Types Of Eating Disorders

Eating disorders are taking its toll, not only to adults but to youngsters as well. The National Institute of Mental Health cited in their reports that about 5 to 10 million girls and women and 1 million boys and men suffer from eating disorders. Aside from these alarming numbers, there are still many unreported cases.

Most common reasons and cases of eating disorders would be because of the increasing social pressure to achieve a thinner body shape and appearance. This can be associated with the changing standards of beauty as described and portrayed by media and popular culture. Subconsciously, everybody is creating an image that being thin is being beautiful.

There are different types of eating disorders. The three main types of eating disorders are:

• Anorexia- this is commonly described as “refusal to eat normally.” In comes from a Greek word which means “lack of appetite.” Most anorexics are described as individuals who fear of gaining weight. The person affected with this kind of disorder rarely eats which is why extreme weight loss happens. Aside from drastic weight loss, the individual also experienced lack of energy for any physical activity, hair, skin and nail problems. Anorexics also suffer from very low self-esteem and most of the times have depression.
• Bulimia – is commonly described of incidents of overeating or binge eating and then would induce themselves into vomiting, excessive exercise, over-se or misuse of diet pills or fasting. Bulimic individuals do not have to be underweight like anorexics but they still feel unsatisfied with their body. Just like anorexics they would also have low self-esteem. Long sufferers of bulimia tend to suffer gastrointestinal system problems, and also problems in other parts of the body, mouth, teeth and kidneys.
• Binge eating – this disorder is often characterized to be compulsive and excessive overeating. Unlike bulimics, binge eaters do not do anything to treat or counteract their overeating tendencies. Most binge eaters would use food to distract them from uncomfortable moments and problems in life. Food is often used to remove stress or deal with any painful feelings.

These three eating disorders are the main eating disorders. However there are other eating disorders that can be congenital conditions or associated to mental conditions. For example pica, another compulsive eating disorder, is about eating non-food items or foods with no nutrition at all. Pica sufferers would eat items like chalk, plaster, baking soda, paint chips, glue, starch, ice, coffee grounds and eve cigarette ashes. Sometimes, this disorder can be associated to mental deficiencies and developmental delays.

There is also a congenital eating disorder or condition, the Prader-Willi Syndrome. This is mainly due to abnormality in genes. This condition can be described as insatiable appetite which can be often associated to behavioural and mental problems. Prader-Willi Sydrome sufferes would also have motor development problems, abnormal growth, speech impairments, dental problems, obesity and diabetes type II.

Understanding eating disorders is important to know how to address these issues. Increasing number or adults, also teens, are suffering from eating disorders. Increasing our awareness would help us deal with this fast becoming social concern.

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Your Teen And Eating Disorders

Eating disorders are not just the problems of the adults, unfortunately, the number of youth affected with different types of eating disorders are already increasing. About 15 percent of young women population is suffering with different kinds of dietary conditions like anorexia, bulimia or binge eating.

There are survey conducted showing that 40 percent of 1st, 2nd and ord grade girls are already wishing that they are thinner. While 80 percent of 10 year old girls are already worried of becoming fat in the future. Most of 6th grade girls are already concerned with their weight. Most of eating disorders affect women than men.

Adolescence is a very difficult stage. Teens would be in a period where they would constantly discover their identities. It would be stressful, confusing and frightening time. Some teens would find the transition easy while some teens would find handling pressures very difficult.

When teens get complimented on how they look, they would feel extremely satisfied and some could go to extreme measures just to retain those look. Mass media is another major influence on how teens view themselves. Media has major influences on how women is perceived to be beautiful when they are thin. Actresses that are very pretty and thin, as they see in television shows, are the role models.

Aside from mass media, family could also have a significant effect on how teens view themselves. Individuals, teens and adults, are likely to suffer from eating disorders if they dealt with a traumatic experience in their past life. Traumatic experience could be divorce, death, abuse over appearance or diet. Parents commenting too much on their looks, suppression of problems and feelings, and a restricting their child’s diet could also lead to eating disorders.

Pop culture and the environment has huge effects on how teens view themselves and their body. Therefore, the school should play a major role in helping children and teens deal with such a difficult age. There could be information dissemination, there is a need to educate students about eating disorders and its consequences.

Schools should also have counsellors that could identify the signs and symptoms of eating disorders. Help should be readily available if there are students that showed signs of eating disorders and similar dietary conditions. It is important to deal with the condition early on, before it could progress into something that can be dangerous.

What you should fear about eating disorders are the long term effects that it could bring to the individual. Long term health effects could be kidney failure and heart problems. It could also lead to deeper psychological issues. Teenagers are in a very confusing situation, they would need to feel good about themselves and at the same time accept the real truth about their body and their life. They would need all the support that they could get. Friends, relatives and family are the one that could primarily provide the support needed.

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Causes of Eating Disorders

Fashion and culture perpetuate the concept of thinness as beauty but causes of "eating disorders are much more than the fallout of fashion opportunism," says Trisha Gura, Ph.D., author of the book Lying in Weight. Experts say that one of the factors that lead to eating disorders is the intention to assert power in time of helplessness or powerlessness. Eating disorder can be a voice against insufferable struggle like oppressive authority or a "lifeboat in a storm of transition."

There are also cases when having eating disorder is biological - a matter of genes craving for thinness. Recent research in the field of genetics reveals that genetic tendencies contribute to eating disorders. However, this does not mean that environmental factors (fashion and culture) cannot anymore be blamed as reason for a person to develop eating disorder. Genetic predisposition is the unloaded gun and environmental and cultural are the factors that load the gun and pull the trigger. Genetic trait may have always been around but it takes environmental encouragement to activate the disorder.

