Eating disorders can be defined as a long term mental/physical illness that may or may not require long term treatment. They commonly coincide with disorders such as depression, drug abuse, and anxiety disorders. Any time there are extremes in eating habits such as massive intake or risks malnourishment by deprivation.
Typically eating disorders develop in the early adult stages and mainly in women. This is not to say that men do not suffer from these disorders because they definitely do. It is just that statistically the patients are between 18 and 25 and female.
People with anorexia nervosa typically present with strange eating habits. Often claiming that they have just eaten or that they are full. They are compulsive about dieting: reading nutrition labels, weighing food, calorie counting and possibly exercising to excess.
In bulimia nervosa people will binge on a any number of foods all at one time and immediately vomit. They often take diuretics and/or laxatives. Patients with bulimia will often excuse themselves from a meal very quickly and go to a bathroom or to some private place to vomit.
With binge eating disorder people have the tendency to binge just like bulimia patients. What is different is that they do not purge. The patient usually does not consume the large amounts of food with others but alone and they may take in excessive amounts of food in a very short time even if they are not physically hungry. This is the one eating disorder that may occur in men and women equally. The result of this behavior are feelings of guilt and shame. However, it does not keep the behavior from occurring time after time.
Long lasting health effects of these teen eating problems can include, reduced heart rate, low blood pressure, tooth decay, esophagus damage, dry skin, ulcers, high blood pressure and cholesterol (in binge eating), and more.
When a patient is diagnosed with these eating disorders the anorexic patient has to weight at least 15% below their normal weight, misses menstrual cycles and has a distinct fear of gaining weight. For bulimia patients they usually have at least two binges or purges per week for several months and have a lack of control over their eating habits. The patient with binge-eating disorder is harder to diagnose because the behavior may be more infrequent and not as noticeable because they binge in private.
First and foremost physicians and psychologists want to get the nutritional needs of these patients met. They can then deal with any substance abuse problems that may be going on. And then the treatment of depression and other behavior disorders comes into play.
