The case for warming as an adjunctive treatment for AN patients is based on strong experimental evidence gathered from research on animals with Activity-Based Anorexia (ABA). We posit that the beneficial effect of heat results, at least in part, from heat blocking the vicious cycle that hyperactivity plays on AN. Hyperactivity decreases caloric intake by interfering with feeding and increases energy expenditure through excess motor activity which in turn increases emaciation that further strengthens anorexic thinking.  

Disparate treatments, placebos, and treatments as usual have similar efficacy for anorexia nervosa. A parsimonious dissection of the this issue with Occam’s razor will necessarily challenge the assumptions on which the diagnosis of anorexia nervosa is based. One such assumption is the role of body-image disturbance, which became a key diagnostic symptom of anorexia nervosa in the literature almost five decades ago, long before any empirical evidence was gathered about this symptom.