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Guide to Understanding Eating Disorders

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Eating disorder is one of the common conditions affecting most people. The following are the features of eating disorders, these include irregular eating habits and severe distress or concern about body weight or shape. It is worth noting that eating difficulties can be harmful since they may involve inadequate or excessive food intake. In this article, we will take you through the types of eating disorders. The following are the types of eating disorders that affect most people, they include Bulimia Nervosa, Anorexia Nervosa, and Binge Eating Disorder. In addition, the condition can develop at any stage in life but typically appear during the teen years or young adulthood. In order for a patient to be on the safe side, they need to seek medical attention before the condition escalates to harmful levels. Look up psychologist near me to get started.

The following are some of the features that people suffering from anorexia nervosa will have, these include having an obsessive fear of gaining weight, refusal to maintain a healthy body weight and an unrealistic perception of body image. Furthermore, the patients will try all they can to control the foods they take, and they tend to view themselves as overweight, even when they are clearly underweight. It is recommended for patients suffering from anorexia to seek medical attention since the condition has adverse health effects, such as brain damage, multi-organ failure, bone loss, heart difficulties, infertility, and death.

Bulimia nervosa is another eating disorder. The signs of bulimia nervosa include repeated binge eating followed by behaviors that compensate for the overeating, such as forced vomiting, excessive exercise, or extreme use of laxatives or diuretics. In addition, patients tend to fear weight gain and feel severely unhappy with their body size and shape. The effect of the condition is that it makes patients experience gastrointestinal problems, severe dehydration, and heart difficulties resulting from an electrolyte imbalance.

In addition, people can suffer from binge which an eating disorder that makes people lose control over their eating frequently. Unlike other eating disorder, this type of condition makes people have the urge of eating. People struggling with binge may also experience effects such as intense feelings of guilt, distress, and embarrassment related to their binge-eating.

Now that you know the different types of eating disorders, it is vital to go through the causes of eating disorders. Eating disorders are caused by a number of factors. Since there are many factors that cause eating disorders, the effects can be categorized into the following groups including biological, psychological, and/or environmental. The biological causes of eating disorders include nutritional deficiencies, irregular hormone functions, and genetics.

A number of people suffer from eating disorders which are brought by psychological factors such as poor self-esteem and negative body image. Some of the environmental factors of eating disorders include family and childhood traumas, careers that promote being thin and weight loss, aesthetically oriented sports, among others.

For more information, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_disorder.

 

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