Blog 5-Eating Disorders

          Eating Disorders have the misconception that is a lifestyle choice but it is in fact it is a mental health illness that can affect anyone and any gender or age. According to Mayoclinic, eating disorders are a serious and fatal illness related to persistent eating behavior that impacts your health, your emotions, and your ability to function in your life. These negative behaviors can have the individual focus too much on their body image, body weight, and amount of food eaten which can lead to damage to the heart, digestive system, bones, teeth, mouth, and other diseases.
The most common eating disorders according to National Institute of Mental Health (NIHM), are anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder (NIHM.com).

Symptoms of each eating disorder:
  • Anorexia nervosa is when an individual see themselves as overweight even though they are underweight. They tend to constantly weigh themselves, restrict amount of food or count calorie intake, excessively exercise, force themselves to vomit or use laxatives all to lose weight. According to NIHM, anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate of any mental disorder for link to people who die from complications from starvation or from suicide.
    • Extremely restricted eating or Extreme thinness (emaciation)
    • A relentless pursuit of thinness and unwillingness to maintain a normal or healthy weight
    • Intense fear of gaining weight
    • Distorted body image, a self-esteem that is heavily influenced by perceptions of body weight and shape, or a denial of the seriousness of low body weight
    • Other symptoms may develop over time, including: Thinning of the bones (osteopenia or osteoporosis), mild anemia and muscle wasting and weakness, brittle hair and nails, damage to the structure and function of the heart and Brain damage
  • Bulimia nervosa, according to NIHM, is a potential life-threatening eating disorder when the individual have episodes of binging and purging. Usually with these episodes of binging is consuming a high intake of food then vomit all is ate secretly. This disorder  tends to link to mental health by the feeling of guilt, shame, intense fear of gaining weight and force oneself to vomit or use other methods of getting rid of the food (use of laxatives or exercising). Most common the individual is either slightly underweight or obese or normal weight. 
    • Worry of weight and body shape
    • have chronically inflamed and sore throat
    • Swollen salivary glands in the neck and jaw area
    • Worn tooth enamel and increasingly sensitive and decaying teeth as a result of exposure to stomach acid
    • Acid reflux disorder and other gastrointestinal problems
    • Intestinal distress and irritation from laxative abuse
    • Severe dehydration from purging of fluids
    • Electrolyte imbalance (too low or too high levels of sodium, calcium, potassium, and other minerals) which can lead to stroke or heart attack
  •  Binge-eating, according to both NIHM and Mayoclinic, the individual struggles with no control over his or her eating with periods of binge-eating and is not followed by purging, exercising, or fasting. The difference is that the person is more often are overweight or obese and is the most common eating disorder in the U.S.
    • Eating unusually large amounts of food in a specific amount of time, such as a 2-hour period
    • Eating even when you're full or not hungry
    • Eating alone or in secret to avoid embarrassment
    • Feeling distressed, ashamed, or guilty about your eating
    • Frequently dieting, possibly without weight loss
  • Treatments and Therapies
Most treatments and therapies for eating disorders are various methods with individual, group or family psychotherapy, nutritional counseling, medications, and medical care with monitoring. The most important is psychotherapy and the individual to seek treatment since most people that have eating disorders are higher risk of suicide and medical complications. There is a complete recovery compare to other mental health disorders. 

According to National Eating Disorders site, the types of psychotherapies are provided with helps with reducing the eating disorder behaviors that have the most current evidence for effectiveness of the following:
  • Acceptance & commitment therapy (ACT)-changing the actions rather than the thoughts and feelings to live an authentic life approach.
  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Enhanced cognitive behavioral- short-term therapy focusing on the beliefs and values. This helps to reduce the modify distorted beliefs of weight and body image
  • Cognitive Remediation Therapy- approaches to develop the persons' ability to focus on more than one thing such as rigid thinking and reflection. 


Most of the population that is statistically have any type of these eating disorders are mainly women yet males are in that statistics as well. According to a study in 2007, 9,282 English speaking Americans were asked about variety of mental health conditions including eating disorders with the results of 0.9% of women and 0.3% of men had anorexia during their life
    (Keski-Rahkonen A, Hoek HW, Susser ES, Linna MS, Sihvola E, Raevuori A, …, and Rissanen A. (2007). Epidemiology and course of anorexia nervosa in the community. American Journal of Psychiatry, 164(8):1259-65. doi: 10.1176/appi. ajp.2007.06081388). 

     Males represent 25% of individuals with anorexia nervosa, and they are at a higher risk of dying, in part because they are often diagnosed later since many people assume males don’t have eating disorders
    (Mond, J.M., Mitchison, D., & Hay, P. (2014) “Prevalence and implications of eating disordered behavior in men” in Cohn, L., Lemberg, R. (2014) Current Findings on Males with Eating Disorders. Philadelphia, PA: Routledge).

     Most of the world assume that the eating disorders is not a serious illness nor is a mental health but there has been studies and facts that it is. Having an eating disorder is a serious and potentially life threatening mental illness. An individual that has an eating disorder experiences severe disturbances in their behavior and with themselves of body image and this link to all ages (mainly young teens) and all genders. Having awareness and educating to the youth of this can help reduce and reach out to the ones who may struggle through this and that there is a recovery to this as well.

     References:
    Eating Disorders. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/eating-disorders/index.shtml.
    Eating disorders. (2018, February 22). Retrieved from https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/eating-disorders/symptoms-causes/syc-20353603.
    Statistics & Research on Eating Disorders. (2019, April 24). Retrieved from https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/statistics-research-eating-disorders.



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