Childhood Abdominal Pain May Be Linked to Disordered Eating in Teenagers

*The following is excerpted from an online article posted on MedicalXpress.

New research shows that people who suffer from recurrent abdominal pain in childhood may be more likely to have disordered eating as teenagers.

This is the first study to provide prospective evidence of an association between recurrent abdominal pain at aged 7-9 years and fasting to control weight at aged 16 years. The study, published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, suggests that recurrent abdominal pain, the most common gastrointestinal complaint of childhood, may be an independent risk factor for later fasting to control weight.

Researchers at the University of Oxford, Duke University U.S., and the University of Bristol, used the “Children of the 90s’ population cohort of 14,000 children in the UK, to explore this association.

Dr. Kate Stein, lead author of the study, Department of Psychiatry, University Oxford, said, “The factors behind eating disorders are complex, but our findings suggest that for some patients, recurrent abdominal pain in childhood may precede and contribute to later problems.

“While we cannot confirm that childhood recurrent abdominal pain increases the risk of developing an eating disorder, we suspect that some children become fearful of their pain and start to avoid foods which they associate with the pain. This could then set them on a trajectory which leads to unhelpful fasting behaviors in adolescence.”

Source: MedicalXpress
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-05-childhood-abdominal-pain-linked-disordered.html