New Treatment For Eating Disorders

New Treatment For Eating Disorders….Teaching Your Teen To Eat Normally

Any treatment that will help a teen with an eating disorder learn to eat right, deserves a try. A new product, the Mandometer, does just this. It is a mini scale that a patient puts her plate on, which is connected to a device that provides instant feedback during a meal. Patients enter how full they feel before, during and after a meal and it tracks the rate at which the patient is eating. This approach teaches patients what a healthy rate of eating is, reconnecting feelings of hunger and fullness which get destroyed with an eating disorder. “The patient gradually learns to model its disordered pattern of eating to the normal pattern of eating.”

Perhaps one of the best things about this treatment is that it does not require the use of drugs and it can be used outside of a treatment facility. The Mandometer treatment method also includes a special treatment to keep patients warm, restriction of physical activity, and the rebuilding of social skills, all overseen by a personal case manager and physician.

The device has been shown to be effective through randomized clinical trials for the treatment of eating disorders.  Those trials have demonstrated that 75 percent of the patients treated with the Mandometer^® method recover and 90 percent remain healthy over five years.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced on March 31 that it had cleared Mandometer^® for the treatment of patients with eating disorders. As a result of the issue of the FDA clearance, physicians can prescribe therapy by the Mandometer^® method.