What Are Eating Disorders?
Eating disorders are identified as certain persistent eating behaviours that can negatively affect a person’s life in many ways. These disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge-eating directly impact a person’s health, their emotions, and their ability to function in their day-to-day lives.
With appropriate treatment, however, many individuals return to healthy eating habits and in some cases can reverse the damage done to their bodies as a result of eating disorders.
Who Develops Eating Disorders?
In most cases, teens and young adults are the most prone demographic to develop eating disorders, however, others in their adulthood can suffer from eating disorders also. Most individuals who suffer from eating disorders focus too much on their bodies: their weight, their shape, and the way they are seen by others.
What is troubling here is that eating disorders severely affect a person’s health through the inability to provide the body with essential nutrition critical for survival. In time, a person suffering from eating disorders can develop serious health complications including: heart problems, digestive system issues, low bone density, and problems associated with the mouth and teeth.
Symptoms Of Eating Disorders
Let us consider the symptoms of the three most common eating disorders: Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, and Binge-eating.
Anorexia Nervosa
Commonly referred to as anorexia, this eating disorder is a serious and potentially life- threatening condition. Common characteristics of those suffering from anorexia include: abnormally low body weight, fear of gaining weight, and an unhealthy perception of their bodies in general. People with anorexia go to the extremes in order to control their body weight and shape, and this very often interferes with their everyday lives.
People with anorexia severely restrict their caloric intake in order to lose weight, or they use other unhealthy methods for weight loss, such as laxatives, diet aids, or excessive exercise. If left untreated, anorexia can weaken the body through starvation, ultimately resulting in one’s death.
Bulimia Nervosa
People with bulimia often experience episodes of binging and then purging the food that they have just consumed. This disorder can be potentially life-threatening as a person who is bulimic deprives their bodies of proper nutrition by stopping the process of digestion through purging. Put another way, our bodies need time to absorb the food that we have ingested. Breaking this cycle negatively affects our nutrition which in turn severely weakens our bodies and greatly endangers our health.
People suffering from bulimia often feel intense shame, guilt, and an intense fear of gaining weight after a meal. It is precisely because of this behaviour that they turn to unhealthy methods for weight loss such as: vomiting, diet aids, laxatives, or excessive and strenuous exercise.
Binge-Eating
Binge-eating refers to eating too much food at any one time and feeling a lack of control over one’s food intake. Oftentimes, binge-eaters eat more than they have to, getting to the point where they gorge themselves even after they are full.
Clearly, binge-eating can bring about many health problems related to overeating such as: obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes. Also, binge-eaters suffer shame, disgust, and guilt for their behaviour, which in turn can negatively affect the way they feel about themselves. Many binge-eaters eat alone to hide their embarrassment and shame, and this can further their mental health problems.
If you or a loved one suffers from the above mentioned symptoms related to eating disorders, please contact us today so that we can help you get back to your wellbeing again.
