Eating disorders are not a dietary problem, but a disordered approach to food. They range from indiscriminate, compulsive stuffing of large amounts of food into oneself to refusal to eat at all. Eating disorders correspond to pathological behavior when it comes to food intake. This behavior is an avoidance behavior, a reaction to unsatisfactory living conditions, escape, helplessness, refusal and silent protest, but at the same time resignation and adaptation.
Eating disorders on the rise
People with eating disorders are often subject to enormous suffering. This is often neither perceived nor taken seriously by the environment. About 85 percent of those affected are women. Increasingly, men and young girls also suffer from it. Specialist literature increasingly points to a connection between obesity and eating disorders, especially “restrained eating” and “binge eating”.
Restrained Eating
“Restrained eating” describes a persistent, willful restriction of food intake for the purpose of weight loss or control. It may manifest itself in repeated slimming diets or persistent starvation. This behavior characterizes many normal and overweight people and has become a widespread part of many people’s daily lives. Some authors even speak of a “collective dieting behavior.” The reasons for restrained eating are manifold. Attitudes and values play a major role. But study results show that restrained eaters generally do not weigh less than people with normal eating behavior. They also suffer more frequently from binge eating. Nutritional psychologists increasingly believe that restrained eating leads to unlearning of normal satiety regulation and thus can also promote the emergence and maintenance of pathological eating patterns, (anorexia, binge eating and binge eating). Clearly, not everyone who diets becomes anorexic, binge eater, or binge eater, but the roots of these maladaptive behaviors often lie in dieting.
Anorexia nervosa.
The central feature of anorexia nervosa is extremely restrained eating. Sufferers consume very few calories; they limit themselves to small amounts of “allowed” and “good” foods. In addition, many try to achieve or maintain their weight by excessive physical activity, vomiting, or taking appetite suppressants, laxatives, or dehydration tablets. Extremely slowed eating leads to severe weight loss. Despite being obviously underweight (to others), anorexics feel too fat. As a result of malnutrition and weight loss, there is a drop in metabolism, pulse, blood pressure and body temperature, psychological and hormonal disorders (with amenorrhea as a consequence), mineral deficiency, cardiac arrhythmias and digestive problems. Anorexia is a very serious condition. Ten percent of all anorexics die from their disease. Anorexia is much more common in industrialized countries with an abundance of food than in poor countries. It mainly affects girls and young women, with a prevalence estimated at 0.1 to 1 percent. According to estimates, one in seven adolescents is at risk for anorexia.
Binge eating disorder (bulimia).
This clinical picture is characterized by repeated episodes of binge eating or cravings. The frequency of these binge eating episodes, in which large amounts of food with high energy content are consumed, ranges from once a week to several times a day. In addition to uncontrollable episodic attacks, the eating behavior of bulimics is characterized by highly restrained eating patterns, regular intentional vomiting after an eating episode, and a pathological fear of being fat. Similar to anorexia nervosa, some sufferers exercise excessively and take laxatives and dehydrators to maintain their weight. Bulimics are often normal or even overweight and thus do not stand out in their environment for a long time. In contrast to anorexia, there is usually an enormous amount of suffering. Physical sequelae of bulimia are mainly caused by the repeated vomiting:
- Inflammation of the esophagus and salivary glands, due to the corrosive effect of stomach acid.
- Mineral deficiency (electrolyte deficiency) due to increased loss via the excretion of gastric juice.
- Tooth damage caused by the acidity in the oral cavity
- Gastric ulcers caused by overuse of the stomach
- Cardiac arrhythmias due to conduction disorders, which are caused by a shift in electrolyte balance
Bulimia also affects mainly women. The frequency is difficult to determine. Probably the number of unreported cases is very high. Depending on the study, figures between 1 and 8 percent are mentioned.
Binge eating disorder, binge eating.
Binge eating disorder has been comparatively late to enter medical terminology as pathological. In this eating disorder, similar to bulimia, huge amounts of calories are consumed at once, but without regurgitating this food. Out of fear of gaining weight or out of guilt, a strict diet is maintained after such an eating attack until the control mechanism breaks down again and a new attack occurs. Those affected are caught in a vicious circle of eating and starving. Because an eating attack is not counteracted as drastically as in bulimia, obesity often results. According to American statistics, 30 percent of overweight people have this eating disorder.
