Middle East Eating Disorders Association Podcast

In this episode, MEEDA's VP Carine El Khazen receives Ricardo Karam. Mr Karam is a talk-show host, public speaker, writer and advocate of promoting Arab achievement and social causes.  

In 2010, Mr Karam decided to take storytelling to the next level and use it as a means of creating impact. He created TAKREEM Foundation, which aims to honor Arab accomplishments and bring Arab achievers to the forefront of the global stage.

With Carine, Mr Karam discusses about:
- Changing the perception of Arabs worldwide and giving hope to young Arabs through various initiatives and excellent storytelling
- The importance of using our voices and our platforms to do good
- The stigma of mental health in the Middle East & why sharing our struggles is collective therapy
- The role of media in creating more mental health awareness 
- What we need to support ED patients in the Middle East
- The importance of community and continuous learning in wellbeing

Find Ricardo Karam on Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin via https://ricardokaram.com/

Please reach out with your questions, suggestions and feedback via [email protected]

For your free 15 mins assessment, please visit www.meeda.me 

In this episode, MEEDA discusses women's mental health with Nadia Al Sayed. 

Nadia Al-Sayed is a British-Kuwaiti-Palestinian anthropologist and cultural consultant. Born and raised in North London, she spent her teenage years in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. She currently lives between London and Kuwait. Nadia recently founded ‘Daloo3a series’, a platform to discuss issues and affairs that affect women of the SWANA region, their diasporas and beyond, and raise the literacy women have on their bodies, mental health and more. 

Together, they discuss 3aib/shame, body image, body dysmorphia, Toxic beliefs about beauty and health and the pressure to be body positive.

To find out more about Daloo3a, please follow @daloo3aseries on Instagram

Please reach out with your questions, suggestions and feedback via [email protected]

For your free 15 mins assessment, please visit www.meeda.me 

Today, 2nd June 2022, is World Eating Disorder Action Day!
The theme this year is "Caring for the carer"

On this occasion, the MEEDA podcast interviewed 3 carers about their experience supporting a loved one recovering from an Eating Disorder: Leila helped her sister and husband, Atul his daughter and Carrie her daughter.

They bravely share their intimate stories of diagnosis, treatment and recovery, their challenges as carers, how they managed to stay strong and focused, what they would say to someone who just discovered their child/sibling/partner has an ED and what their wish would be to prevent Eating Disorders in the Middle East.

The whole MEEDA team extends their deep gratitude and recovery wishes to Leila, Atul and Carrie, but also thinks, today more than ever, about all the people suffering from an Eating Disorder and those around them helping them through this ordeal.

Please share, repost, talk about Eating Disorders, today even more than usual, so we can break the stigma and get more people properly diagnosed and treated. For more on awareness and pledges this World Eating Disorder Action Day, please visit: http://www.worldeatingdisordersday.org/

Please reach out with your questions, suggestions and feedback via [email protected]

For your free 15 mins assessment, please visit www.meeda.me

In this episode, MEEDA interviews Consultant Dermatologist and author Dr Natalia Spierings about:
- Skin health and disordered eating / eating disorders
- Online imagery and how it impacts our vision of beauty
- Cosmetic surgery
- Who to trust when it comes to skin health online
- The forces at play in our feeds and what creates our beauty insecurities

You can find Dr Natalia Spierings via @drnataliaspierings on Instagram
or via www.drnataliaspierings.com: https://drnataliaspierings.com/

Dr Spierings book, Skintelligent, is available for pre-order now and out on July 7th.

Please reach out with your questions, suggestions and feedback via [email protected]

For your free 15 mins assessment, please visit www.meeda.me

In this episode, MEEDA VP Carine El Khazen meets Dr Jason Lavender. 

Dr. Jason Lavender, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) and the Deputy Director of Research for the Military Cardiovascular Outcomes Research (MiCOR) Program with the Metis Foundation. Dr. Lavender’s research broadly focuses on elucidating risk/maintenance factors for eating and weight disorders, particularly emotion and emotion dysregulation, personality and temperament, and neurocognitive functioning. His research additionally focuses on unique factors related to the manifestation and assessment of eating disorder symptoms among boys and men, including muscularity-oriented disordered eating.

Together, Carine and Dr Lavender discuss: 

- Dr Lavender's work in the field to advance ED detection in men and change typical female-oriented evaluation tools
- Prevalence of muscularity-oriented nature ED within the male US population
- American College-age men's concerns and issues around their bodies
- How to draw a line between a balanced relationship with fitness/food/body & concerning behaviours that might stay under the radar if these appear as “bio-hacking” or “gaining strength/performance”
- Understanding and defining bigorexia, also called reverse anorexia
- The problem with unrealistic male body ideals online and how they lead boys and men to muscularity-driven ED

Find Dr Jason Lavender's research via www.researchgate.net or on Twitter @drjasonlavender

Please reach out with your questions, suggestions and feedback via [email protected]

For your free 15 mins assessment, please visit www.meeda.me

In this episode, MEEDA volunteer and certified Eating Psychology Coach Florence Gillet interviews Dr Riccardo Dalle Grave, Director of the Department of Eating and Weight Disorders at Villa Garda Hospital (Lago Di Garda, Italy).

