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Rumination in eating disorders: Literature review

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Abstract

Rumination is defined as regurgitation of partially digested food that is subsequently re-chewed and then swallowed or ejected by mouth. We report a case of rumination and a review of selected literature to emphasize: 1. Risk factors for rumination in eating disorders are unknown, 2. A history of rumination must be taken routinely because shame prevents patients from volunteering this history, 3. Rumination usually lessens with improvement of the eating disorder, but other methods including behavior modification, breathing techniques, and gum chewing have shown success in individual cases or small case series. There have been no controlled trials published of any treatment for rumination in eating disorders.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Eating Disorders Program, Department of Psychiatry, St. Paul’s Hospital, 1081 Burrard Street, Vancouver, BC, V6Z 1Y6, Canada

    C. L. Birmingham (Professor and Head)

  2. Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Canada

    T. Firoz (Medical Student)

Authors
  1. C. L. Birmingham
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  2. T. Firoz
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Correspondence to C. L. Birmingham.

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Birmingham, C.L., Firoz, T. Rumination in eating disorders: Literature review. Eat Weight Disord 11, e85–e89 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03327563

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03327563

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