- Inadequate food intake leads to a weight that is clearly too low.
- Intense fear of weight gain, obsession with weight, and persistent behavior to prevent weight gain.
- Self-esteem is overly related to body image.
- Inability to appreciate the severity of the situation.
- Binge-Eating/Purging Type involves binge eating and/or purging behaviors during the last three months.
- Restricting Type does not involve binge eating or purging.
Eating disorders experts have found that prompt intensive treatment significantly improves the chances of recovery. Therefore, it is important to be aware of some of the warning signs of anorexia nervosa.
Warning Signs
- Dramatic weight loss.
- Preoccupation with weight, food, calories, fat grams, and dieting.
- Refusal to eat certain foods, progressing to restrictions against whole categories of food (e.g., no carbohydrates, etc.).Button
- Frequent comments about feeling “fat” or overweight despite weight loss.
- Anxiety about gaining weight or being “fat.”
- Denial of hunger.
- Development of food rituals (e.g., eating foods in certain orders, excessive chewing, rearranging food on a plate).
- Consistent excuses to avoid mealtimes or situations involving food.
- Excessive, rigid exercise regimen--despite weather, fatigue, illness, or injury, the need to “burn off” calories taken in.
- Withdrawal from usual friends and activities.
- In general, behaviors and attitudes indicating that weight loss, dieting, and control of food are becoming primary concerns.
Health Consequences of Anorexia Nervosa
Anorexia nervosa involves self-starvation. The body is denied the essential nutrients it needs to function normally, so it is forced to slow down all of its processes to conserve energy. This “slowing down” can have serious medical consequences:
- Abnormally slow heart rate and low blood pressure, which means that the heart muscle is changing. The risk for heart failure rises as heart rate and blood pressure levels sink lower and lower.
- Reduction of bone density (osteoporosis), which results in dry, brittle bones.
- Muscle loss and weakness.
- Severe dehydration, which can result in kidney failure.
- Fainting, fatigue, and overall weakness.
- Dry hair and skin; hair loss is common.
- Growth of a downy layer of hair called lanugo all over the body, including the face, in an effort to keep the body warm.
AbCenters Anorexia Nervosa
- Approximately 90-95% of anorexia nervosa sufferers are girls and women.
- Between 0.5–1% of American women suffer from anorexia nervosa.
- Anorexia nervosa is one of the most common psychiatric diagnoses in young women.
- Between 5-20% of individuals struggling with anorexia nervosa will die. The probabilities of death increase within that range depending on the length of the condition.
- Anorexia nervosa has one of the highest death rates of any mental health condition.
- Anorexia nervosa typically appears in early to mid-adolescence.
Defining characteristics of Anorexia Nervosa:
Individuals with anorexia nervosa are unwilling or unable to maintain a body weight that is normal for their age and height (most clinicians use 85% of normal weight as a guide). Individuals with anorexia nervosa typically display a pronounced fear of weight gain and a dread of becoming fat, although they are dramatically underweight. Concerns and perceptions about their weight have an extremely powerful influence and impact on their self-evaluation. The seriousness of the weight loss and its physical effects is minimized or denied (women with the diagnosis of anorexia nervosa have missed at least three consecutive menstrual cycles).
Diagnostic criteria of anorexia nervosa include two subtypes of the disorder that describe two distinct behavioral patterns. Individuals with the Restricting Type maintain their low body weight purely by restricting food intake and increased activity (i.e., compulsive exercise). Those with the Binge-Eating/Purging Type usually restrict their food intake but also regularly engage in binge eating and/or purging behaviors (i.e., self-induced vomiting or the misuse of laxatives, diuretics, or enemas). Binge-Eating/Purging Type of Anorexia Nervosa is also frequently associated with other impulse control problems and mood disorders.
People who suffer from anorexia often have low self-esteem and a tremendous need to control their surroundings and emotions. The eating disorder is often a reaction to external and internal conflicts (i.e., anxiety, stress, and unhappiness can be leading factors).
