Who are at risk with anorexia disorder?
As the incidence of anorexia disorder increases, one question being posed is what drives a person to become anorexic. Anorexia disorder affects as many as 3 out of 100 teens. Various researches into this eating disorder showed that anorexia disorder is a coping mechanism, usually for people who have a history of neglect and abuse or those who have suffered physical and emotional traumas including racial, religious, or sexual discrimination. Anorexia disorder can also occur in people undergoing acculturation and people who are living in poverty, which are situations beyond a person’s control.
Causes
There are theories that link anorexia disorder to people seeking to have some control over their personal lives as well as themselves. Since an anorexia disorder sufferer cannot control the abuse or the traumas, they take control of how they look by controlling their weight and their food. The control can give them power and a sense of security for the sufferers of anorexia disorder because they can successfully lose weight by close adherence to their own strict rules and regimen.
Anorexia disorder then becomes a very effective way for sufferers to cope with the difficult situations they have to endure and helps to distract or deaden the pain they feel. They give more focus to how to manage their calorie intake and on exercising to regulate their weight that their minds blank out the pain.
Several factors can lead a person to have an anorexia disorder. Confusion in the changing roles in society is one factor. For young women, it can be about whether they have to be assertive or nurturing, if they are supposed to go to work or are they destined to stay at home or should they be dependent or remain independent. They see plenty of women who are thin yet endorsing a healthy lifestyle, seemingly very happy and contented.
These fashion and advertising models and celebrities become role models for young women and they want to emulate what their role models are doing, associating being thin to being successful and achieving a happy life. And the same confusion is also true in young men. They begin to have the wrong notion of associating thinness with health and fame, and so they start to diet. Compulsion can turn to obsession that can get out of hand and result in anorexia disorder.
Traumas on the other hand can drive people to diet excessively and progressively until it turns into anorexia disorder. Those who were victims of sexual abuse will inadvertently want to go back to a period of innocence, and dieting is their way of going back to their childhood.
For sensitive people who are have gained weight, a derogatory remark from relatives who are on a diet or a school sports coach can trigger an adverse reaction, which can start a person to seriously turn to drastic diet, excessive exercising and fasting as a means to gain power, recognition and increase their self-worth.
Low self esteem can drive a person to develop erratic behavior and do drastic things such as extreme dieting so they can exercise some control over their weigh and how people view them. While dieting and watching what they eat may be good for them, if the dieting becomes uncontrollable it can lead to a bigger problem. Anorexia disorder soon follows as they continue to seek control on how they look.
And without supervision and the desire to be accepted, the uncontrolled changes in the eating habits and lifestyle changes can lead to a restricting anorexia disorder where they limit the amount of calories and the type of food they eat, in contrast to a purging anorexia disorder where a sufferer induces vomiting to keep weight down or use diuretics and laxatives.
Signs and Symptoms
It can be very difficult to recognize the signs and symptoms at the onset of anorexia disorder because the sufferer will take pains to hide their condition. They will provide several excuses for their eating habits and their weight loss until such time that their condition can no longer be hidden.
While a person suffering from anorexia disorder may continue to deny their condition, they will be very obsessed with their calorie intake and will be constantly counting calories, they will have a distorted view of their image when they look in the mirror, thinking that they are still fat and therefore should have less calories and be more mindful of what they can and should eat.
Signs and symptoms you can look out for when faced with a friend or family member who had contracted anorexia disorder include continuous dieting despite being thin, pretending to eat or making excuses to avoid eating with you, getting preoccupied with food such as looking for and collecting recipes, cooking for other people, making meal plans and reading food magazines but never actually eating.
You should also notice that a person suffering from anorexia disorder is more critical of their appearance and will consider themselves fat despite losing weight, constantly checking their weight and yet denying that they are already too thin.
A person suffering from anorexia disorder may be using different pills to lose weight or to purge food, they may vomit right after eating or exercise excessively. The may also wear loose clothing to hide their thinness, making this an excuse as to why they look thin.
Treatment
It can be very challenging to treat a person with anorexia disorder. There are the underlying emotional and mental problems that drove the person to be anorexic. These problems may be very deep-rooted, with some problems dating back to their childhood. It can also have something to do with their self-image and their perception of themselves. You see, a person with anorexia disorder is in denial. They will deny that they are dangerously thin and that they have an eating problem.
The best approach for treating anorexia disorder is to start with correcting the eating disorder by seeing a specialist, who is also a psychologist. The medical professional should also have extensive experience and training to help a patient with anorexia disorder. It should be done in conjunction with a physical examination and workup by a medical doctor for the physical side of the many-pronged problems related to this debilitating eating disorder.
One of the most common treatments applied when treating people with anorexia disorder is psychotherapy. This is very popular and backed up and supported by several researches. Anorexia disorder treatment can be long and costly so full commitment is needed for a person to be healed, since there are several issues that have to be dealt with. Psychotherapy addresses emotional health and happiness aside from the problems of disordered eating habits.
Cognitive behavioral therapy is considered a gold standard when it comes to treating anorexia disorder. It is the treatment of choice. It is very focused and time-limited, aimed at helping a person with anorexia disorder to understand how their negative thinking and low self esteem have made a direct impact on their negative behaviors and their erratic eating patterns.
Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on identifying and changing the dysfunctional thoughts, beliefs and attitudes the sufferer had previously and then helping the person make the real changes in a strictly managed treatment program. The program helps the anorexia disorder sufferer to set specific goals for each phase of the treatment, including promotion of good eating habits and managing compulsive behavior and depression.
Psychotherapy for anorexia disorder may also include family therapy where there will be sessions without the patient present. This is done so that family members will understand the roles they have to play to support the recovery of the person suffering from anorexia disorder and suggest ways for them to help the sufferer, including taking responsibility to feed their teen with anorexia disorder to help them gain weight and improve their eating habits.
There are no specific medications that can treat anorexia disorder although the doctor may prescribe some medication to correct some ailments that developed due to anorexia such as abnormal heart rhythms and electrolyte imbalance. Antidepressants may be prescribed because depression is one of the causes of anorexia disorder, although the doctor may not allow antidepressants to be taken due to side effects.
Women who had anorexia disorder are prone to bone fractures as a result of osteoporosis. Although estrogen may be prescribed to mineralize their bones, the doctor may or may not allow it because of negative side effects that estrogens may give them.
Anorexia disorder can be treated, just like other eating disorders as long as the patient and family members recognize the problem and are committed to take charge of nursing the patient back to health. The road to recovery requires trust in the medical team, in yourself if you are the patient and in your family.
