EATING DISORDERS

Eating Disorders



Eating Disorders

Introduction

Eating disorder refers to those psychological disorders that lead to serious anomalies in the behavior of food intake. The outward symptoms of Eating Disorder may be an alteration of feeding behavior (prolonged dieting, weight loss), but the origin of these disorders should be explained from a mental disorder in the shape of personal dissatisfaction, distorted ideas about weight or food and so on.

Discussion

In this section, we will discuss and evaluate various eating disorders and eating models.

Anorexia Nervosa

This eating disorder is more common among women, especially teenage women. The most common symptom that characterizes this disorder is the perception of altered body shape. The direct consequence of this distortion is the suspension of altered food intake, relative to weight and height of the body, causing serious deterioration in physical and cognitive development (Seder, D. L, 2010).

Bulimia Nervosa

They are characterized by frequent episodes of greed followed by compensatory harmful behaviors, such as induced vomiting, abuse of drugs, fasting or exercise, as in anorexia nervosa bulimia, also alters the perception of an individual.

Diabulimia

This new eating disorder affects those people with type 1 diabetes. One symptom of this disease is the weight loss, which is normally compensated by injections of insulin.

Evaluation of Eating Disorder Models

The beginnings of anorexia nervosa have situations, where the affected person steadfastly refuses to maintain body weight also demonstrates a fear of weight gain even when below normal weight. This will be accompanied by a distorted portrayal of their own body shape and, in the case of women; you start to miss three to five cycles of menstruation. This could also be termed as a behavioral model, where an individual takes a decision about the food intake depending upon perceptions and by observing the surrounding people. The beginnings of bulimia show high frequency of high intakes (or binge) food for prolonged periods (greater than 90 minutes), and one lacks the control over the decision to stop drinking. The next symptom is to perform a harmful action to counter the intake: self produced vomiting, use of medications, laxatives, uncontrolled consumption of liquefied petroleum jelly (Gendall KA, Bulik CM, Sullivan PF, 1999).

These are serious disorders that affect women more than men, and preferably in adolescent or pre-adult stage and interfere with normal functioning of social life, work and study. Most people with eating disorders begin their problem not at all to foresee the consequences. Many of these people ...