Coping with Eating Disorders: Types of Eating Disorders
Even though exact symptoms vary due to individual personality, lifestyle and circumstances, these are three commonly experienced eating problems that often have overlaps between them.
- Compulsive Eating.
- Bulimia Nervosa.
- Anorexia Nervosa.
Compulsive Eating
This is where a person finds they have irresistible urges to binge. Often after a binge they might feel overwhelmed by feelings of self-disgust or shame. The binge may follow a period where a rigid dieting regime has been put in place.
Thus a diet-binge cycle may ensue. The dieter is often concerned with body size that may fluctuate. Someone who compulsively eats may appear or feel overweight.
Eating is often not in response to physical hunger pangs. The eater feels out of control around food. The desire to binge seems to take over and overpower any will to diet and lose weight.
Bulimia Nervosa
This is a cycle of overeating followed by self-induced vomiting or purging with laxatives or fasting. The eating disorder is often kept secret. The sufferers binge or purge alone and appear normal in body size. Those experiencing bulimia are constantly preoccupied with food and body size. They may have lists of high calorie or high carbohydrate foods that are self-forbidden, these foods become binge products. The disorder is characterised by secrecy, shame and guilt until help is sought and recovery begins.
Sufferers from bulimia may experience one or more of the following:
- Damage to kidneys;
- Swollen salivary glands;
- Damage to stomach and oesophagus;
- Loss of body fluids;
- Muscle cramps and weakness;
- Fainting spells;
- Fits and irregular heart beats.
The binge seems an automatic response to emotional pain. Often the person feels out of control and unable to resist the desire to binge.
Anorexia Nervosa
Those who experience anorexia may be totally obsessed with food yet diet stringently and deny themselves healthy meals. They are constantly dieting or exercising to loose weight. The most commonly affected are young women in education aged 15-25. Although they may appear very underweight they will feel fat. Anorexia can be life-threatening - some women starve themselves to death. Sufferers often feel low self-esteem and may vomit or purge themselves of food with laxatives. Women anorexics will sometimes suffer a loss of menstrual periods.
Sufferers may feel terribly isolated and may experience the effects of starvation including:
- sleep disturbance;
- reduced mental ability;
- excess hair growth on body;
- poor circulation;
- feeling excessively cold;
- fatigue;
- dizzy spells;
- thin bones leading to deformity or osteoporosis;
- stunted growth;
- digestive tract dysfunction.
Indeed all eating disorders may incur feelings of isolation, shame, guilt and emotional pain.