Changing attitudes, beliefs and feelings towards food in bulimic patients

Eating attitudes are defined as beliefs. thoughts, feelings and behaviors towards food. Bulimia nervosa (BN) is ail eating disorder, in which the eating, attitudes are Seriously disturbed. Studies that evaluated nutritional aspects of BN focus mainly oil food intake, dietary restriction and binge eating. while the follow-up Studies evaluate mainly clinical symptoms. The objective of this study was to evaluate eating attitudes of patients with BN. during and after cognitive-behavioral intervention. Thirty nine (39) BN female patients received cognitive behavioral treatment with a Multidisciplinary team and had eating attitudes assessed by a questionnaire developed for this research. Frequencies of the attitudes assessed were compared at baseline. after 12 weeks and 24 weeks of treatment. After treatment, patients had less distorted beliefs about food, less guilty after eating ""forbidden"" foods and they felt more tranquil while caring outside home. Other negative behaviors, as dietary restriction, the desire of not cat, being angry when feeling hungry and using the food to relive stress. persisted. Eating attitudes of patients with BN are hard to be changed in a short-term. More attention to this disease`s component and new approaches to treatment are needed in order to have a better recovery.

Phototransformation of hematoporphyrin in aqueous solution: Anomalous behavior at low oxygen concentration

The photoactivation of a photosensitizer is the initial step in photodynamic therapy (PDT) where photochemical reactions result in the production of reactive oxygen species and eventually cell death. In addition to oxidizing biomolecules, some of these photochemical reactions lead to photosensitizer degradation at a rate dependent on the oxygen concentration among other factors. We investigated photodegradation of Photogem A (R) (28 mu M), a hematoporphyrin derivative, at different oxygen concentrations (9.4 to 625.0 mu M) in aqueous solution. The degradation was monitored by fluorescence spectroscopy. The degradation rate (M/s) increases as the oxygen concentration increases when the molar ratio of oxygen to PhotogemA (R) is greater than 1. At lower oxygen concentrations (< 25 mu M) an inversion of this behavior was observed. The data do not fit a simple kinetic model of first-order dependence on oxygen concentration. This inversion of the degradation rate at low oxygen concentration has not previously been demonstrated and highlights the relationship between photosensitizer and oxygen concentrations in determining the photobleaching mechanism(s). The findings demonstrate that current models for photobleaching are insufficient to explain completely the effects at low oxygen concentration.