What Is Anorexia Nervosa?
Anorexia nervosa is one of the most prevalent eating disorders and also one of the most life-threatening. A person suffering from anorexia refuses to maintain a healthy body weight. Anorexics have an intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat and strive for perfection. Due to the loss of fat and weight, girls and women may suffer repeated missed menstrual cycles. People suffering from anorexia are generally very restrictive in their eating habits.
Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder affecting mainly girls or women, although boys or men can also suffer from it. It usually starts in the teenage years. It is difficult to estimate how common it is but surveys suggest that up to 1 per cent of schoolgirls and female university students have anorexia nervosa. This may be an underestimate.
Anorexia nervosa, in the most simple terms, is self-starvation. Anorexics (anorectic is also correct usage) are typically described as “walking skeletons”, a graphic image that depicts the pallor and frailty of these struggling individuals. Anorexics are also often characterized as stubborn, vain, appearance-obsessed people who simply do not know when to stop dieting. But anorexia nervosa is much more than just a diet gone awry, and the sufferer more than an obstinate, skinny person refusing to eat. It is a complex problem with intricate roots that often begins as a creative and reasonable solution to difficult circumstances, and is thus a way to cope. Anorexia is Greek word meaning “loss of appetite,” which is misleading because only in the late stages of starvation do people in fact lose their appetites. Instead, an intense fear of weight gain leads anorexics to routinely and vehemently deny their hunger. In order to formally diagnose an individual with anorexia nervosa, clinicians t
Anorexia nervosa is a life-threatening eating disorder that is characterized by self-starvation and excessive weight loss. The disorder is diagnosed when a person weighs at least 15 percent less than his or her normal body weight. Extreme weight loss in people with anorexia nervosa can lead to dangerous health problems and even death. The term anorexia literally means “loss of appetite.” However, this definition is misleading as people with anorexia nervosa are often hungry but refuse food anyway. People with anorexia nervosa have intense fears of becoming fat and sees themselves as fat even when they are very slender. These individuals may try to correct this perceived “flaw” by strictly limiting food intake and exercising excessively in order to lose weight.
