ARFID is greatly restricted eating of foods that starts in youth or adolescence.

LORETA treats ARFID by desensitizing your brain to the foods you fear. With LORETA neurofeedback, you’ll be able to see your brain react to the food and learn how to reduce your reaction by controlling your fear response before, during, and after eating. As you desensitize, your brain’s response to these foods will be reduced.

Cause:

The aversion to the oral ingestion of certain foods, flavours, textures or foods.

Treatment:

Desensitization to the foods you fear is accomplished by reducing the fear response before, during, and following ingestion. As LORETA neurofeedback shows your brain reacting to the thought of ingesting the food, you can learn to reduce that response. To speed and improve recovery, I treat mood, OCD, and other concurrent disorders at the same time. If you’re prepared to tackle your problem foods from the first sessions, ARFID can be treated in 10 sessions.

Specifics:

Foods cause nausea and vomiting. This is at the “severe end” of what used to be called “a picky eater.” It may result in failure to grow in height and gain weight – but interestingly older teenagers may present with mild obesity. Many of the patients I see have had the disorder for 10 to 20 years and are seeking treatment so they can progress socially in life. It’s hard to be social when you “can’t eat anything.”

Preparation:

Please read the section on “how to prepare for your session”. Your hair must be clean and dry. You must remove everything you can from your head and neck and preferably clothes and other parts of your body.

Location: Dr. Birmingham provides ARFID Treatment at his Vancouver, BC clinic

For more information or to make an appointment