly important for people with eating disorders, and as nutrition specialists, dietitians form an integral part of the treatment team who work with them all the way from prevention to treatment.

Dietitians work with adults and young people with eating disorders to treat malnutrition, reverse the effects of starvation, and nourish the body and brain. They also provide education and correct misinformation about nutrition for optimal health, normalising eating, challenging eating disorder behaviours, and addressing societal pressure promoting thinness. They actively promote a health at every size and non-diet approach to nutrition.

Dietitian, Caroline Hill explains how dietitians work with people with eating disorders.

“We work closely with clients to treat the physical impacts of the eating disorder through nutrition rehabilitation and restoration, particularly when patients are medically unwell in hospital. We aim to enable the person to get to a place where they are stable and safe enough to go home.”

“Once they leave hospital, we continue to work with the person and their carers on their recovery journey by addressing eating disorder behaviours, treating the symptoms of the eating disorder, and improving their relationship with food and their body in a community setting. We use a person-centred approach to work with the individual and their treatment team and family or carers to meet their recovery and treatment goals.”

Dietitian, Maureen Moerbeck explains that without nourishment of the mind, body and brain, treating for eating disorders becomes much more challenging.

“With an eating disorder comes not only starvation of the body, but starvation of the brain which causes food obsession, rigid thinking, mood fluctuations, impaired concentration and problem solving, and intense and negative emotional reactions. These changes cause an additional barrier for people when they are thinking about or trying to recover from an eating disorder.”

“Without adequately nourishing the mind, body and brain, recovery becomes infinitely more challenging for people with eating disorders, including their ability to use psychological therapies in treatment.  This is why nutrition and the work of the dietitian to deliver support is so important in the recovery journey of someone with an eating disorder.’’

Dietitian, Linda Winn, believes there is huge potential for dietitians to play a central role in the mental health of Australians.

“What we eat can have a profound impact on our mental health.  We have lots of research literature now that demonstrates this.  We know that a nutritious diet is not only good for physical health but mental health too.”

“In Australia, the life expectancy of those with a mental illness and or substance use disorder is 10-16 years shorter than it is for people without these conditions.  They’re more likely to have poor dietary intake, medication side-effects and low motivation which can lead to physical illness like cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.”

“Dietitians can address all of these issues by working holistically with the patient and their families with realistic and sustainable changes to their diet and lifestyle.  They understand the barriers to making healthy changes and provide education and practical strategies such as how to cook, shop, budget, and meal plan.  Most importantly, they want their clients to have a good relationship with food and learn how to best nourish their body.”

The SMILES trial (Supporting the Modification of lifestyle in Lowered Emotional States) found that participants in a randomised control trial with mild to moderate depression who undertook seven one hour dietitian consultations to help them to make healthy changes to their diets were more likely to go into remission from depression compared with those who didn’t.