Anorexia Nervosa

Introduction

Anorexia nervosa is a relentless pursuit of excessive thinness that interferes with the fulfillment of responsibilities to the self and to others because it produces an intense and irrational fear of becoming fat, an obsession with food and weight control, and a life threatening weight loss. Eventually, a series of starvation-induced physical and psychological changes threatens control over eating and motivates more conscientious efforts to reduce. The result is a truly vicious circle of weight loss, hunger, and fear that will become a deadly noose if the process is not acknowledged and reversed.

Discussion

An Eating Disorder is an urge to over eat or avoid eating that damages the person's physical and mental health. Eating disorders affect all the aspects of a person's life. It is usually associated with depression and anxiety. Eating disordered are usually among teenage girls and women, men also can get eating disordered but by a smaller range. Eating disorders affect vital organs and might cause fatal diseases and eventually death (Valette, pp 34-178).

Eating Disorders

There are three chief types of eating disorders, they are: Anorexia Nervosa, Binge Eating Disorder (or Compulsive Overeating), and the third is Bulimia Nervosa (Le Grange, pp. 237-51).

Binge Eating Disorder (BED): an eating disorder characterized by continuous binge overeating without counter measures to control or cancel the effects of over eating.

Bulimia Nervosa: is an eating disorder characterized by episodes of overeating, of high calorie food trailed by vomiting, excessive exercising and fasting as a way of punishing one's self. Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa are affecting an estimate of 5-7% of females in the United States during their life time.

Anorexia Nervosa: commonly called anorexia is a psychiatric diagnosis eating disorder, characterized by body distortion and low body weight, usually less than 15% of the normal body weight.

Anorexic people control their bodies by constant vomiting after eating, excessive exercises, diet pills and drugs and voluntary starvation. Anorexia Nervosa is a complex diagnostic that has neurobiological, psychological, and sociological components. Despite being thin, anorexic people always see a fat person when they look into the mirror. They are never too thin. The problem is that they don't see the physical and emotional damage that anorexia causes to their bodies, so they continue on purging, excessive exercising and dieting. The truth that they don't know is that anorexia is a deadly eating disorder (Gordon, pp. 137-43).

Anorexia Types

There are two types of anorexia:

Restricting Type

Weight loss is achieved by limiting calories. Restrictive anorexic control calories with excessive exercising, drastic dieting and fasting.

Purging Type

Purging anorexics get rid of weight and calories by purging, vomiting or using laxatives and diuretics.

Anorexia Nervosa Key Features

Anorexia is most common between women and adolescent girls between the ages of 13 and 20 years. But people of all ages, including men and children, can suffer from anorexia. The key features of anorexia nervosa are (Eysenck & Flanagan, pp 34-189):

The refuse to maintain minimum body weight

The fear of getting overweight despite being underweight

Vague view of one's body or ...