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.

Friday, July 31, 2009

Doctors Can Predict the Onset of Eating Disorders - Anxiety and Eating Disorders

Doctors states that schizophrenia and depression are not the mental disorders that have the highest mortality rate; rather, they point out that among people who have this disorder, 20% of them yield to the illness. Therefore, it is helpful if there are ways to predict the risk factors of having eating disorders and who will likely develop it.

According to the statistics, almost 90% of those who have bulimia, anorexia, or both, are young women in their 20's and teens. When they reach adolescence, their eating disorders have fully developed. Colleges in America reported that more than 40% of students have any of the three disorders in their florid or sub clinical form.

Around 2 to 3% of adolescents are bulimic while .05 to 1% of adolescents are anorexic. Moreover, 13% of high school girls are purging. Statistics suggested that eating disorders doubled since 1960's and younger age groups are the common victims.

Childhood anxiety, according to a team of researchers, is identified as a major vulnerability factor to predict the onset of these disorders. Two thirds of people with bulimia, anorexia or both experienced a form of clinical anxiety-like obsessive-compulsive disorder or social phobia-at some point in their lives. Years before their illness, 42% of them developed anxiety when they were children.

Doctors and medical specialists alike established a strong bond between anxiety and eating disorders in a way that both share a genetic pathway besides sharing many of the same personality traits. Dr. Walter Kaye reported this after observing and studying 672 individuals. He announced that in order to help young women to recover from devastating diseases, doctors must develop strategies to cure the eating disorder and anxiety. It may also be helpful to treat the anxiety illness at its onset to provide preventive effects on eating illnesses.

The obsessive-compulsive behavior of those with bad eating conditions was also particularly striking. OCD usually afflicts 3% of children. Because the onset of OCD is in the 20's, doctors identify this condition to be another factor to predict eating disorders.



Autor: Faviano Torres

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Added: July 31, 2009
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/

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