Marya Hornbacher connected with some more of her many readers Thursday night at Skaneateles’s Creekside Books and Coffee. She brought smiles, humor and hope to a subject that usually isn’t thought to contain those elements: bipolar disorder.
The author has reached the New York Times best-seller list with her book “Madness: A Bipolar Life.” It is a compelling first person account of her life-long experience with the mental illness.
In spring, Hornbacher was invited to come do a reading from the book by Susan Cox, an employee of the store.
“I sent her an email and I said that I really enjoyed her book,” Cox said. “We managed to work this out.”
Connecting to her audience is a key element to Hornbacher’s writing life.
“Writing a book that other people can connect with is your whole purpose as a writer,” she said. “Your purpose is not to be known. Your purpose is not to get famous or any of that. Your purpose is to connect with a reader — one reader out there in the world holding your book in their hands. If you can connect with that one reader effectively you did your job.”
On Thursday, Hornbacher had just driven in from New Paltz where she had lectured to 600 people on her book “Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia.” This night the 35-year-old from Minneapolis was speaking to an intimate audience of 10 fans. They tucked away between the biography and young adult sections of the cozy store on Fennell Street.
Hornbacher stood behind a wooden podium and read with an intense energy. Manic. Staccato. Hardly ever taking her eyes off the pages to look up. She wrote the book in the same style.
“I was writing the way one writes when one is manic so you can get a sense of what it is like,” she said “I was trying to show in the language what the mood state is like.”
The excerpts, and the book, are ordered chronologically from the author’s first recollections of bipolar disorder as a 4-year-old girl to her adulthood. Hornbacher’s reading to the audience at the bookstore was varied.
It included a scene of intense mesmerizing conversation between her mother and herself as a 4-year-old; recollections of a misguided road trip to the desert in which she and her co-dependent boyfriend lose perspective; and a somewhat comical episode of her doing battle with her washing machine.
Not all incidents in the book are light hearted. Hornbacher’s story is at times graphic and somewhat grim.
In the incident of the road trip, Hornbacher recalled that the companions perspective was so distorted by mental illness that what they thought of a trip of only a few weeks was actually an escapade of more than three months.
But the writer’s work has found a place in the hearts of readers and critics alike. Her book, “Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia,” has been published in 14 languages. The author and journalist have been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and today she receives thousands of pieces of mail a week. She reads all of them, she said.
At Creekside, fans had come from as far way as Rochester and Ithaca to hear her.
Gina Cardarelli of Syracuse said Hornbacher was her favorite author. She’s read all her books and enjoyed “Madness: A Bipolar Life.”
“I really liked it,” she said. “It is stream-of-consciousness. I can relate to it.”
Hornbacher said she wants readers to take away a sense of hope and inspiration from her book. Even the title is designed to provoke a discussion of mental illness.
“I wanted people to go, ‘Oh is she allowed to call it madness’,” Hornbacher said. “I wanted to use the word so that we would start questioning the word. What do we mean by madness? What do we mean by crazy? I would never in a million years refer to someone else as crazy, but those are ways I bring some levity in my experience of it.”
The author said she is currently managing her illness well. She is on medication and hasn’t been hospitalized in over two years. She continues to write, now with a concentration on poetry.
“I have a lot of good days,” she said. “A good day is when my mood stays relatively steady and I’m able to work all day. My bipolar is in remission which is a delightful state of affairs.”
But she knows with her illness may come more ups and downs. That is one reason she keeps very busy.
“I may get sick at some point,” she said. “There’s no guarantee. While I’m OK now I want to get some things done.”

http://www.cnylink.com/cnynews/view_news.php?news_id=1257874346

It's easier than ever to watch what you eat these days. Counting calories, nutrients and fat grams has become somewhat of a national pastime.

But as CBS 2 HD learned recently this pursuit of eating right has gone terribly wrong for a growing number of people suffering from an emerging eating disorder called orthorexia.

"I shake at the thought of eating a hamburger," Kathy Losonczy said.

Red meat is not on Losonczy's menu. And neither are a slew of other foods that you may never think of going without.

"I do not eat fried chicken; I do not eat French fries. I very rarely eat pizza, though I love it," Losonczy said.

Losonczy is so concerned with eating healthy she has severely restricted what she can and cannot eat.

"Never eat fast food, absolutely zero junk food," Losonczy said.

She also doesn't eat canned foods and rarely, if ever, touches sweets. She never eats fat and the list goes on. Most importantly, Losonczy said she obsessively counts and catalogues everything she consumes.

