Eating disorders – group 1 – 10B
What is an eating disorder?
Eating disorders are serious conditions related to eating behaviors that negatively impact
health, emotions and ability to function in important areas of life. They might start with an
obessesion with food, body weight, or body shape. In severe cases,eating disorders can cause
serious health consequences and may even result in death if left untreated in fact, eating
disorders are among the deadliest mental illnesses (they can affect people of any gender at any
life stage).
What kind of eating disorders exist?
• Anorexia nervosa
• Bulimia nervosa
• Binge eating disorder
• Orthorexia
Anorexia nervosa
Anorexia is an eating disorder characterized by low weight, body image disturbance, food
restriction, fear of gaining weight, and an huge desire to be thin. The term anorexia means "no
appetite, caused by nervousness".
There are two tipes of Anorexia:
• Restrictive anorexia: A person with this type limits how much food they take in by eating
as little as possible.
• Binging and purging anorexia: Individuals with this type eat food but then vomit or use
laxatives to get rid of the food.
What causes anorexia isn't known. It is like a combination of biological, psychological, and social
factors such as social pressure to be thin, family conflicts, depression, and obsessive-compulsive
tendencies. Over time the body it breaks down into “survival mode” and starts to feed on their
organs and other areas of the body in an effort to continue functioning geting undernourished,
and if not treated in time it leads to death.
Bulimia Nervosa
Bulimia is an eating disorder characterized by eating large amounts of food (even if they aren't
hungry) with a loss of control over the quantity of food ingested and then try to get rid of the
extra calories by induce vomiting , misuse of laxatives or other methods.
Like the anorexia the exact causes of bulimia are unknown. Many factors could play a role in the
development of eating disorders, including genetics, biology, emotional health, societal
expectations and other issues.
Bulimia has multiple short-term consequences:
• disruption of metabolism, which can have negative effect on all organs;
• tooth decay and gum diseases;
• intestine failure;
• hair loss, dry skin;
• strokes and multi-organ failure.
But it have long-term consequences too:
• diabetes;
• brittle bones;
• fertility disorders.
Underweight
Underweight is when someone is malnourished, technically it doesn't have enough nutrients.
Nowadays there are about 768 million million people with subnutrition in the world, mostly
caused by poverty.
Overweight
Overweight is when someone has to much fat acumulated in their body. Currently there are
approximately 1,9 billion people with overweight in the world, mostly in developed coutries like
U.S.A. because of the amout of fastfood restaurants.
Body mass index (BMI)
BMI is a estimate of body fat based on your weight and height, tells you if you're underweight,
normal, overweight or obese. It can be done by this calculation:
Underweight Less than 19
Normal 19 to 24
Overweight 25 to 29
Obese 30 to 39
Severely Obese Over 39