Charlotte’s Helix were out and about with a team from KCL BioResource yesterday at the first ever conference hosted by Men Get Eating Disorders Too, a charity supporting men with eating disorders and their friends and families.  

We had a great day, and benefited from hearing and learning more about male and transgender experiences - with illness, with treatment, with recovery, and with peer support - and about the particular roadblocks that are suffered by all those affected - and we also endeavoured to brainstorm some ideas for solutions.

We heard from different parts of the UK working together with MGEDT - movingly from the Laurence Trust in Northern Ireland, raising awareness and finding ways to help a population with very particular difficulties as a result, in part, of the legacy of the conflicts there, and from the Scottish organisation MBEEDS about their work and vision. 

We heard from Fixers campaigner, Danny Bowman about his recovery from BDD, and we enjoyed a thought provoking, and engaging Keynote speech from Dr Russell Delderfield from Bradford University, amongst other professional and personal perspectives from many many more (the programme is still up to view on the MGEDT website). 

All in all a day of engagement, a variety of information and points of view to share, no shortage of courage in the room, a great lunch (always important!), and an opportunity to meet and talk with those with a particular interest in some under-represented groups in the more general discourse of eating disorders.  Many there seemed interested to find out more about the nuances of the research that we are engaged in with #AN25K and its global reach and breadth of vision.  This research is looking toward a future in which we will understand a great deal more about eating disorders - who may be at risk, how we can diagnose, and the possibilities to personalise treatment across the spectrum of all those who may be affected by them.

First things first - the photo!  No, it doesn't really belong to "us" (it belongs to Rosamund Upton), but given that eating disorders were given a good 20+ minutes discussion on the @BBCWomansHour programme on Monday this week that features it, we are borrowing it - because it is such a refreshing change from the usual photo library suspects that accompany features on eating disorders!

Of those 20+ minutes, many of them were devoted to our very own @cbulik - lead scientist for the #AN25K challenge - talking genomes, sociocultural dissassocations, nature AND nurture, and negative energy balances - and we have lots to share.

You can listen to all the rest of the programme and all of its contributors on the Listen Again facility (or download the podcast and carry it with you), but to "nail down" Cindy's contribution, here are some of the main points that she made in a bullet pointed nutshell:

• Anorexia is known to run in families
• heritabilty for anorexia is somewhere between 50% and 60%, but environment is also a player
  
• anxious at baseline, the "underlying turbulent biology" of someone who suffers from anorexia, may be calmed by the negative energy balance that starvation puts in place
  
• anorexia is not just a female problem, nor is it just a teenage problem - men, women, boys, girls - all ages - we want you to come forward
  
• you may have had anorexia years ago and be recovered, or you may still be unwell, either way DNA does not change, you can contribute to this study
• the study is expected to find hundreds of genes, each having a small effect - in order to uncover these small effects, science needs very large sample numbers
• body image issues may feature somewhere in the whole, but it is time to redress the balance and pay more attention to the biological piece of the eating disorder puzzle
• early intervention with eating disorders is critical; genetic risk scores may be able to identify the vulnerable early on and make early intervention unequivocally easier to put in place
  
• there are currently no medications effective in the treatment of anorexia, because we don't have the understanding of the underlying biology to inform their development
  
• genetics may help us personalise treatments in the future.

Visit our DNA donations page here if you are eligible to donate (a diagnosis anytime in your lifetime, and the consent of a parent if you are under 16, is all that is needed).  If you are able to offer your DNA, or your support, to this research, we are very much looking forward to hearing from you.

Last, but not least, a very big Thank You! to the team at @BBCWomansHour for welcoming us in and giving us audience.

 Update 04/07/2015!

Weekend Woman's Hour featured us again - and we get a whole new picture there, of a person, not Prof Bulik, in a pink jacket - I wonder if she would like to support us too? - we do include all parts of the UK!

We feature at 26:20 minutes.