Eating Disorders: Bulimia and Anorexia
Eating disorders occur when certain damaging patterns of eating take on a life of their own. Starvation diets, pills, juice drinks and other rapid weight-loss techniques are usually the starting point to eating disorders. Women and men have spent decades trying to obtain the perfect body image, which is generally contrived by society and the media. The ideal body image is what drives both men and women to extreme measures for fast results. Being thin is the main goal for these ailing people with eating disorders. Researchers are investigating how and why voluntary behaviors, such as eating smaller or larger amounts of food than usual, at some point move beyond control in some people and develop into an eating disorder. The main types of eating disorders are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa; the disorders have many features in common, though two distinct illnesses. Personality characteristics of people with the eating disorder anorexia nervosa often include depression, irritability, and withdrawal. They also have peculiar behaviors such as compulsive rituals, strange eating habits, and division of foods into "good/safe" and "bad/dangerous" categories. They may have a low tolerance for change and new situations; they ma
This is because those behaviors are not effective ways to loose fat or calories. Impulse control may be a problem for them; for example shoplifting, sexual adventurousness, alcohol and drug abuse, and other kinds of risk-taking behavior. Women with anorexia are 50 times more likely to commit suicide. Feeling unworthy, they have difficulty talking about their feelings, which may include anxiety, depression, self-doubt, and a deeply buried anger. This is about 12 times higher than the annual death rate due to all causes of death among females ages 15-24 in the general population. y fear growing up and acquire adult responsibilities with an adult lifestyle. Their self-evaluation of their body is never good enough. People with bulimia often perform the behaviors in secrecy, feeling disgusted and ashamed when they binge, yet they get a sense of relief once they purge. Often, this disorder is based on basic psychological conflicts like poor self-esteem, fear of fatness, and obsession with thinness, dependency, immaturity, and difficulty separating from their parents, perfectionism, or issues of control. Some of the first symptoms often include denial of the seriousness of the low body weight, and infrequent or absent menstrual periods (in females who have reached puberty. However, bulimics tend to put up a brave front; they are often depressed, lonely, ashamed, and empty inside. Anorexia varies among individuals; some fully recover after a single episode; some have unpredictable patterns of weight gain and relapse. If the disease is not stopped in its early stages, it may become a lifelong struggle and could possibly result in severe debilitation or possibly death. Because purging or other behaviors follow the binge-eating episodes, people with bulimia usually weigh within the normal range for their age and height.
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