In collaboration with Professor Christopher Fairburn, Dr Dalle Grave developed an original inpatient treatment for eating disorders based entirely on enhanced cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT-E), an adaptation of CBT-E for adolescents with eating disorders, and the CBT-OB, an innovative treatment combining the behavioral treatment for obesity with strategies and procedures derived by the CBT-E for eating disorders.  

Over the past 20 years, he has published several papers in international peer-reviewed journals (137 included in PubMed), about 100 papers in Italian, 25 books in Italian, and written three books in US. In 1997 he founded the First Certificate of Professional Training in Eating Disorders and Obesity. This one-year course, that is now at the 19th cohort, trains medical doctors, psychologists, and dietitians in cognitive behaviour therapy for eating disorders and obesity. He provides expert supervision for clinical services in Europe, the USA, Australia, and the U.A.E.

Together, Florence and Dr Dalle Grave discuss about

1/ what is CBT-E and what makes CBT E the gold standard for ED treatments in adults?

2/ CBT-E : 

a)       who can benefit from it, 

b)      who is allowed to deliver it

c)       treatment modalities (how long, how often, etc)

3/ Differences between Family Based Therapy and CBT-E for adolescents

4/ the most crucial support parents can provide if they have an adolescent being treated with CBT-E

5/ Differences between the Focused and Broad version of CBT-E and who needs what

6/ Guided self-help for binge eating disorder, as a streamlined form of CBT-E 

7/ If someone doesn’t have access to CBT-E where they are, what could be a Plan B option for treatment

To know more about CBT-E for patients, professionals and lay people, please visit www.cbte.co: https://www.cbte.co/

Consider reading Dr Dalle Grave and Carine El Khazen's book:  Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Young people with Eating Disorders.

Or understand how to get trained in CBT-E via https://www.credo-oxford.com/#topic0

Please reach out with your questions, suggestions and feedback via [email protected]

For your free 15 mins assessment, please visit www.meeda.me

In this episode, MEEDA VP Carine El Khazen chats about the role of parents in eating disorders prevention and treatment with Journalist, radio host and “Honest motherhood” blogger  Helen Farmer.

Together they discuss the impact of Covid on children and on parenting, how to spot and diagnose eating disorder behaviours in children and teens, the dangers of dieting and social comparison, what parents can do to prevent eating disorders, how to talk to a child that exhibits red flags for an ED and what parents of children with an eating disorder can do to stay calm and support their children in recovery.

To find out more about these topics, consider buying Carine El Khazen's book, "Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for Eating Disorders in Young People: A Parents' Guide" available here https://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Behaviour-Therapy-Eating-Disorders/dp/0367775050

Follow Helen Farmer via Instagram @_helenfarmer_ or http://themothershipdxb.com/

Please reach out with your questions, suggestions and feedback via [email protected]

For your free 15 mins assessment, please visit www.meeda.me

In this episode, Eating Disorder expert Dietitian Hala Abu Taha chats to Mental Health Advocate Maha Khan, of @islamandeatingdisorders about navigating Ramadan with an Eating Disorder.

Together they evoke:
- Risks of fasting for ED patients
- How to mentally prepare for the challenges that lie ahead- and how to develop healthy behaviors and traditions that are worth keeping year round to help boost our health and happiness.
– Managing meal times, the trigger of the large meals and feelings of guilt around (not) eating, comparison, without relapsing
– Maintaining relationship – dealing with the feeling of no one understands, isolation, social pressure and stress of “holidays”
- How to spend Ramadan with people who simply don’t understand Eating Disorders?
- How to deal with family when they insist we fast

Find Maha's outstanding work via https://waragainsteatingdisorder.com/

Please reach out with your questions, suggestions and feedback via [email protected]

For your free 15 mins assessment, please visit www.meeda.me

In this episode, ED Registered Dietitian Carina Khoury Ghossoub meets Rouhana El Hage, Head of video content for ITP Media group

Together they talk about Rouhana's story with body dysmorphia and with disordered eating and overexercising, his journey into bariatric surgery and the risks associated with it, toxic masculinity and many more topics.

Follow Rouhana via Instagram @rouhana or Perfection 101 via https://youtu.be/bmvc9P1aegg
https://youtu.be/b3I-SqNydMI

Please reach out with your questions, suggestions and feedback via [email protected]

For your free 15 mins assessment, please visit www.meeda.me

In this episode, Specialist ED Dietitian Hala Abu Taha meets Egyptian born, London raised writer Alya Mooro.  Together, they discuss some of the cultural stereotypes Alya talks about in her book “The Greater Freedom: Life as a Middle Eastern woman outside of the stereotypes” and how these might affect women’s relationship with themselves and their bodies.

- Why representation is key to help with authentic living
- “The Arab contradictions that while women are warned against being in any way sexual from childhood, they are at the same time trained to be almost wholly preoccupied with their body, hair, eyelashes and clothes, sometimes even at the expense of developing their minds, personalities and other assets”.
- The “invisible jury”, the concept of 3aib and gossip specifically targeting women and their looks
- What is a better way than forbidding food, drink, sex
- Where to start on our way to the greater freedom

Find Alya's book, newsletter and podcast via www.alyamooro.com

Please reach out with your questions, suggestions and feedback via [email protected]

For your free 15 mins assessment, please visit www.meeda.me