HEALTH - EATING DISORDERS
Eating disorders are a group of serious conditions in which you're so preoccupied with food and weight that you can often focus on little else. The main types of eating disorders are anorexia nervous, bulimia nervous and binge-eating disorder. Eating disorders can cause serious physical problems, and at their most severe can even be life-threatening. Most people with eating disorders are females, but males can also have eating disorders. An exception is binge-eating disorder, which appears to affect almost as many males as females. Treatments for eating disorders usually involve psychotherapy, nutrition education, family counseling, medications and hospitalization.
Biology. There may be genes that make certain people more vulnerable to developing eating disorders. People with first-degree relatives — siblings or parents with an eating disorder may be more likely to develop an eating disorder too, suggesting a possible genetic link. In addition, there's some evidence that serotonin, a naturally occurring brain chemical, may influence eating behaviors.
Psychological and emotional health. People with eating disorders may have psychological and emotional problems that contribute to the disorder. They may have low self-esteem, perfectionism, impulsive behavior, anger management difficulties, family conflicts and troubled relationships.
Society. The modern Western cultural environment often cultivates and reinforces a desire for thinness. Success and worth are often equated with being thin in popular culture. Peer pressure and what people see in the media may fuel this desire to be thin, particularly among young girls.
Treatment
Centers for eating disorder treatment are located all around the country and can offer help and healing for those suffering from anorexia, bulimia and compulsive overeating. If left untreated or the patient is unresponsive to therapy, these food addictions can be fatal. So these centers for eating disorder treatment are often in a life and death fight for their patients and their specialized treatment and their staffs have a unique perspective on the underlying causes of these many-headed disorders. While these three major disorders or diseases can affect a wide spectrum of ages and ethnicity, and while the sufferer of anorexia will physically appear wildly different from those who have a compulsive eating disorder, the causes are often very much the same.
The heart of the treatment for all these patients is group therapy, personal counseling, education and in some cases, medical intervention. Anorexic patients are usually teens and college students, typically female although there are a small percentage of males who are also afflicted with the illness. The patient is usually quite concerned about body image and has transferred that concern into an obsessive fear of gaining weight. The fear turns the patient into someone who is slowly starving to death through purging, non-eating and excessive exercise. An anorexic patient is usually at fifteen percent below normal body weight and cannot perceive the often skeletal appearance as being abnormal. www.christianet.com/anorexia
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