"I went through a stage of being vegan, vegetarian," Maggie Miller said.

Miller said she, too, knows what it's like to have a compulsive need to eat right.

"It was like walking on a never-ending balance beam that I was always scared I would fall off of," Miller said.

Losonczy and Miller both said they struggle with orthorexia, a new type of eating disorder. Doctors say it's an obsession with eating healthy. But it's so severe it can quickly turn very unhealthy

"I would say it falls into the family of anorexia nervosa," said Dr. Allan Geliebter.

But unlike anorexia or bulimia, orthorexia is not about weight loss.

"Food becomes a natural way to regain power, assertiveness and control," nutritionist Nicolette Pace said.

Pace said she's seeing more and more patients with orthorexia and you might be surprised to learn who they are.

"A middle class, well educated person over 30, so they have the means to purchase the foods," Pace said.

But people with orthorexia may not eat enough of them and exclude a number of other food groups they perceive as bad.

"The biggest risk would be semi-starvation," Dr. Geliebter said.

Geliebter also said extreme cases can even lead to death.

"I was exhausted and couldn't stand the mental struggle anymore," Miller said.

Miller said the disorder eventually took over her life and became too much work. That's when she finally sought help.

"It was really like my whole life opened up. I fell in love, I got married," Miller said.

And chronicled her struggle in a book.

Losonczy said she is still struggling with her obsession to eat right.

Regimented eating patterns may start off subtly but can quickly escalate into a dangerous food obsession that lead to severe weight loss and other medical complications.

If you or someone you know feel you suffer from disordered eating, there is help available. To find that help and the 10 warning signs of orthorexia by clicking here.

http://wcbstv.com/topstories/orthorexia.eating.disorder.2.1304706.html

Calling for advertising rules to be changed to restrict the use of airbrushed images, the group of 44 academics doctors and psychologists say that the pictures promote unrealistic expectations of perfection, encouraging eating disorders and self-harm.

The paper has been submitted to the Advertising Standards Agency with a call for all airbrushed adverts to carry a notice making clear the images have been artificially enhanced.

It has been written by Dr Helga Dittmar of the University of Sussex, Dr Emma Halliwell of the University of the West of England and backed by 42 more academics.

The experts write: “Media images that depict ultra-thin, digitally altered women models are linked to body dissatisfaction and unhealthy eating in girls and women.”

Among the problems that can arise include “unhealthy dieting regimes and problematic eating behaviours (starving, bingeing, and purging), clinical eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia), cosmetic surgery and extreme exercising.”

The paper has been organised by the Liberal Democrats as part of their campaign against the use of airbrushed or retouched images in advertisements.

The Lib Dem campaign is adding to the pressure on the fashion and advertising industries over airbrushing.

Several “extreme” examples of airbrushing have recently been the subject of internet campaigns of criticism. Last month a photograph of a Ralph Lauren model looking so thin that her waist and hips were smaller than her head was targeted by online campaigners.

The paper says that boys can also be harmed by altered images. Pictures that exaggerate models’ muscle development and definition can encourage “unhealthy muscle-enhancing behaviours” such as taking steroids or other supplements).

Boys and men can also suffer depression, anxiety, sexual dissatisfaction, and low self-esteem, the experts say.

Jo Swinson, the Lib Dem MP behind the campaign, has persuaded almost 1,000 people to complain to the ASA about airbrushing.

The agency has told her that the current rules on adverts do not allow the ASA to insist that every ad that has been retouched includes a disclaimer about that alternation.

However, the ASA has indicated that it could change those rules if it sees evidence that airbrushing is clearly harmful.

Miss Swinson said she hoped the research paper would persuade the watchdog to change the rules.

She said: “This paper spells out the real damage irresponsible airbrushing is doing to young women’s physical and mental health.

“Airbrushing means that women and young girls are being bombarded with images of people with perfect skin, perfect hair and perfect figures which are impossible to live up to.”

The Lib Dems have also called for a ban on the airbrushing of people in advertising aimed at under 16s.

The party also wants cosmetic surgery advertisements and information leaflets to carry success rates.

Schools would be encouraged to offer exercise options more likely to appeal to teenage girls, such as dance, yoga and aerobics, and headteachers asked to ensure changing rooms are clean and well equipped, to stop high drop out rates from PE classes.

And gyms should offer discounted membership to children, the Lib Dems say.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/liberaldemocrats/6516537/Airbrushed-images-harming-girls-and-boys-experts-say.html