Mark Austin admits he told anorexic daughter "starve yourself to death"

The broadcaster Mark Austin has revealed how he struggled to understand his daughter’s anorexia and “failed utterly to grasp that she was seriously mentally ill”.

In a candid account, he admits he thought her “crass, insensitive, selfish and pathetic” and became so frustrated he once told her: “If you really want to starve yourself to death, just get on with it.”

But now the TV presenter hopes to break the taboo around potentially deadly eating disorders and is calling for improved mental health provision to deal with the crisis of more than 850,000 young sufferers, predominantly girls, in the UK.

Austin’s daughter Maddy, now 22, became ill in 2012, losing four stone and changing from a healthy and promising athlete to an “emaciated, ghostlike figure”.

He recalled: “I didn’t understand it at first. Cancer I understand … but this was my daughter wilfully destroying herself by not eating.”

Writing in the Sunday Times magazine, he described how Maddy would lie about how much she had eaten and “explode with rage” when challenged.

“She showered me with contempt. As a father you have to make a decision and I made the wrong one. I decided to go on the attack.”

He said: “I even remember saying, ‘If you really want to starve yourself to death, just get on with it’. And at least once, exasperated and at a loss, I think I actually meant it.”

The newsreader acknowledged that as a father he felt “excluded and hated” and found it hard to talk about issues of body image and weight control.

“I floundered and, in the process, ended up poisoning her against me further,” he said.

Austin described how things hit rock bottom for Maddy after a failed spell at a private inpatient unit on a regime of forced feeding. She resisted the treatment and threatened to kill herself. Maddy’s mother became so worried that when her daughter returned home she took time off work and slept on her bedroom floor so as to monitor her around the clock.

Maddy was eventually “saved” by a local NHS day-patient unit.

She recalled: “Eventually it was a local NHS nurse who really understood me and saw the Maddy without the demons. I was lucky, but mental health treatment should not be a lottery.”

Now her father is urging people to take the illness more seriously and is calling for “walk-in centres on the high street of every town and city in this country, manned by trained counsellors”.

He added: “As a country our response is bordering on the pathetic. It is a mental illness, but, almost uniquely, it is one that kills.”

One in 100 women aged between 15 and 30 are affected by anorexia and it is reckoned that one in five chronic anorexics will die as a result of the condition or because they take their own life.

The Beat youthline can help young people experiencing an eating disorder: 0345 634 7650. In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here

Mark Austin admits he told anorexic daughter "starve yourself to death"

"Feed a cold, starve a fever" could be right, scientists find

The traditional advice to “feed a cold and starve a fever” might have an element of truth, say scientists.

Research shows that the old adage appears to be based on sound science when a fever is caused by bacterial infection.

Scientists put the folk wisdom to the test using laboratory mice with bacterial and viral infections. They found that mice with flu – like the common cold, caused by a virus – were helped to recover and survive when they were fed. In contrast, feeding animals infected by bacteria only hastened their death.

The lead researcher Prof Ruslan Medzhitov, of the Yale School of Medicine in the US, said: “We were surprised at how profound the effects of feeding were, both positive and negative.

“Anorexia – not eating – is a common behaviour during sickness that is seen in people and all kinds of animals. Our findings show that it has a strong protective effect with certain infections, but not with others.”

In the first of a series of experiments, mice were infected with listeria bacteria, a common cause of food poisoning. The animals stopped eating naturally, and eventually recovered. However, when they were made to eat, they died.

Sugary food was the culprit, the researchers discovered – the mice survived when they were fed protein and fats but no glucose.

A similar study of mice infected with the flu virus showed an opposite effect. In this case, the mice lived when they were force-fed glucose, but died when they were denied food.

Giving the animals a drug called 2-DG, which prevents glucose metabolism, saved the listeria-infected mice but proved fatal to those with flu.

Further research indicated that the different outcomes related to an interplay between metabolism and the immune system.

“Almost everything we know about infection is based on immune response studies and looking at how the immune system eliminates pathogens (harmful agents),” said Medzhitov. “But that’s not the only way we defend ourselves. There are also cases where we change and adapt so that microbes don’t cause harm.

“Our study manipulated the ability of these mice to tolerate and survive infection without doing anything that had an effect on the pathogens themselves.”

His team is now looking at how changes in sleep behaviour during illness influence the way the immune system fights infection.

The researchers also want to investigate why people sometimes display food cravings when they are sick.

The findings, published in the journal Cell, have implications for the design of clinical trials evaluating the benefits of nutrition to patients with sepsis, say the scientists.

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition caused by a response to infection that damages the body’s tissues and organs.

Medzhitov said: “Sepsis is a critical problem in hospital ICUs [intensive care units] that defies most modern medical approaches. A number of studies have looked at nutrition in patients with sepsis, and the results have been mixed. But these studies didn’t segregate patients based on whether their sepsis was bacterial or viral.

“The implication is that patients should be stratified by the cause of their sepsis, and trials should be designed based on that.”

"Feed a cold, starve a fever" could be right, scientists find

Daughter claims elderly mom being left to starve

“It happened so abruptly it was nearly like somebody had flicked a switch and she stopped consuming.

“I don’t believe she eats a factor when she’s at property and it really is so upsetting to see my mum waste away.

“I’m watching her starve to death and I can’t do anything to support her.”

