Anorexia Nervosa

Anorexia Nervosa is a psychological illness characterized by marked weight loss, an intse fear of gaining weight even though the patient is underweight, a distored body image and amenorrhea. Anorexia primarily affects adolescent girls and occurs in approximately 0.2 to 1.3 percent of the general population. Complications of Anorexia Nervosa are numerous, involving almost every organ system although most complications may be reversed when a healthy nutritional state is restored.

Who Suffers from Anorexia Nervosa

The typical patient with Anorexia Nervosa is an adolescent female who is a high achiever. She usually has successful parents and feels compelled to excel. She is a perfectionist and a good student, involved in many school and community activities. She is very performance-driven and berates herself for any performance she perceives as being less than perfect. Family members often perceive the patient with Anorexia as being the "good girl" because she completes tasks and homework without having to be asked. She rarely engages in typical adolescent activities such as attending parties or dating.

By age 18 more than 50 percent of girls pereive themselves as too fat despite having normal weight.

Anorexia typically begins in adolescent to early adulthood, with onset at about 17 years of age, although it has been reported in grade-school schildren and middle-aged persons.

A common misconception is that patients with Anorexia are not hungry, but in actuality they always feel hunger. It is their ability to overcome this feelign of hunger that gives them a sense of power over their bodies. Anorexic patients are constantly preoccupied with food and have difficulty concentrating on subjects other than food, weight and dieting. It is not uncommon for these persons to have declining performances at work, at school and in relationships because of their inability to concentrate on issues unrelated to food.

Related medical problems run from fainting spells, physical weakness, exhaustion, shortness of breath to bone mineral loss, which leads to osteoporosis, slowed reflexes to an irregular heartbeat, which can cause cardiac arrest.

Both Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa tend to be higher in certain populations such as College Sororities. In this type of environment a high priority is placed on thinness, and dieting is a common practice.

What are the Signs of Anorexia Nervosa?

Signs include but are not limited to:

1. Refusal to maintain body weight at or above a minimally normal weight for age and height.
2. Intensive fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even though underweight.
3. Disturbance in the way in which ones body weight or shapes experience, undue influence of body weight or shape on self-evaluation, or denial of the seriousness of the current low body weight.
4. The basence of at least three consecutive menstrual cycles.