We often don’t understand the intensity of the eating disorder. Although it has an “eating” word in its name it is more than food. It is a complex problem that may lead to many fatal situations.
What is an eating disorder?
An Eating disorder can be defined as changes in one’s psychological conditions and human behavior that results in unhealthy eating habits. They can be very serious conditions affecting physical, psychological, and social functioning. In some cases, it may also result in death if this mental illness is left undetected and untreated.
Most eating disorders start with too much focus on weight, body shape, and food, leading to dangerous eating behaviors. These behaviors can significantly impact your body’s ability to get appropriate nutrition.
Eating disorders can occur in people of any age, sex, and all body types. The physical, mental, and emotional symptoms vary from person to person depending upon their condition and eating disorder type.
What are the symptoms of an eating disorder?
Eating disorders are becoming very common in young people of our age and most of the time we neglect them owing to little knowledge about their symptoms. There are different types of eating disorders but each type extremely focuses on unhealthy food habits and weight gain.
The common symptoms include weight loss or intense fear of weight gain, constipation, abdominal pain, excuses to avoid meals, not eating in proper quantities, avoiding certain foods, or being obsessed with diet plans or burning off calories.
The physical signs may include dizziness, cramps, dry skin, muscle weakness, vomiting, and a poor immune system.
Eating disorders can be identified by keeping in mind these symptoms and observing the changes in one’s behavior accordingly.
What causes eating disorders?
A variety of factors ranging from genetics to environment, personality traits, or social factors may cause eating disorders. Eating disorders can be developed by people having some in their family or parents going through the same. Personality traits like perfectionism may cause eating disorders that people just avoid eating to maintain a perfect figure. The people we are surrounded by, the customs we follow, culture or practices around us may also become the reason for the development of eating disorders.
Remedy or treatment of an eating disorder
When properly treated, eating disorders are curable and less harmful. The common and most effective treatment for eating disorders is therapy. But for every person, eating disorder plans are specifically made with respect to their type of disorder and conditions.
Treatment usually involves a therapy session and regular health check-ups with a physician. Though there are other options also available for the treatment like medications, and nutritional balance counseling which helps in curing the disorder.
Conclusion
Eating disorders are fatal and severely affect one’s mental health so if you think or know someone in your life is going through an eating disorder, encourage and motivate them to seek help from professional healthcare and take care of them as suicides are common in people with this condition.
Awareness of eating disorders is very important!!
