Eating disorders are habits or patterns of eating that are out of balance and may involve major health and emotional problenms.
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Binge eating disorder
Binge and purge
Food and nutrition
What
Eating disorders are habits or patterns of eating that are out of balance and may involve major health and emotional problenms.
for searching the Internet and other reference sources
Binge eating disorder
Binge and purge
Food and nutrition
What Are Eating Disorders?
Eating disorders are not merely unhealthy eating habits; they involve patterns of eating too little or too much, and they may cause a variety of physical and emotional problems. Eating disorders usually develop during adolescence and usually affect girls, although boys can also be affected. Eating disorders include anorexia (an-o-REK-see-a), bulimia (bull-EE-me-a), binge eating disorder, and obesity (o-BEE-si-tee).
Anorexia is an eating disorder that involves fear of becoming or being fat, intensive dieting or exercise, and a distorted body image. People with anorexia see themselves as fat even though they may be dangerously underweight. They severely restrict their food intake and/or exercise to extremes in order to lose weight. Someone may be diagnosed with anorexia if she refuses to eat enough food to maintain a healthy weight, and has lost more than 15 to 20 percent of her healthy weight. For example, a girl with anorexia whose healthy weight is 125 pounds might weigh 105 pounds. She might eat as little as 500 calories a day (most healthy teenagers eat 2,000 or more calories a day).
Sometimes referred to as the "binge-purge" disorder, bulimia involves repeated episodes of binge eating (consuming large quantities of food while feeling little control over the behavior) followed by purging (trying to rid the body of the food by vomiting or by using laxatives or enemas). Some people with bulimia also exercise excessively. In bulimia, self-image is overly tied to body shape and weight, and people with this disorder are dissatisfied with these aspects of their body. However, unlike those with anorexia, people with bulimia usually stay at a fairly healthy weight.
Binge eating disorder
Binge eating disorder involves out-of-control overeating but lacks the purging that is seen with bulimia. Binge eaters often are obese or constantly dieting and they often feels guilty after a binge. Painful emotions or stress may trigger binges.
Obesity is an excess of body fat. People are considered overweight if extra body fat causes them to weigh 20 percent more than the healthy weight for their height and obese if they if they weigh more than 30 percent above what is healthy for their height.
Who Develops Eating Disorders?
Most teenagers are concerned about how they look. After all, their appearance is changing very quickly. Girls are developing breasts and their hips are becoming rounded and curvy. Boys' voices are deepening and body hair is increasing. Most teenagers have an ideal image in their minds about what they should look like, and images on television and in the movies reinforce the goal of thinness as perfection.
Many young people, particularly girls, go on diets to control their body weight. Dieting has been reported to start as early as elementary school. Dieting without guidance by a medical doctor can cause problems with growth and development for children and teens. Sometimes an earnest but misguided effort to control weight can evolve into an eating disorder.
Consider Diane, a 13-year-old seventh grader. Her diet began innocently enough. She thought she was 10 to 15 pounds overweight and switched her lunch from a sandwich and cookies to a salad. She lost a few pounds. She liked feeling thinner, got a lot of compliments, and pretty soon she reduced the salad at lunch to a carrot and a piece of cheese. Diane trimmed her dinner as well, telling her parents that she had eaten a big lunch and was not hungry. Before long, Diane had lost 20 pounds. But Diane was surprised that she did not feel happy; instead, she was obsessed with food and her weight (she still felt fat) and was embarrassed whenever anyone commented on her body. Diane continued dieting and also began to exercise two times a day to try to lose more weight.
Diane is not alone; experts say that more than five million American women and girls and one million men and boys suffer from eating disorders. About 1 in 100 girls between 12 and 18 years old has an eating disorder. As many as 1 in 10 college females has anorexia or bulimia. More than 1,000 young women die each year from the serious medical problems that develop because of eating disorders!
Young people who participate in sports that prize thinness are at particularly high risk of developing eating disorders. Female dancers, ice skaters, and gymnasts have a three times greater risk for developing an eating disorder than do girls not involved in such activities. Boys who participate in similar sports or in wrestling are also at higher risk. Girls who enter puberty early and girls who are overweight may also be more likely to develop eating disorders.
What Causes Eating Disorders?
There is no clear-cut, single cause for any 