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What are Eating Disorders?
What causes anorexia and bulimia?
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Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are the two most serious eating disorders. Each illness involves a preoccupation with control over body weight, eating and food.

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• People with anorexia are determined to control the amounts of food they eat.
• People with bulimia tend to feel out of control where food is concerned.

Anorexia affects two out of every 100 teenage girls, although the illness can be experienced earlier and later in life. Most people who have anorexia are female, but males also develop the disorder. Bulimia may affect up to three in every hundred teenage girls. More females than males develop bulimia.

While these rates show that few people meet the criteria for eating disorders, it is far more common for people to have unrealistic attitudes about body size and shape. These attitudes may contribute to inappropriate eating habits or dieting practices. Both illnesses can be overcome and it is important for the person to seek advice about either condition as early as possible.

What are the symptoms of anorexia?

Anorexia is characterised by:

• a loss of at least 15 per cent of body weight resulting from refusal to eat enough food, despite extreme hunger;
• a disturbance of perceptions of body image in that the person may regard themselves as fat, overestimating body size the thinner they become;
• an intense fear of becoming ‘fat' and of losing control;
• a tendency to exercise obsessively;
• a preoccupation with the preparation of food;
• making lists of ‘good' and ‘bad' food.

Usually, anorexia begins with a weight loss, either resulting from a physical illness or from dieting. Favourable comments cause the person to believe that if thin is good, thinner is better. The body does not react well to starvation, and erratic eating behaviour begins to dominate the person's life. About 40 per cent of people with anorexia will later develop bulimia.

What are the symptoms of bulimia?

Bulimia is characterised by:

• eating binges which involve consumption of large amounts of calorie-rich food, during which the person feels a loss of personal control and self disgust;
• attempts to compensate for binges and to avoid weight gain by self-induced vomiting, and/or abuse of laxatives and fluid tablets; and
• combination of restricted eating and compulsive exercise so that control of weight dominates the person's life.

A person with bulimia is usually average or slightly above average weight for height, so is often less recognisable than the person with anorexia.

Bulimia often starts with rigid weight reduction dieting in the ‘pursuit of thinness'. Inadequate nutrition causes tiredness and powerful urges to binge eat. Vomiting after a binge seems to bring a sense of relief, but this is temporary and soon turns to depression and guilt. Some people use laxatives, apparently unaware that laxatives do not reduce kilojoules or fat content, and serve only to eliminate vital trace elements and to dehydrate the body.

The person can make frantic efforts to break from the pattern, but the vicious binge/purge/exercise cycle, and the feelings associated with it, may have become compulsive and uncontrollable.

A person with bulimia may experience chemical imbalances in the body which bring about lethargy, depression and clouded thinking.

Disorders - Eating Disorders