It's just a click away to worst conditions for anorexics and bulimics

There are websites doing well by guiding young people with potentially deadly eating disorders -- until these observations of a recent US study published in a journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics:

Visitors create communities around disorders such as shunning food or binging and purging, sometimes promoting the behavior as a lifestyle choice.
Chat rooms and other interactive forums often refer to anorexia as "Ana" and bulimia as "Mia." Some websites highlight extremely thin models as role models for "thinspiration."

According to a published study by the researchers at Stanford University's school of medicine and children's hospital in Silicon Valley, pro eating-disorder websites have gained popularity in recent years, despite efforts to shut them down. It is even found that websites dedicated to fighting the disorders were mined for ways to reinforce the sickness.

Them glamorizing anorexia and bulimia is utterly unacceptable. First, those are potentially deadly eating disorders. Second, they are doing it on the Internet, which is essentially an unmonitored media forum.

"It's just not possible to completely control the content of an interactive site," said Rebecka Peebles, an adolescent eating disorder specialist at Stanford and lead author of the study.

The study authors wrote, "it is critical that the impact of these websites be better understood" citing that between 50 and 90 percent of teens has access to the Internet at home on average of five hours per week.

Now this is alarming because half of surveyed 76 patients who visited pro-recovery sites said they learned tips on how to continue their disease, also new weight loss or purging techniques. The study found the inevitable: it took those patients longer to recover from their illnesses.

Anorexia is intentional and extreme weight loss, and bulimia is binge eating. Statistics show that anorexia and bulimia affect between one and two percent of the female population, mostly teen girls and young women in industrial societies. The World Health Organization also reported that eating disorders are on the rise among Asian and Middle Eastern teenagers.

In August Uruguayan model Luisel Ramos died of heart failure caused by anorexia during a fashion show in her home country. Two months later, 21 year-old Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston died from complications of anorexia.

The death of these two ingénues follows growing criticism of the use of underweight models in the fashion world. Even, Madrid Fashion Week forbid extremely, painfully thin models from participating in fashion shows.