Overview

An eating disorder is a compulsion to eat, or avoid eating, that negatively affects both one's physical and mental health. Eating disorders are all encompassing. They affect every part of the person's life. According to the authors of Surviving an Eating Disorder, "feelings about work, school, relationships, day-to-day activities and one's experience of emotional well being are determined by what has or has not been eaten or by a number on a scale." Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are the most common eating disorders generally recognized by medical classification schemes, with a significant diagnostic overlap between the two. Together, they affect an estimated 5-7% of females in the United States during their lifetimes. There is a third type of eating disorder currently being investigated and defined - Binge Eating Disorder. This is a chronic condition that occurs when an individual consumes huge amounts of food during a brief period of time and feels totally out of control and unable to stop their eating. It can lead to serious health conditions such as morbid obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Social Networking and Eating Disorders

Social Networking and eating disorders have teamed up to produce a disturbing new trend for those struggling with this disease. Isolation is a recognized symptom of eating disorder sufferers and a symptom that alerts anyone close that there is a problem. With the advent of social networking anyone can appear to be interacting socially when in reality they are receiving negative support for those behaviors that are dangerous and life threatening. The pain of isolation is gone replaced with a network of afflicted eating disorder sufferers who encourage one another and trade diets that are recipes of malnourishment.

Social Networking and eating disorders combine to produce a worldwide audience. Some of which may not have previous knowledge of disordered eating and are receiving information that glorifies it rather than introducing the devastating effects of this disease. Those viewing a social networking will learn new was to vomit or ways to hide their disease from family or friends that could provide help that might save a life.

Organizations have joined together to remove "Ana Sits" from the internet only to see the use of "Facebook" and "MySpace" replace those banned sites. Some organizations join social networking sites portraying themselves as a positive support system only to be revealed trading pictures of anorexic members and their weight loss diets.

Children are the most susceptible to this new form of peer pressure. It becomes much easier to locate someone with the same negative behavior pattern to identify with receive negative feedback. Eating disorder treatment centers report new clients are talking about their experience with social networking and their eating disorder. All addictive diseases dealing with obsessive behavior are insidious; adding the internet seems to increase vulnerability and speed up the negative progression. Suffering people are looking for acceptance and will continue to use social networking if they can't find that acceptance anywhere else.



Autor: Dan B. Clark

Dan C's career in the addiction field spans twenty-five years. He has held positions in all phases of administration and clinical services in Treatment Facilities throughout the state of Florida. He is currently employed by http://www.recoveryconnection.org


Added: June 3, 2009
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/

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