Researchers are also looking on certain brain chemistry that affects the urge the person to binge, purge, starve and do compulsive exercises. Carolyn Costin, in her book The Eating Disorder Sourcebook mentions that "the neurotransmitter serotonin (a mood-and-appetite-regulating chemical in the brain) is reduced in anorexia nervosa [while] reduced serotonin activity persists even after recovery. Symptoms improve in approximately 50 percent of bulimia nervosa cases through the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft.

Eating disorder usually happens in adolescent years. Teens are the most susceptible to having weight problems as they undergo rapid physical and emotional changes in their lives. Trisha Gura cited a typical pattern for development of eating disorders:

"Stress mounts as new issues come up. The old ways, the ways of a child, cannot solve the new problem. A girl takes the problems out on her body. She reduces the problem to something she can manage - dieting. And for most girls this is where the cycle stops."

Professor Christopher G. Fairburn, explains the same pattern in his book Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Eating Disorders:

"A woman hates herself; her low self-esteem causes extreme concern about her shape and weight; this in turn, prompts strict dieting. With anorexia it stops here. With binge eating disorder, the strict dieting leads to binge eating; with bulimia, the binge eating leads to such guilt that it triggers the urge to vomit or purge in some other way."

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Are You Suffering From An Eating disorder?

The term eating disorder used to be closely associated with the fashion industry. In the early nineties, pencil-thin models began appearing in the major fashion shows around the world and on billboards and magazine covers. What seems to be just a harmless trend soon became a public concern. It wasn’t only the appearance of the models per se but the effect of these glamorous advertisements featuring emaciated cover girls that got the public going.

The increasing number of people with eating disorder has been largely blamed on the media. Whatever the case maybe, eating disorder is not as simple as young girls and women aiming to have an impossibly perfectly thin body. Each sufferer, of course, is a different case.

One of the most popular eating disorder is anorexia nervosa. A person suffering from anorexia deliberately skip meals to lose weight or to avoid adding on weight. In some serious cases, the person might even desist from taking in solid foods and subsist only on fluids in order to feel full. Anorexia sufferers have often told that they feel a certain amount of pride in being able to reject what is naturally needed by the body. It is as if by shunning food they are able to control a part of their lives, which, for them is an achievement in itself.

Another form of eating disorder is bulimia nervosa. The difference with this eating disorder is that the person may take in food or even indulge in binging but purges them eventually by induced vomiting. These two eating disorders are closely related to body dimorphic disorder, a disease wherein the person is perpetually dissatisfied with his body image, resulting in most cases, extreme dieting or excessive exercising.

But eating disorders are not just about resisting food. Those who are emotional eaters are also most likely to have an eating disorder as well. In this case, the person uses food to give himself or herself comfort from whatever that’s bothering him or her emotionally or psychologically. This usually triggers food binging, which is the large in take of food for short amount of time. Those who suffer from this have described the feeling as stuffing a seemingly bottomless well. But food binging comes not without guilt, which is usually felt right after doing the deed.

There are also those who are simply addicted to food. They get an immense rush every time they eat and so they constantly crave for food. This particular eating disorder usually results to being overweight and other complications pertaining to obesity.

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Key Features of Eating Disorders

Eating disorders anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating had been studied comprehensively in the past 30 years. The following are key features of eating disorders according to DSM and ICD-10. (Source: Eating Disorders by Mario Maj, Katherine Halmi,Juan Jose Lopez-Ibor and Norman Sartorius).

Key features of DSM-IV anorexia nervosa:

1. Refuses to maintain weight in a normal range

2. Morbid fear of becoming fat

3. Denies the situation of low weight

4. Experiences amenorrhoea or absence of menstruation

Subtypes

1. Restricts dieting and exercising

2. Binge eating or purging

Key features of ICD-10 anorexia nervosa

1. Weight loss

2. Induced weight loss, a person avoids fattening foods

3. Fear of fatness and perception of becoming too fat

4. Endocrine disorder which involves hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis or amenorrhea.

5. No overeating episodes and no sense of of compulsion to eat

Key features of DSM-IV bulimia nervosa

1. Experiences recurrent episodes of binge eating

2. Repeatedly uses self-induced vomiting or laxatives, diuretics, enemas, fasting and excessive exercise to prevent weight gain. (Occurs an average of twice a week for 3 months)

3. Body shape and weight unduly self-evaluation

4. Symptoms of anorexia nervosa is not present

Subtypes

1. Purging or self-induced vomiting

2. Non-purging or fasting only or exercising to avoid calorie intake

Key features of ICD-10 bulimia nervosa

1. Recurrent episodes of overeating (an average of 2 times a week for 3 months)

2. Persistent preoccupation with eating and sense of compulsion or craving to eat

3. Counteraction of calorie intake by binge eating, starvation or use of drugs

4. Feeling too fat, with fear of fatness that usually lead to becoming underweight

Anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating are all clinically defined by the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM-IV. The DSM-IV classifies binge eating disorder as somewhat similar to bulimia nervosa but without the compensatory purging or other behaviors. A person with BED tends to be obese and has low self esteem. Binge eating may begin after few years of unsuccessful dieting.

Classifying patients into groups and subgroups are helpful for doctors to determine which treatment is best. Diagnoses help but have their limitations. Trisha Gura, Ph. D. says that "strict criteria can convey a false sense of who is well and who is not. There may be patients who are still in therapy but no longer fits in the disorder category. She may be better but inside still feels something wrong.

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