Definition Of An Eating Disorder

Eating disorders involves how a person eats, such as refusing to eat enough food, eating too much food, purging after meals, or a combination of these. Eating disorders often include out-of-control behaviors and thoughts that strongly reinforce unhealthy eating patterns. Also, women and men with eating disorders frequently experience indistinct views of their bodies. People who have anorexia feel an irresistible urge to lose weight and avoid gaining weight. A person with anorexia is unlikely to have an accurate view of his or her true body shape. Regardless of how much weight they may lose or how thin they may become, those with anorexia usually continue to believe that they have more weight to lose. Anorexia can include binging and purging behavior.

Because people can become visibly frail and thin, anorexia is perhaps the most dramatic of eating disorders. The eating disorder becomes obvious to others. Also, anorexia in celebrities is reported widely in media outlets. Anorexia has the highest death rate of any known psychological disorder roughly 10 percent.

Bulimia Nervosa: This eating disorder is somewhat easier to hide, but it is still a damaging disorder. People with bulimia binge eat and may have other inappropriate behaviors to avoid weight gain, such as purging food after eating. Because the symptoms of bulimia nervosa are not as obvious, people with bulimia can and do hide their symptoms from others.

Eating Disorder not otherwise specified is an eating pattern that does not meet all the criteria for anorexia or bulimia. This analysis is defined very loosely and covers many combinations of symptoms. For example: Binging and removal that occurs less frequently than is required to diagnose bulimia nervosa or chewing large amounts of food and spitting them out without swallowing or even being of normal weight but having all other necessary symptoms of anorexia.

Eating disorders and co-accruing psychological disorders are common and in most cases must be treated at the same time. Whenever there is a life threatening behavior it must be addressed without delay and then the secondary issues can be explored. When someone suffers with an eating disorder over a long period of time the primary disorder may be depression of anxiety disorder. The eating disorder becomes an instrument for coping with the primary psychological disorder. People can suffer with various mental health disorders and also struggle with disordered eating. Eating disorders are a now and again fatal disease and are not always coupled with a co-accruing disorder; the diagnosis is all important.

An eating disorder sufferer may also be addicted to drugs or alcohol, shopping, sex or anything that helps them cope with a life situation that they believe is out of control. The more obsessive the behavior with the addiction becomes the more they try to control with their eating disorder. This presents a cycle that often spirals out of control until a life altering event occurs and someone intervenes. Just because the sufferer is faced with a major consequence or confronted with their behavior does not mean they will change.

• John Palsson
• 13/04/2009, 8:59 PM
• 0 Comments