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Comment by gerbilly | Hacker News Reader

Anorexia nervosa and excessive exercise seem to be causally linked.¹

If you want to cure someone of anorexia, you will usually have more success if you both eliminate the excessive exercise and address the eating behaviour at the same time.

For some reason, it seems as if each behaviour somehow supports the other, and to break the cycle, you have to address both.

Also if you or anyone has an eating disorder, take it seriously and seek treatment. Eating disorders have the highest death rate of any mental disorder.

1: When researchers restrict rats’ food intake while giving them unlimited access to a wheel, the rats start running excessively. Paradoxically, these rats opt to continue running rather than eat during the short intervals of time food is made available to them. If allowed, they will literally run themselves to death. (https://www.verywellmind.com/excessive-exercise-eating-disor...)

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I wonder why its unethical to test such things on human beings. I'm assuming it's unethical, because there rarely seems to be any damn work on this using humans.

Those rats ran themselves to death, will we humans? We share about 92% of the genes[0] (on the first google attempt), what changes does that giant 8% contain?

Just pick up people like me, and make us run and give us food.

I doubt we will object if it means there's a possibility that we might help ourselves.

Are they afraid they'll make it worse? Sure that's a possibility, but that's the price to pay. I'm willing to pay that price if it means people after me, who have this wire crossed in their brains will be served better healthcare in the future.

Some experiments might not work, but we've just discovered another way to _not_ make the lightbulb, but the good news is that the lightbulb _will_ be made if we try n times.

[0] https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/genetics-101/geneti...

It's far cheaper to run an experiment on 100 rats than 100 people, and it's unethical to let people run themselves to death obviously.

It's not unethical to watch people run and eat -- Gatorade/UF exercise lab does this stuff all day long. Obviously it's unethical to let you continue to do so if adverse health effects are observed.

Actually it isn't obvious. It only seems like it is obvious because most of us share some values.

> it's unethical to let people run themselves to death obviously.

It's also unethical to let rats run themselves to death, and it wouldn't pass an ethics review board if you suggested an experiment like that these days.

So the truth is that rats could run themselves to death (seems unlikely) or maybe could stop at some point before, when some metabolite reachs some level or falls under some level. Impossible to know it because... taboo.

Even if this information could help to understand better anorexia nervosa in humans.

Maybe we should do the experiment with running thumbleweed instead.

Philosophers can have a long discussion on ethics. There is no universal truth to the subject. You can turn God, the gods, and many other philosophers. Take your pick who you follow, there is no universal law saying you are right or wrong.

The average person in our society has decided that killing other humans is generally unethical, so it is. Most people have some sort of exception to that rule. Some people allow the death penalty for various crimes against their ethics (no universal truth of what is a crime exists). Some people allow for some area on the scale of where someone needs medical care for their cells to live. Some people allow killing before birth. Most people allow war in some part. I have my own opinions on the above, you do as well, but they are not the point. I'm sure we disagree on something.

You don't need to try to induce it in humans, you want to create treatments that work.

In this case the study in rats provides an interesting hunch, that food restriction and excessive exercise seem linked.

Then you can certainly run a trial where you either eliminate exercise or not, and see if it makes a difference.

It actually has been tested on humans: the Minnesota Semi Starvation Experiment. The experiment involved starving 36 people for a year. It was really designed to look at the physical impact of starvation and refeeding, so they used only the most psychologically healthy people they could find. Still, several developed anxiety reactions to food and continued not to eat after they were allowed. Many others developed food obsessions - several went on to become chefs.

The goal of the experiment was to figure out what to feed holocaust survivors.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experim...

Anorexia and bulimia are both OCD spectrum disorders. It's not remotely surprising that they're linked, but, as parent comment suggests, please help those who need it get treatment, even (especially) if it's yourself.

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