Eating Disorders 2 Eating Disorders: It’s Affect on adolescents For many years now, eating disorders have affected many people in our society. Young people being the main target because of the publics’ idea of a person’s size and weight. In our world, society has made people think that people have to look a certain way to fit in. Most women are judge by their appearance and some still dream of the perfect measurement 90-60-90. This disorder affects both females and males, but the female population being the most talked about. Besides the eating disorders knowing that they lose weight or stop weight gain, they don’t knowledge about what the effects are. Researchers have come together to let the truth about eating disorders and what are their health complications. Some of the questions that everyone should have the answers to are:
1.What are the main points of having an eating disorder?
2.What are the medical complications?
3.Who can be at risk?
4.What are the outcomes of an eating disorder treatment right after discharge and about three months later?
Journal of adolescent health, nutrition research and eating behaviors have dedicated their time to explain all the factors so they can be accessible to the public. The information is out there to prevent people from suffering of these disorders in the future. As a young woman I find that this topic is to be known about, so that way people know what they are about to deal with to look like some magazine model. The cost of the perfect body can cause far more damage than people think. And with this information presented by these researchers, the extra pounds don’t seem so bad after all. What are the main points of having an eating disorder? Eating Disorders 3
According to the Journal of adolescent Health (2003), eating disorders are very complex illnesses that affect many adolescents and the numbers are rising. Eating disorders is the third most chronic illness in adolescent’s females with a percentage of about five. There is three groups that make up the disorders, they are; anorexia nervosa, where there is a limited amount of food taken in the system, bulimia nervosa, where the person eats but to avoid gaining the weight they get rid of the food by inducing vomiting, by doing extreme exercise or by fasting. The other group is where neither the characteristic of bulimia or anorexia I are met, this group is also known as EDNOS (eating disorders not otherwise specify). Eating disorders are very common among modern society and it can also be life threatening. Anorexia it’s said to affect one percent of all children, adolescents and adults. Bulimia is found in one to nineteen percentage of the population. Eating disorders are biological, sociological and psychological problems that can cause mortality. To be able to figure out a diagnosis and treatment of an eating disorder, the person development process is taken into considerations. The diagnostic criteria for adolescents include both the height and weigh gain during puberty and the absence of menstrual period. What are the medical complications? There is no organ that is spared when someone has an eating disorder. The most common symptoms from eating disorders come from the weight loss and malnutrition that the person puts their selves to. Some of the most known symptoms are loss of dental enamel, growth retardation, puberty delay, and the predisposition to suffering from osteoporosis. Eating Disorders can cause starvation, purging behaviors, and binge eating. The disorder can cause cardiac complications. Starvation can cause cardiac muscle to be wasted and hypo tension and reduce left ventricular mass. Exercise can also be a factor because exercise should be avoided because it causes a fatal arrhythmia in a patient that has wasted heart muscle. The patient can suffer from orthostatic hypotension, because they are underweight or have lost an extreme amount of Eating Disorders 4 weight. This occurs because it lowers the metabolic rate because there are not enough calories being taken in. People that have high percentages of weight loss are at risk for decreases in renal function. It was found those four patients between ages of thirty-one and forty-three developed renal disease and they needed chronic dialyses. These patients were found out to have suffered from eating disorders about ten to twenty years before the renal disease was diagnose. If a person takes enough laxatives, his or her urine potassium level would be less that 15 meq/l because the laxatives cause the potassium to be lost. Many people that suffer from anorexia nervosa take a lot of water, so that they can feel full and also because they think that water will make the body get rid off all the waste. But they don’t know the actual cause of this; they can get hyponatremia and hypo-osmoladity, which can later on result in seizures, coma and even death. Starvation can also cause problem in the gastrointestinal, such as abnormal hormonal and neurotransmitter functions. These kind of problem, seem to decrease as the person gains weight, but they never go away completely. Starvation can also lead to cholesterol levels going up. In a study conducted, there were 66 woman that had suffered from anorexia nervosa compared with 98 regular woman, in this “there was no difference in rate of pregnancy, mean number of pregnancies per woman, or age at first pregnancy: however, more miscarriages (30% vs. 16%) and more cesarean deliveries (16%vs.3%) occurred in the eating disorder group.” “Offspring of women with anorexia nervosa may be of lower average birth weight and are more likely to be premature.” According to the Journal of adolescent health (2003) This information was made assessable to the public so that eating disorder patients can make positive changes, since some of the complications can be life threatening. Nutrition is a big deal when it comes to eating disorders because not taking in enough calcium, vitamin, proteins, and calories affect the growth development and “the attainment of peak bone mass”. It’s proven that “adolescents with eating disorders may be losing critical tissue components (such as muscle mass, body Eating Disorder 5
Fat, and bone minerals).” Eating disorders affect an adolescent adjustment to their puberty development and the task needed to become a “healthy functioning Adult”. When an adolescent is going to be treated for an eating disorder their home situation such as the “role of the family” is taken into consideration when planning out a treatment. Eating disorders also affect the person mentally in the future. For example, there is evidence in the journal that 30% to 50%, of both bulimia nervosa (BN) and anorexia nervosa (AN) suffer from depression. BN and AN patients are the 30% to 65% of people that suffer from anxiety disorders. This causes all patients to be carefully evaluated for a “psychiatric conditions”. Who can be at Risk? According to this research by Yueching Wong, from the Chungshan Medical University, its reported in the nutrition research that beauticians are at high risk to develop eating disorders. The reason is there “work environment, pressure to be fashionable, and the unattainable images of female perfection promoted in modern commercial culture and the mass media may influence how woman evaluate their weight.” “Since the beauticians job was to emphasis beauty on others they might be at a grater risk to feel discomfort with their own body weight and shape.” The information was acquired from a study done between beauticians and non-beauticians in Taiwan. The study was designed to ‘compare self-perceptions of weight, body satisfaction, weight loss experiences, and weight –loss methods between two types of people.” The study was done in Taichung all the subjects were females. There was a group of non-beauticians from ages 20 to 45 randomly selected from six communities. The beauticians were randomly selected from the city’s Beauticians association also from the ages 20 to 45 years old. The information was collected by giving out written questionnaires, with question about heir body weight, intentional body weight loss and some eating behaviors. Some sample questions were like “ What do you think of your weight category?” with possible answers from “severely underweight” to “obese” on a Eating Disorder 6 five point scale. “ Do you have intentional weight loss Experiences?” The answers were “yes” or “no”. After the questionnaire was done, the researchers took their height and weight measurements to “compare the body weight perception and weight loss method performed among subjects in different weight categories, subjects were classified according to five categories: severely underweight, underweight, acceptable, overweight and obese.” When the results were in the comparison was made, both groups perceived their body weight to be more than what it actually was except for those people that were actually obese. The study founded that only 50% of beauticians were underweight or severely underweight and only 22.3% of non-beauticians were in the same place. From the underweight group 70%of the beauticians thought they were overweight or obese while only 50% of the non-beauticians thought the same. Out of the 70%, only 8.8% were actually overweight. When they were asked about their desire weight 78.8% of beauticians said weights that were actually underweight or below, while only 39.3% of non-beauticians thought the same. 50.1% of beauticians were to be losing weight intentionally compare to the 23.7% of non-beauticians. The medication use to lose weight is four times more use by beauticians than by non-beauticians. And beautician are twice more likely to induce vomiting to lose weight than non-beauticians.