Expert: Joanne - 2/17/2009

Question
i was wondering if there are any specific vitamins that could help me in my struggle for freedom from anorexia nervosa. I have recently been recovering and at a healthy weight for about 4 months and i was reading about b-vitamins and how they could help with negative thoughts and such. I was just wondering if you would happen to know of any thing else that i could do so i do not end up going back down the road to being active in the eating disorder again. Thanks

Answer
Tayla

I've not heard of any specific vitamins that will prevent anorexia relapses.  All I can recommend is that you eat a well-balanced diet.  You should make sure that your diet contains foods from each of the food groups and make sure that you eat plenty fruit, veg and protein to make sure that your body can rebuild itself and replace all the vitamins and minerals that it is missing.  Folic acid and vitamin B12 are suggested to help with depression, but it is up to you whether you want to take these as supplements as you can actually get these from your diet.

Folic acid can be found in oatmeal, oranges, broccoli, wheatgerm, lentils, fortified breakfast cereals, just to name a few sources.  You can get Vit B12 from shellfish, wild salmon, yohgurt, cottage cheese, eggs and milk.  It is also recommended that you get omega-3 in your diet from oily fish, walnuts, fortified eggs, or even some of the new fortified breads.

Providing you are eating a wellbalanced diet, taking some form or exercise, but not over-exercising, you should have a good chance of keeping your body healthy.  A healthy body should also help create a healthy mind, however, in order to ensure this and make sure that you don't relapse, it is very important that you receive some sort of therapy or counselling to make sure that you deal with the issues that have led you to an eating disorder.  It is important that you deal with the emotions, thoughts and/or memories that have fed this eating disorder and that you learn new coping mechanisms.

Joanne