Profile: Anorexia Nervosa
The person suffering from anorexia is generally extremely sensitive about being fat, or has an intense fear of becoming fat, and of losing control over the amount of food he/she eats. This hyper-sensitivity is accompanied by the desire to control his/her emotions and reactions to these emotions. Low self-esteem and the constant need for acceptance lead to obsessive dieting and starvation as a way to control not only weight, but also feelings and actions regarding their emotions. Many anorexics feel they are not deserving of life's gifts and pleasures. They often deprive themselves of situations that offer pleasure. Starvation or restriction, obsessive exercise, calorie counting, a constant obsession with food and health issues, self-induced vomiting, the use of excessive amounts of laxatives, diuretics, and/or diet pills, and a persistent concern with body image can all be some of the physical indications that someone suffers from Anorexia Nervosa. People suffering from anorexia may also go through periods of Bulimia (bingeing and purging) as well.
There are numerous ways a person with Anorexia can exhibit their disorder. The anorexic attempts to maintain strict control over food/caloric intake. Periods of starvation, obsessive counting of calories, compulsive exercising, and/or purging after meals are among the most common symptoms. In some cases, an anorexic will seem to eat normal meals with only periods of restriction. They use diet pills to control their appetite, or laxatives to attempt to rid their body of food, both of which are dangerous and useless in producing weight loss results. Anorexics will deny hunger, make excuses to avoid eating, and will often hide food they claim to have eaten, or attempt to purge the food away with self-induced vomiting or by taking laxatives.
Diagnostic Criteria: Anorexia Nervosa
The following definition of Anorexia Nervosa is used to assist mental health professionals in making a clinical diagnosis. The clinical criteria are not always representative of what one living with anorexia feels. Please note, you can still suffer from Anorexia even if one of the following signs is not present. One can not simply read the criteria and think, "I don't have one of the symptoms, so I am not Anorexic" or "I don't have a problem with food."
1. Refusal to maintain body weight at or above a minimally normal weight for age and height (e.g., weight loss leading to maintenance of body weight less than 85% of that expected; or failure to make expected weight gain during a period of growth, leading to body weight less than 85% of that expected).
2. Intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even though underweight.
3. Disturbance in the way in which one's body weight or shape is experienced, undue influence of body weight or shape on self-evaluation, or denial of the seriousness of the current low body weight.
4. In postmenarcheal females (the absence of at least three consecutive menstrual cycles.
Restricting Type: during the current episode of Anorexia Nervosa, the person has not regularly engaged in binge-eating or purging behavior (i.e., self-induced vomiting or the misuse of laxatives, diuretics, or enemas).
Binge-Eating Type or Purging Type: During the current episode of Anorexia Nervosa, the person has regularly engaged in binge-eating OR purging behavior (i.e., self-induced vomiting or the misuse of laxatives, diuretics, or enemas).
Definition/Review of Anorexia Nervosa:
Anorexia Nervosa is an eating disorder affected by a complex mixture of social, psychological, and physical problems.
The definition of anorexia spectrum disorder is anorexia nervosa or partial anorexia nervosa.Characteristics are:
A. An intense drive for thinness
B. An intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat
C. A disturbance in body image
D. In women, a cessation of the menstrual cycle for at least three months
E. In men, a decreased sexual drive
Facts About Anorexia Nervosa:
A. There are two types of Anorexia Nervosa:
1. Restrictive type
2. Binge eating/purging type.
B. 90-95% of individuals with Anorexia Nervosa are female.
C. It affects about 1 in 2400 adolescents.
D. It typically develops in early to mid-adolescents.
E. Psychological problems are displaced onto food.
F. It is usually preceded by dieting behavior.
G. Unusual food behaviors are practiced.
H. Need to vicariously enjoy food by cooking it, serving it, or being around it is common.
I. Preoccupation with body weight and image.
J. Dieting becomes increasingly important.
K. Denial of the condition can be extreme.
L. Body image disturbance (misperception of body size and shape) is common.
M. Pronounced emotional changes are common.
N. One-third of anorexics subsequently develop Bulimia Nervosa.
Common purging behaviors include:
A. Self-induced vomiting
B. Diuretic abuse
C. Laxative abuse
D. Emetic abuse
E. Excessive exercise
F. Fasting
Both Anorexia and Bulimia:
Eating disorders are very complex emotional issues. Though they may seem to be nothing but a dangerously obsessive dietary concern on the surface, for most men and women suffering from an eating disorder, there are deeper emotional conflicts to be resolved.
Things that can increase your chances of getting anorexia are called risk factors. Here's a list of some of them. (From the British Medical Journal)
