Eating Disorders

Eating Disorders
Human beings by our status as biological organisms, we should maintain a natural relationship with food. The regular intake of foods rich in nutrients and adequate amounts would have to be a universal pattern for men and women. The dramatic increase during the last decades the number of people who show an unnatural relationship with food has led to a growing interest inunderstanding these paradoxical behaviors and how to help these people regain a pattern most appropriate food. Most are based on the consideration of these behaviors as symptoms of a mental illness or disorder labeled as anorexia and bulimia nervosa.
Etymologically speaking, an eating disorder would be referred to any circumstances involving a dysfunction of the affected feeding behavior. But inreality, when we talk about food behavior problems we are not referring only to food but behind there are a number of difficulties such as inadequate dietary habits, a desire not to excess weight gain, emotional imbalances, a negative self-appraisals and a whole myriad of components that give us a vision of the behavioral characteristics of this problem.
Eating disorders are serious conditions thatcause both physical and emotional damage. Eating disorders involve extreme disturbances in eating behaviors: following rigid diets, gorging on food in secret, throwing up after meals, obsessively counting calories. But eating disorders are more complicated than just unhealthy dietary habits. At their core, eating disorders involve distorted, self-critical attitudes about weight, food and bodyimage. It’s these negative thoughts and feelings that fuel the damaging behaviors.
People with eating disorders use food to deal with uncomfortable or painful emotions. Restricting food is used to feel in control. Overeating temporarily soothes sadness, anger or loneliness. Purging is used to combat feelings of helplessness and obsessions over food and weight come to dominate everythingelse in life.
According to Zhu and Walsh (2002) “eating disorders conditions affect 3% of women in industrialized nations over their lifetimes”.
The Encyclopedia of Public Health states that “mental health professionals recognize three main types of eating disorders: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating”.
Although the word anorexia literally means without appetite, thecondition is better described as restricted eating or self starvation. The person with anorexia has an appetite, and food tastes good; however, food is seen as “the enemy”. One authority terms anorexia “food phobia”. The disorder is characterized by a refusal to maintain a minimal normal body weight, an intense fear of gaining weight, a disturbance in the self-perception of body size and shape, and(in women) an absence of menstrual periods for three or more consecutive months. Anorexia may be further classified as a restricting type or binge-eating/purging type.
In 1689, British physician Sir Richard Morton described as occurrences of “nervous consumption”, a easting away due to emotional turmoil. In 1874, anorexia nervosa was introduced as a clinical diagnosis by two differentphysicians, Sir William Withey Gull of Britain and Charles Lasegue of France. Each emphasized varying aspects of the condition in their clinical reports, yet they both described anorexia as a “nervous” disease characterized by self-starvation. They were the first to recognize the illness as a distinct clinical diagnosis.
Anorexia nervosa usually begins in adolescence or early adulthood. The causesare multi-factorial and include genetic and biological risk factors, developmental factors that may to contribute to a negative subjective body image, a lack of awareness of internal feelings (including hunger and emotions), a family history of eating disturbances, social influence, and psychological factors that can include a range of obsessive tendencies, a history of trauma and either chronic...