mrsamct
Joined: 07 Aug 2011
Posts: 208
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 Eating Disorders – A Serious Problem |
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poppen
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As mentioned earlier, almost 1% of the global adolescent population is currently suffering from eating disorders. The most common among them is anorexia nervosa. The typical symptoms of a person suffering from this are:
• When a person refuses to maintain normal body weight for age and height, consistently weighing 85% or less than normal for her height and weight.
• Menstrual problems occur in young girls, often menstruation fails to start normally. In women, menstrual periods stop, while in men levels of sex hormones fall.
• Psychologically, she/he is terrified of putting on even an ounce of fat and repeatedly denies that she is conspicuously underweight.
• In addition, depression, irritability, withdrawal, and peculiar behaviors such as compulsive rituals, strange eating habits, and division of foods into "good/safe" and "bad/dangerous" categories.
• Sociological skills like managing new situations and assuming responsibilities may also suffer or be completely non-existent.
The second most common eating disorder is bulimia nervosa – the diet-binge-purge disorder. The most common symptoms of this problem are:
• Believes self-worth requires being thin.
• The person eats like there’s no tomorrow, and then immediately feels guilty about this loss of self control.
• The next step is that she vomits, uses laxatives, exercises, or fasts to get rid of the calories.
• Shoplifting, promisciousity, alcohol or drug abuse may be present.
• Bulimics are extremely insecure people, even though they may look normal. In most cases they are ashamed of everything about themselves, anxious, depressed, and angry with their existence. Irresponsible social behavior and abnormal bouts of rage are commonly seen.
Then there are people with binge eating disorders who do not do anything about their eating binges, and as a result, become obese, depressed individuals getting sucked deeper and deeper into the vortex of depression about their physical demeanor. Depression leads to more binging and the problem generally gets out of hand about now. Sometimes they are genetically predisposed to obesity and so try to diet, then get cravings and binge, then blame themselves.
In addition to these general symptoms, young persons with eating disorders have other very typical symptoms too. They exhibit disgust for heavy foods, like red meats and creamy desserts, even if these were their favorites just a little while ago. Most of them develop a tilt towards vegetarianism, believing that this will help eliminate excess fat from their diet. They tend to choose primarily low fat items and avoid oils etc, (which form an essential part of the veggie diet too). Their obsession with the health attributes of what they consume is sometimes irritating for others in their proximity. There are some who WANT to be discovered as anorexic or bulimic and leave behind trails, stinking bathrooms, spots of vomit, empty health food cans…all pointing towards a conscious effort at being `disordered’ so to speak.
Such people also take to wearing baggy cloths to hide what they think are imperfect bodies, is constantly whining about how terrible he or she looks and will not believe anyone who contradicts this. Many exercise compulsively, sometimes with punishing schedules. They lose the perspective of their lives, often thinking in extremely illogical ways, cannot concentrate and almost lose the ability to think positively, and feel good about themselves or anyone else. Exacting standards for looks and behavior drive them more and more towards loneliness since such perfection cannot be easily found in the real world.
Most of them try to hide their true feelings, denying that anything is wrong till things get out of control, their extreme self hatred often leading them to insanity or at least deterioration of mental health. Anorexics tend to avoid even sexual relationships since they fear rejection, while bulimics would go for casual sex rather than be in a steady relationship.
The recovery for people with eating disorders is possible but with infinite patience, care and even then, it is extremely slow. It may take a person up to ten years to fully recover from this problem, even though they may feel that the solution lies in just "if I look god, things will be OK". This is a misguided attitude and requires careful diagnosis (since most sufferers refuse to see they are suffering), then help (but then, no shrink). The time is too long and most of them suffer relapses or just give up. About 80% of those who attempt recovery, do recover while the others…well, just stay so or slowly die.
At present, bulimia has affected about 4 percent of the college going population in the US alone, but the number may be much higher since most bulimics hide their condition or are simply not aware that it is dangerous. An interesting thing is that only about 10% of all bulimic and anorexic persons are male. This clearly points to the warped social trend...that to be good looking, women are prepared to sacrifice their health, while men couldn’t be bothered,…in fact, for males, big is better, beefy is best. Women have only themselves to blame for this skewed thinking, after all, nobody but they themselves needs to confirm to any trend.
In the US, eating disorders are rapidly taking on epidemic proportions. Studies suggest that almost 60% of all Americans are overweight and of these, of these almost a third are obese or borderline cases. A large number of these people have eating disorders to boot. In the teenage section of the population, almost 31% of the girls and 28 % of the boys are overweight with almost half this number in both cases, obese. The causes? Fast and junk foods with high fat and sugar content, overall, a pampered and sedentary lifestyle. Other studies place the figure of with eating disorder at about 2 million in US alone. If this is not alarming, then what is???
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mrsamct |
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