Eating Disorders

An eating disorder is a psychological disorder characterized by abnormal or disturbed eating habits. There are different kinds of eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder. Anybody can have an eating disorder, and there are many factors and causes to having one. Eating disorders are important concerns to society, but there can be many solutions to them. There are an increasing number of people with an eating disorder, and those who have one have to go through many symptoms that aren’t healthy for them. Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder in which a person is “preoccupied with being thin and reduces the amount of food they eat. A person will either skip meals entirely or count all of the calories of what they have eaten. He or she will use exercise or drugs to compensate for eating and their weight drops to at least fifteen percent below their normal body weight” (“Update: Eating Disorders”). Some symptoms of anorexia nervosa are “the thinning of bones, brittle hair and nails, dry and yellow skin, growth of hair on the body, constipation, low blood pressure, damage to the structure and function of the heart, brain damage which could lead to multi-organ failure, extreme thinness, a restriction of eating, and a lack of menstruation” (“Eating Disorders”). Bulimia nervosa is different than anorexia nervosa, and although a person has an “obsessive preoccupation with weight”, they can still remain at their normal weight (“Update: Eating Disorders”). Unlike anorexia nervosa, in bulimia nervosa a person tends to “eat large quantities of food, and then vomits, fasts, exercises, or takes drugs to rid the body of the food” (“Update: Eating Disorders”). Symptoms of bulimia nervosa are “a chronically inflamed and sore throat, swollen salivary glands in the neck and jaw area, worn teeth enamel, increasingly sensitive and decaying teeth, acid reflux disorder and gastrointestinal problems, intestinal distress and irritation, severe