Letters to the Editor
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Anorexia and twins
This recent topic of anorexia and twins has caused me a bit of cognitive dissonance. See, on Monday evening, the new season of the TV program "Intervention" started, and it was about a pair of identical twins, one with anorexia, one without. Then, I think it was on Tuesday that I saw the study results about the male/female twin anorexia "conclusion". It made me think - shouldn't BOTH of these women be anorexic? But they weren't - only one was. How to explain that?
Watching the rest of the program, it was very clear that the anorexic twin was more shy and less "noticeable" (the family even specifically said that sometimes you wouldn't even notice she was there!), and she herself admitted to being a perfectionist. With twins, there usually IS one dominant one and one submissive one. Maybe when the submissive one is the male rather than the female, that's when it happens - not based on hormones at all.
So, while biology may in fact play a part, I doubt it's hormones. My opinion is still that it's a great deal environmental, and tends to occur in "competitive" situations between a shy perfectionist and a "center of attention" type, coupled with maybe a predisposition to addictive behaviors. But I'm not a doctor and this is only my opinion.