STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A Swedish clinic says it has developed a highly effective treatment for anorexia and bulimia, eating disorders affecting many thousands of people, especially teenaged girls.

The treatment involves training patients in normal eating habits then making them sit down to rest in rooms with a temperature as high as 104 Fahrenheit.

"Treating anorexic patients with warm temperatures is an old method which was long forgotten in the medical world," Per Sodersten, a professor at the Anorexia Center at Stockholm's Huddinge Hospital, told Reuters on Thursday.

"Experiments have shown that animals (with eating disorders) have calmed down in warmer temperatures and have begun to eat more," Sodersten added.

Since the seven-year study started, 75% of the 168 treated patients have regained normal weight, with an average recovery time of 14 months. For 12% the condition improved and only 7% had a relapse.

The study was published earlier this week in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Both patients with anorexia nervosa, which involves self-starvation, and bulimia, binge-eating followed by self-induced vomiting, were successfully treated.

With the new method, patients are trained to eat bigger and bigger portions of food, helped by a special computer program.

Plates of food are put on scales linked to a computer and patients can track their eating speed on a graph, trying to match it with the speed of a normal eater.

Patients are then taken to rest in a warm room and are only allowed to move in a wheelchair in order to conserve energy.

"Anorexic patients have low body temperatures and often try to get warm by moving a lot. There is also a genetic explanation--when we eat too little our genes tell us to be more active in order to find food," Sodersten said.

Patients are also trained in resuming normal social activities such as working or going out to a cafe. Sufferers often shun human contact or are too weak to go out.

One percent of all girls in Western countries are estimated to develop anorexia between 14-19 years of age. Only 5% of all patients with eating disorders are male.

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