There is a stigma around mental health all over the world. A partial portion of this stigma happens due to excessive dieting, ignoring healthy food habits, irregular exercises, or being a part of some unhealthy situations. This sign of ignoring healthy food habits causes anorexia or bulimia. It may harm your body if not cured to some extent. Eating disorders are characterised by loss of weight, sometimes till the starvation point. People with eating disorder tends to use laxatives and vomit regularly or purge themselves after eating. We will learn some symptoms of eating disorder and the steps to cure it. The steps should be followed immediately, and you should not ignore these signs of eating disorder.
The Types And Signs of Eating Disorder
Eating disorders are common in normal people as well as in celebrities. Many well-known celebrities like Lady Gaga, Zayn Malik, have dealt with Eating Disorders previously.
Eating disorders can be classified into several types. To name a few we have:-
Anorexia nervosa:-
It is the most common of all eating disorders and generally happens during teenage, adolescence, and in women more than men. In this disorder, the person feels overweight despite being severely underweight. They get hyped in reducing their weight and take eating or dieting precautions to restrict themselves from gaining calories.
Some common symptoms of anorexia are:-
- Prefer being underweight compared to people of their age.
- Follow a very restricted eating plan.
- Fear of gaining weight despite having low weight.
- Relentless efforts of losing weight and never wanting to gain healthy weight.
- Having a distorted body image due to low weight.
A constant thought of food occupy their mind and suffer from obsessive-compulsive symptoms. These people also face difficulty eating in public places and strongly control their environment, limiting their intuitive ability. Patients with anorexia are generally categorised into two types:- the Restricting type and the Binge Eating type.
A person with the restricting type anorexia nervosa restricts energy intake. Their weight loss occurs primarily through dieting, fasting, or excessive workouts.
People who are classified into the binge eating category binge off large quantities of food but eat just a portion of it. After this, they tend to vomit, take diuretics, and exercise a lot. It harms the person as their bones get thin. They face fertility problems, brittleness on their hair and nails, and a fine layer of hair grows on their body. In critical cases, this may also result in multiple organ failures.
Bulimia Nervosa:-
This is another disease that can result from eating disorders. This disease is more common in teenagers, and predominantly in women than in men. People who have bulimia eat heavy quantities of food unusually at a particular time. They sit idle and continue eating randomly until their stomach is full. Also, they can neither stop random eating, nor can they control the quantity of how much they are consuming.
These people continue this random food eating habit with the dish they should avoid for their health. They then realise to compensate for all the calories they have consumed and relieve the discomfort of their guts. This leads to forced puking, fasting, intake of laxatives, enemas, and working out heavily. They try to maintain a normal weight rather than being underweight.
The symptoms of Bulimia Nervosa are:-
- Lack of control over random or binge eating.
- Continuously purging inappropriate behaviour for weight gain prevention.
- Overly influenced self-esteem, body weight as well as shape.
- Maintaining a normal weight and still having a fear of putting on weight.
Bulimia Nervosa causes inflammation and soreness of the throat, swelling of salivary glands, wearing out of the teeth enamel, decaying of teeth, acid reflux, gut irritation, dehydrating of the body severely, and disturbances in the hormones.
It creates an improper balance of the body’s electrolytic levels, such as sodium, potassium, and calcium. This may also result in blockage of heart vessels, leading to a heart attack.
Binge Eating Disorders:-
Binge eating disorders generally happens in teenagers and early stages of adulthood. It may also happen in later stages. People with this disorder are persistent with their binge eating and cannot control their random cravings for food. They do not restrict their intake of calories, or any behaviours of vomiting. They perform heavy workouts to compensate for calorie intake.
Symptoms of binge eating disorders:-
- Eating heavy amount of food despite being hungry till they feel uncomfortable being full.
- Unable to control their food intake.
- Feeling stressed, shameful, disgusted, and guilty when having thoughts of eating food.
- No calorie restriction acts or behaviours of vomiting for compensating binging.
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These people suffer from obesity and are overly weighted. They have a high risk of health complications like cardiac diseases and type 2 diabetes.
Besides this, other eating disorders like night eating syndrome, pica, rumination disorder, and intake of restrictive food disorders can also occur. They harm the normal diet routine of your body and make you fall sick. These diseases are categorised under OSFED or other specified feeding or eating disorders.
Orthorexia which falls under the category of OSFED, is yet to be well known as an eating disorder by DSM recently. It is a disease where a person obsessively focuses on a healthy diet that eventually disturbs their daily lives. They omit some groups of food entirely, thinking it’s unhealthy. They then suffer from malnutrition, emotional stress, and excessive weight loss.
Conclusion:-
These signs and symptoms of eating disorders will provide an idea of the most common diet disorders and spill out the myths about them. Eating disorders have an impact on your mental health and need immediate treatment. If left uncured, they can cause severe problems to your body. If you’re facing any of the signs and symptoms mentioned above, you should not ignore these signs of eating disorder and see a dietician as soon as possible. We hope that this article has helped you understand our purpose and you will follow the above steps.
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