Therapy
If a diet to gain weight is recommended by a doctor or therapist, several small meals of healthy food per day should be consumed, which contain many vitamins, carbohydrates, trace elements and minerals. Bananas, nuts, wholemeal products, pasta, potatoes, cheese, cream and cream products, oils, spices and butter cookies are particularly suitable for this. Affected babies can be fed a special high-calorie milk diet.
Nevertheless, even without an eating disorder, gaining weight is often not easy and one should also be happy about small progress. In the case of eating disorders, nutritional therapy cannot simply be applied, as those affected will avoid eating despite being underweight. An important part of the therapy for anorexia or bulimia is to teach the affected person to eat normally again and to establish a healthy relationship with the body.
This is often done with the help of outpatient therapy in a day clinic or inpatient therapy in a suitable clinic. The therapy includes not only the building up of a normal body weight but also psychotherapy to restore physical and mental health, as well as the own body condition and to prevent a relapse. Only if the affected persons learn to accept their body again and listen to its signals like hunger, they can get rid of the eating disorder.
Within the framework of psychotherapy, the causes of the eating disorder are worked out and processed in order to eliminate them as the cause of the eating disorder. If a major social or family problem is the cause, family therapy may also be advisable. The duration of the therapy varies, but in general the earlier the eating disorder is recognized, the better it can be treated.If the affected person continues to refuse therapy despite life-threatening deficiency symptoms, forced feeding may become necessary. This will be done via a stomach tube, a thin tube through the mouth directly into the stomach.
Diagnosis
The diagnosis of underweight is based on the weight and the survey of the person concerned. Here, the distinction between normal and pathological underweight is particularly important in order to assess the need for treatment. A nutrition diary may be helpful here.
To exclude physical causes, a blood test is suitable, in which many possible reasons for underweight, for example by determining the thyroid gland values, can be clarified. More sensitivity is required when diagnosing an eating disorder, as those affected usually try to keep the eating disorder hidden by many means. The affected person can be reached through careful questioning and approximation. Careful preparation for the therapy is necessary in order to make the person affected aware of the disease value of his or her disorder. Serious indications of an eating disorder can be extreme sports, repeated weighing several times a day and refusal to eat.