Learn About the Types of Eating Disorders

Mona Khanna: Eating disorders are source of great concerning this country, particularly since so much of our fashion magazines or fashion industry and so many of the messages that we sent to children are that thinner is better, thinner is more beautiful, thinner is more powerful and, thinner people have a greater success whether it will be able to work or at home. So, because of all those messages, which were constantly being bombarded by it is a problem and continues to be a problem, in fact it is getting worse. We know the children at younger and younger ages now are starting to exhibit the science and symptoms of having into this eating disorders were as previously a few decades ago, you may have seen it, who were teenagers or young adults now we're seeing it with a girls especially in their middle school ages. How many types of eating disorders are there? There are three main types of eating disorders. The first is anorexia nervosa, the second is Bulimia nervosa and third is Binge eating. And the differences between them or can sometimes be settle, but in general what we see is with the anorexia nervosa we see people, who are underweight in many cases girls who have been menstruating in the past, loose their mensuration, they loose their period, because they don't have enough body fat to sustain the estrogen. In anorexia nervosa we see children and were adults have distorted body images and distorted perceptions of them self. They will look in a mirror and see somebody who is fact, they will see the same person that you or I would I see, if we looked them if we looked at this person, we see somebody who is skinny or who was you know who was slim at the vary at least but they distorted body image and think that there is no way they can loose enough weight, so they keep trying to loose more and more weight, that anorexia nervosa. Bulimia nervosa on the other hand is a condition, where we have people who eat and then they throw up what they eat. So by all accounts to family and friends they are actually eating and there is no sign or indication that there is anything mess, because in general their body frame is normal and they are not particularly skinny but what they do is after they eat, they throw their food up. Some of the science you can see of a person, a person who is throwing his or her food up whether it's Anorexia or Bulimia is sometimes, if you look at their hands , their knuckles are scaly because what they are doing is there putting their hand in their mouth to institute gang reflex, so they can throw up. The other thing we notice with these folks is, that the back of throughout area and down the esophagus because very crowed. Because when it happens is, when you eat the food and it goes into your stomach it mixes with acids in your stomach. Then when you throw it up all that acid is crowding your esophagus when you throw or when you bringing it back up especially for somebody who does that repetitively we see some real disorders in that sense in there throats in their esophagus. And the third eating disorder then is Binge eating. And that is men or women, who like to eat great amounts of food, I mean we've heard accounts of somebody who will going empty that refrigerator and then after that those they may or may mot throw it up but then they won't eat as much, perhaps several days had time and they not going to Binge again. Very similar to Binge drinking but also classified us one of them of the eating disorders. Who is most at risk to develop an eating disorder? We always talk about eating disorders and put it in the context of the young women. But eating disorders actually affect all across social economic lines both genders; all ages, and all status levels. So we see at in younger men we see it in older men, we see it in younger women; we see it in older women. It really, really has no age or gender or raise barrier at all, so we're seeing it all these different groups. We know that some groups are higher risk for developing eating disorders than others. For example, we know that young women, who are perfectionist or abusive about their grades were very students, who are start athletes, who feel like they need to please others that seems to be a group with that higher risk, typically these girls have very good grades in school. They excel academically, they may excel athletically, they may excel in the arts, but they are really striving for perfection, they may be productive perfectionist parents. They may have parents with high expectations, very unrealistic expectations. So, what they are trying to do is please everyone around them and the way they do that is by punishing their body. So that's one group of women, who we know young women who are higher risk for developing one of these eating disorders What are the treatments? Treating eating disorders is very, very difficult especially because accept for body weight we don't really have a good biomarker for determining, how severe the disease is. So in general, the way its being done in this country is unless somebody drops to dangerously low level of body weight then that person is generally treated as an out patient. When they drop to very low level of body weight or if they repeatedly have been treated for the same eating disorder without any improvement then they are candidates for inpatient therapy and inpatient treatment. Are there any medications? There are some medications that we can actually give. A people who might be agreeable that they understand, that they have to gain weight for their bodies own health and there own health status. We can give medications to increase their appetite. And in some cases we do that, but really that mainstay of treatment for somebody wouldn't need disorders is therapy, because if the problem is physiological and they won't eat, because they don't won't too because they feel like they get too fat. We need to overcome in that, because we can't give somebody medication forever in other words that's a stopgap measure is giving a medication to increase their appetite if their weight drops to dangerously low level. We want to make sure we attack the problem at the root, so that they can live with rest of their lives. What should you do if you suspect someone you know is suffering from an eating disorder? Like any other medical condition, if you suspect a love one has an eating disorder, the first thing really is too absorb. You may want to write down your observation in a diary, whether be the person disappears after meals for long period of time or whether be the person has slowly decrease the amount of food he or she eats or as eating at abnormally large amount of food and occasionally, and then without that documentation you -- at some point are going to have to get this person in for help, whether it be a therapist. The best place is probably to start with their primary care position. And one the ways to actually get them there is to look at conditions that are caused by the eating disorder. For example, if you have somebody with anorexia nervosa and who is throwing up to Bulimia nervosa and he is throwing up food, and they have tooth decay well they need to get in see a dentist and that can possibly starts the line of questioning like, Wow! How come all the set knew you have all the tooth decay and why this affect the back of your teeth and the lower back of teeth is supposed to the other places in your mouth where people who chew and eat a lot of sugar would normally get decay. So there has to be a situation were assign or symptom or consequence of the eating disorder then leads to care and that care leads to line of questioning. Confutation usually is the not the most successful way of getting somebody in for help for eating disorder, so that's what I would recommend is the other way, the indirect way.