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Chris and Andrew catch up after a couple of soul-satisfying weekends away in the desert, reconnecting with what’s important in life and considering the prospect of what will never be.
Next, our dear friend Caroline Treadway joins us to discuss her bold new film LIGHT, which tackles the subject of eating disorders in climbing through very honest and personal narratives, including her own.
After a heavy episode, we end on a lighter note with another edition of Whose PASSAAT! Is This Anyway?
Show Notes
- Watch LIGHT on YouTube.
- Follow Caroline Treadway and the LIGHT film on Instagram.
- The Hayden Fund
- Read “Climbing for the Likes: The Social Media Trap” on Evening Sends.
One response to “RunOut #56: Shining Light on Eating Disorders in Climbing”
Awesome interview guys! Was great to hear all yalls different perspectives. You asked how to distinguish eating disorder from discipline/performance… I think another thing that didn’t really come up in the conversation is the medical consequences of anorexia. There are loads, ranging from amenorrhea and osteoporosis (which in an otherwise “healthy” athlete who’s performing at a high level could result in pathologic fractures sustained during what would’ve been a benign fall in someone without osteoporosis) to severe electrolyte disturbances, arrhythmias and death at the extreme end of the spectrum (not to mention the psychological consequences that caroline brought up, which may actually be almost as damaging as anything else). That’s a big part of how I think about it: if you’re consistently engaging in behaviors that are detrimental to your health, potentially in permanent ways, in order to obtain athletic achievements… that seems like a bad idea. Particularly if you’re 15 and may not have a good sense of these long-term consequences.
And I think we’ve already kinda drawn a similar line in other competition sports where we don’t allow the use of performance-enhancing drugs. My guess is that the reason for this is twofold: use of performance-enhancing drugs is perceived as “cheating;” AND there are a bunch of adverse health effects associated w/ use of many of those drugs (eg hepatitis, blood clots, cardiomyopathy, etc). In other words, we’ve decided that athletes are not allowed to do something that’s harmful to their bodies (take drugs) in order to perform at a higher level in many competition sports, and we do regular drug testing to try to prevent it. So why do we allow competition climbers to lose extreme amounts of weight in order to perform better when we know those behaviors are likely harmful to those athletes’ health?