What are Eating Disorders?
In broad terms an eating disorder occurs when a person displays extreme eating patterns, such as binging/purging, severely restricting food intake, severely overeating and/or having feelings of extreme distress over weight and body image. Often times, excessive exercise is also present to "make up" for calories consumed, as well as purging (either by laxative use or vomiting). There are two major types of eating disorders that this website will address: anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.
Bulimia NervosaBulimia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by a cycle of overeating or "binging" followed by "purging." This purge can be in the form of self-induced vomiting, laxative use, fasting and/or obsessive and extreme amounts of exercise. A person suffering from bulimia nervosa is not usually of average weight, but to a person suffering from bulimia nervosa, they view themselves as "fat" or overweight and are intensely unhappy with their body shape and size. Oftentimes these binge/purge cycles are done in secret, because the victim has feelings of shame and disgust. These cycles can occur several times a week up to several times in one day.
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Anorexia NervosaAnorexia Nervosa is an eating disorder where the person refuses to eat and subsequently has severe weight loss (with lack of physiologic cause) and has a strong psychological component. There is a intense preoccupation with one's perception of body image and this is often significantly distorted. This disorder can be life-threatening secondary to the physical dangers that accompany it.5 There are 2 subgroups to this disorder: restricting subtype and the binge-purge subtype. The prior achieves his/her goal through fasting, dieting or intense exercise. The binge-purge subtype achieves its goal through use of laxatives, vomiting, and diuretics. 14
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The following YouTube clip discusses statistics revolving eating disorders and disturbing results from research studies.