Do You Have An Eating Disorder? Check Before It's Too Late

Eating disorders in humans is a serious condition which is associated with people's eating habits, thoughts and emotions. People can get eating disorder problem if they are highly obsessed with their food, shapes and body weight.

There are some common types of eating disorders which are "anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder".

Anorexia Nervosa

In this condition, people may see themselves overweight even when they are underweight, sometimes dangerously underweight. This condition makes them emotionally and mentally weak and they become highly obsessed with their weight.

People with Anorexia Nervosa tends to reduce their weight by restricted eating, excessive exercising and they weigh themselves repeatedly without understanding. Their preoccupied mind develop a tendency for starvation for weight loss and sometime towards suicide. This is the reason behind the highest mortality rates in Anorexia Nervosa of any mental disorder.

If your relative or known person has shown the below symptoms, you should help them and get them to the doctor.

• People tends to restrict their eating so that they can lose weight,
• Due to losing weight they may become very thin, 
• They develop a highly obsessed behaviour towards weight loss and don't want to maintain a normal weight. 
• They preoccupied their thoughts with weight lose hence they develop fear of weight gain.
• People may have a very low self esteem due to their perceptions of weight and shape.

Bulimia Nervosa

With this condition, people tends to eat more and repeatedly which results in weight gain. They are not able to control their hunger or tendency and eating frequently. Due to frequent eating they eat large amount of food. Now this eating behaviour makes them forced vomit or excessive exercise. People with Bulimia Nervosa may have over weight to slightly under weight.

You can identify Bulimia Nervosa condition in you or in your relative or friend from the symptoms mentioned below-

• If person feels his or her throat is sore or inflamed,
• Inside your mouth, if salivary gland is swollen, 
• If your teeth and gums are becoming more sensitive,
• Frequent acidity which can leads to Acid reflux disorder, 
• If your stomach is upset frequently, 
• If you have severe dehydration from purging of fluids,
• If you have too low or too high levels of sodium, calcium, potassium, and other minerals which can lead to stroke or heart attack,

Binge Eating Disorder

People with Binge eating disorder, eat regularly and they have no control over their eating, you can say. Due to binge eating, people becomes obese and overweight. They also don't do exercises or fasting unlike Bulimia Nervosa disorder. As per a study, binge eating disorder is the most common disorder in USA.

Following are the symptoms of binge eating disorder:-

• If you are eating a large amount of food in a short time, say 2 hrs, 
• If you are eating without hunger,
• Slow eating is good but if you are eating fast during binge eating,
• Continue eating without hunger,
• Eating alone to avoid embarrassment,
• Feeling distressed, ashamed, or guilty about your eating,
• Tend to dieting but no weight lose result,

How To Treat Eating Disorders

It is always beneficial to identify the symptoms of any disease early. It helps doctors and patients to find the correct treatment in early stage. Eating disorders makes you obese, mentally ill and even suicidal. People with eating disorders are more prone to other diseases like anxiety and depression.

Treatment for eating disorders may vary person to person. Its treatment may include:-

• Psychotherapies and
• Medications, 

In psychotherapies, the responsibility of feeding adolescents is given to their parents so that they can control the food and hunger of their child. It can helps the patients to recover fast and improves their mental ability for self control. They can also helps to provide proper nutrition. 

Experts also applies cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which is another type of psychotherapy. In CBT, the person makes learn to identify unhelpful thinking patterns to correct the inaccurate beliefs.

It is found that medications like antidepressants, anti-psychotics and mood stabilizers are also helpful to treat eating disorders. 

Bottom Line:

Eating disorders can affects every person and it does not belong to any specific race or ethnicity. It also affects both male and females. Eating disorders may be genetic and transfers from one generations to the next. The best way to treat it, is to identify the symptoms in early stage. Young adults are more prone to affects by eating disorders so people specially parents need to be alert and monitor their child's eating habits.

READ MORE: What is Obesity? How to deal with it?