Mrs Todd, a grandmother-of-three, has been taken to hospital 5 occasions given that she stopped consuming but doctors say she has no physical sickness.

She refused to celebrate Christmas at her daughter’s home as usual and by February 9 her issue had deteriorated so a lot her daughter was forced to phone ambulance.

She was taken to the Royal Blackburn Hospital in which she stayed for ten days and underwent a series of tests – with no clear outcomes.

Ms Nelson, a mom-of-two, added: “I believe possibly it truly is some kind of psychological sickness. The doctors have looked at regardless of whether she’s acquired depression or the onset of dementia but then, when they assessed her, they explained she’s fine.

“It cannot be a physical factor because she eats fine when she’s in hospital but she’ll possibly be launched in a handful of days and after she’s residence the cycle begins yet again.

“Because the physicians do not know what’s wrong, they cannot treat her.

“A single doctor in fact explained to me that if she doesn’t want to eat then that is up to her.

Following Mrs Todd’s final hospital visit, a care package deal was implemented but her daughter stated that has not not helped.

She added: “She has carers going in to see her but she is even now refusing to eat and they can not force her.

“It really is not their fault but everyone looks to be passing the buck. The care system is so tough to navigate.

“You will not have to be medically educated to see that there is some thing critically incorrect with my mum.”

Rosehill Surgical procedure in Burnley where Mrs Todd is registered as a patient explained they could not comment due to the fact of patient confidentiality.

Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Believe in explained: “When a person is discharged from hospital, the Trust works closely with the individual and family members to guarantee that a ideal package of care is in area.

“The Trust adopts a man or woman-centred care method which supports individuals and assists them to make informed choices and manage their own wellness care.”

Daughter claims elderly mom being left to starve

West need to not starve Afghanistan"s youngsters of the support they need to have | @guardianletters

Detail of Muhammed Muheisen’s portrait of laiba Hazrat, a six-yr-old Afghan refugee residing in a slum outdoors Islamabad, Pakistan. Photograph: Muhammed Muheisen/AP

Whilst the worldwide local community has spent billions of lbs in Afghanistan since the US-led military intervention in 2001, the vast majority has been spent on the war work and a considerably smaller proportion on repairing the harm induced by that war and developing the nation (Half of Afghan young children endure irreversible harm from malnutrition, 27 January).

The British charity Afghanaid has been operating alongside Afghan men, girls and young children for the previous thirty years. With the help of Britain’s Department for Global Growth and generous individual donors, we are creating wells, micro-reservoirs and pipe methods to give people accessibility to clean consuming water putting in toilets to improve sanitation and educating young children and grownups in excellent hygiene. We are also helping rural communities to boost agriculture and livestock, establishing micro-enterprises and strengthening their foods security – so that households do not dwell in hunger or the dread of hunger.

Programmes this kind of as Afghanaid’s support families hold their children healthful. Even so, it is vital that when British and other global troops withdraw from Afghanistan, the global community stays committed to supplying the money that will enable companies this kind of as Afghanaid to reply to the regular humanitarian emergencies and support the extended-phrase sustainable growth that will let kids to survive and thrive.
Charles Davy
Managing director, Afghanaid, Kabul

• Emma Graham-Harrison’s graphic dispatch from Afghanistan draws attention to the proof that early-daily life deficiencies in nutrition and healthcare can have lifelong, largely irreversible, impacts on learning achievement, physical stature and grownup earning possible. And these in flip influence on longer-term nationwide prosperity and development.

But even in emerging market nations that have committed assets to tackle continual issues of maternal and child well being, a remarkable volume stays to be completed in this region.

Proof-primarily based answers to these troubles had been exposed this month at a symposium on maternal and youngster health and nutrition in emerging markets at Green Templeton University, Oxford. New evidence permits us to specify optimum environments, wellness and nutrition regimes, and new criteria for measuring outcomes. The evidence permits us to say that below optimised conditions every single youngster on Earth could have identical prospects for wholesome, productive lives irrespective of ethnicity. And simply because it opens new pathways for human resource improvement it provides the prospect of healthier, much more educable, a lot more productive adult populations, with no which prolonged-phrase financial development, cohesive societies and political stability cannot be achieved.

Governments close to the globe, notably individuals in emerging market place economies, need to accept these scientific findings and get a fresh, longer-phrase standpoint on social investment in pre-conception, neonatal, child health and nutrition.
Professor George Alleyne Chancellor, University of the West Indies, Professor Ana Langer Harvard school of public well being, Dr Sania Nishtar President, Heartfile, Pakistan, Professor Srinath Reddy President, Public Overall health Basis of India, Professor David Watson Principal, Green Templeton University, Oxford, Shengman Zhang Chairman, Citi Asia Pacific

• Muhammed Muheisen’s pictures of the refugee Afghan children (Eyewitness, 29 January) in Islamabad were really just stunning. Every 1 informed a story of suffering and trauma: the innocent faces of conflicts that destroy youthful lives, not just in Afghanistan but during the globe. A single can only hope that these displaced youngsters will 1 day be in a position to return to a homeland that is cost-free of war, and get pleasure from the childhood they deserve.
Martin Johnson
Congleton, Cheshire

West need to not starve Afghanistan"s youngsters of the support they need to have | @guardianletters