Ladies 2 Know

The Case of Women and Anorexia

Written by Administrator    Sunday, 17 February 2008

Anorexia nervosa is a psychological condition in which a person, usually teenage women, develops unreasonable fear of gaining weight. This is an abnormal condition because women becomes powerless to recognize that they’re already very underweight; the only thing they have in their mind is to lose more and more weight. This condition is very deadly to women if not treated accordingly; the patients suffering with anorexia are not conscious of the fact that they are very underweight. Anorexia nervosa has two basic types, which both of them deadly if untreated. The two types are the binge eating/purging and the restricting type. Patients suffering from the first type of anorexia binge eat and then due to their uncontrollable fear of gaining weight, they purge the food they’ve ingested by forcing themselves to vomit. Abuse of diuretics or laxatives can also be seen among patients of this type of anorexia. The second type of anorexia, the restricting type, is characterized by deliberately eating almost nothing at all; patients are often seen to take only water. The fear of adding weight is overwhelming in these patients; they don’t have power to control this fear. It’s also not uncommon to see patients that switch back and forth to either of the type of anorexia, and even some combined the two types. This psychological disorder has the highest reported cases of death among women sufferer. Statistics tells us that 10 percent of women suffer with anorexia. This is only the full blown and the reported cases of anorexia; excluding the unreported ones. Experts believe that this statistics should increase if all cases are known and reported. There’s a stigma associated with the disease so that women – and men – patients don’t report their condition. Plus the fact that patients have often no idea that they have the condition because they often think that their practice is normal. It’s usually the roommate or the relatives of the patients that can tell that they might be having the deadly disease. There is also a wrong perception going around about this medical condition that only white, teenage women are susceptible from this disease; the blacks are spared. This is flat out wrong! In fact, this disease affects all women of all ages, colors, and background. The unhealthy perspective among women that the society accepts people that are thin often triggers and aggravates this condition. This perverted addiction to manikin-like body makes women resort to frustrated attempts just to drop those pounds of their body. But anorexia is the worst kind of perversion in diet. And since it’s a psychological condition, patients can’t recover without getting help from professionals. Women with anorexia are often withdrawn from people. They usually hide from the people; when they’re at home, they just want to stay in their rooms for almost the whole day. They have low self-esteem and shy about going out in public. This condition is potentially deadly and parents should look out signs of anorexia among their teenage daughters because the temptation of being thin is just overwhelming in this age group more than any other group. This is a medical condition and therefore needs medical treatment. Consult your doctor if you or your love ones have this disease before some irreversible damage to the body can occur.