Anorexia Nervosa

Women suffering from eating disorder anorexia, technically termed anorexia nervosa is characterized by severe weight loss, either by severe restriction in food consumption or excessive exercising to the point of significant physiological consequences. An anorexia patient refuses to maintain a normal body weight, and is intensely afraid of gaining weight, even if they are underweight. Studies have reported that an estimated 0.5 to 3.7 percent of females suffer from anorexia nervosa in their lifetime.

There are usually two types of anorexia seen in women affected by it:

Restrictive type: In this category, the anorexic takes to intensive caloric restriction and methods like starvation to keep off weight.

Binging/purging type: In this type, the anorexic woman first binges food and then purges the body of the ingested food either by self-induced vomiting, ingestion of large quantities of laxatives, the overuse of diuretics and enemas to rid the body of food.

Women with anorexia develop unusual eating habits such as avoiding food and skipping meals; picking out a few foods and eating these in small quantities, or carefully weighing and portioning food. This process of deliberate self-starvation results in malnutrition leading to protein deficiency and multiple organ failure. If not treated in time anorexia can become a lifelong illness and long-term or severe anorexia can lead to other serious health problems and may even prove fatal.

Causes
Anorexia nervosa in its real term is more than just a disorder or problem with food. Women affected by it  consider it more of a way of using food or starving oneself to feel more in control of her life and to ease tension, anger, and anxiety. Though there is no single known cause of anorexia, several factors like biological and genetics, cultural, personal conception, and any other stressful events or environmental transformation.

Biological and genetic:  Anorexia is said to be influenced by several biological and genetic factors like obsessive-compulsive, temperamental and also due to certain hormonal imbalance.

Cultural: Women sometimes get adhered to eating disorders like anorexia due to cultural compulsions of being thin. Women in the U.S have lately become a victim of such a cultural vice.

Personal conception: Women with anorexia usually possess a distorted perception about their looks and weight. They feel they are overweight and fat even if they are skinny and thereby take to methods like starvation.

Stressful events: Stressful events like substance or sexual abuse may lead a woman towards anorexia. Even environmental displacement and change of careers may lead to anorexia.

Family impact: A woman with a family history of anorexia is more prone to the disorder than others. In such cases, the person grows up with a distorted image of themselves as projected by their mothers or any other members of the family.

Symptoms

• Peculiar patterns of handling food; like playing with food.
• Resistance to maintaining body weight at or above a minimally normal weight for age and height.
• Acute fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even though underweight.
• Disturbance in the way in which one's body weight or shape is experienced, undue influence of body weight or shape on self-evaluation, or denial of the seriousness of the current low body weight.
• Irregular menstruation.
• Compulsive exercising despite fatigue and weakness.
• Some show signs of bulimic traits of binge-eating followed by vomiting and/or laxative and diuretic abuse.

Diagnosis

• Abrupt weight loss of 15% or more, with no known medical illness accounting for the loss.
• Reduction in food intake, denial of hunger and decrease in consumption of high carbohydrate and fat-containing foods.
• Girls with anorexia often experience a delayed onset of their first menstrual period.
• Cessation of menstruation or amenorrhea.
• Takes to excessive exercise, purging and overuse of laxatives or diuretics.

Prevention
Women with traits of anorexia nervosa go on self-starvation and excessive strenuous exercising resulting in severe weight loss to the point of significant physiological consequences and might even prove fatal. They are generally defiant about treatment. It is the collective responsibility of people around the patient to initiate a treatment process which includes, maintaining a healthy weight, learning good eating habits and healthy living.

Treatment
Women with this disorder see themselves as overweight even though they are dangerously thin. Moreover, one of the basic traits for such patients is that they deny that they are anorexic. Thereby, it has been found that counseling the anorexic patient is the fundamental form of treatment. Family and friends have a major role to play in taking the affected woman to confidence and get her treated in time so as to ward of grave health consequences and even death in some cases. The most common causes of death are complications of the disorder, such as cardiac arrest or electrolyte imbalance, and suicide.