Mental health: eating disorders

 

Eating disorders are illnesses related to behaviour with food. They are associated with distressing thoughts and emotions. Common eating disorders are anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge-eating disorder. This illness can affect the heart, digestive system, bones, teeth and mouth.

Causes

The exact causes are not known but they might be:

    - Genetics. Some people may have gens that increase their risk of developing eating disorders.

    - Biology. Biological factors may play a role in eating disorders.

Anorexia Nervosa

It's a condition where people avoid food, so there's a low weight for height and age. There are two subtypes: restricting type (individuals lose weight primarily by dieting, fasting or excessively exercising) and purging type (individuals engage an intermittent binge-eating or purging behaviours). Anorexia nervosa can be fatal, it has a high death rate.

Bulimia

It's a condition where people have recurrent episodes of eating unusually large amounts of food and feel a lack of control during this episodes. After this episodes the ill person tries to compensating by purging or excessive exercise.

Binge-eating disorder

In this case, people also have recurrent episodes of eating large amounts of food, but unlike bulimia the person with this problem doesn't try to compensate it, so they're usually obese or overweight.

Other eating disorders

Avoidant restrictive food intake disorder (people control the amount or type of food eaten), pica (people repeatedly eat things that are not food with no nutritional value), rumination disorder (repeated regurgitation and re-chewing of food)...

Treatment

It is important to seek for help, not just because of nutrition but for the higher risk of suicide and medical complications. People with this kind of mental disorders usually have depression, anxiety or substance abuse.
Treatment may include: psychotherapy, medical care, nutritional counseling and medication.

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/eating-disorders
https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/eating-disorders/what-are-eating-disorders#:~:text=They%20can%20be%20very%20serious,disorder%2C%20pica%20and%20rumination%20disorder.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/eating-disorders/symptoms-causes/syc-20353603

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