Anorexia Nervosa is a psychological disorder which nowadays, is often the cause of death, particularly among teenage girls. In pursuit to exaggerately lose weight, victims of anorexia tend to starve themselves. In extreme cases of anorexia, people who suffer under this psychological disorder weighs 25% lower than that of their ideal and standard body weight.

Symptoms of anorexia may be seen among athletes or sports enthusiasts, and most of whom are achievers in school. Their unusual and abnormal eating habits and rituals may undergo in 2 stages – where they sometimes choose to have strict fasting, and/or sometimes splurge into over eating or ‘binge’. The binge stage of anorexia refers to the ‘gorge and purge’ attitude towards food, where the anorexia victim induce voluntary vomiting after eating excessive amounts of food.

Also, people with anorexia nervosa habitually clings on to the weighing scale and tend to check on their weights several times in a day and stays away from food when they feel great hunger. Teenage girls who are more likely to go out on social gatherings, would rather stay at home so as not to be tempted to eat at the sight and smell of food. Teens who are suffering from anorexia also tends to shy away from crowd to avoid possible cristicisms concerning body weight and shape – just the perfect reason to deteriorate self esteem and confidence, isn’t? But for adolescent girls with anorexia, the psychological disorder is associated with amenorrhea, cessation or delay of menstruation.

Anorexia and Bulimia
More often than not, the term anorexia is always linked and associated with bulimia. So what is the difference between anorexia and bulimia? People with anorexia starve themselves even to the point of extreme hunger, and spontaneously do heavy exercise at the fear of gaining weight. People with bulimia, on the other hand, takes large amount of food and then throws up afterwards. Most of whom takes water pills or diuretics and laxatives to avoid getting fat.

Anorexia nervosa cannot be treated in just a blink of an eye. It is indeed a lengthy and costly process. Treating patients with anorexia does not only deal with serious food and/or weight problems, that’s why anorexia treatment primarily requires great help and support from psychological and psychiatric counseling. Anorexia nervosa victims need to rebuild self confidence and self esteem along the process of treatment, involving a strong and close hand to hand coordination between the body’s hypothalamus – a part of the brain which manipulates normal eating behavior, and the norepinephrine – a substance which transmits facts about the food we take.

Anorexia 911
So how do you find out early signs of anorexia? Health experts have enumerated the most common symptoms and signs of anorexia:

Habitual glancing at the mirror
Intentional self- starvation
Non-stop exercise
Low resistance to cold temperature
Hair loss in scalp
Irregular (or sometimes) absence of menstruation periods (for girls)
Refusal to eat and defiance of hunger

So, who gets anorexia?
As mentioned earlier, people who are more likely to suffer from anorexia are those who think that being thin is the key to self contentment and life long happiness. Sports enthusiasts who believes they could run faster, hit more balls, or jump higher if they were extra thin –are just some of the concrete examples. These are unrealistic people who hopes to get everything they want once they achieved a thin figure.

Dream not of becoming perfect Barbie and Ken dolls, because LIFE itself is not perfect.

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