|
Anorexia nervosa |
Details
|
Anorexia nervosa is a psychiatric condition, involving disturbing eating behavior that may lead to heart, bone and tooth damage. This disease can be life-threatening. During this condition, women are preoccupied with their body weight and food and have a distorted body image and poor self-esteem as well as obsession with exercising. Almost 50% of all people with anorexia nervosa develop symptoms of bulimia and have history of anorexia. People with this disease have a big fear of becoming fat and purposely try to lose weight to the point of starvation. A distorted body image causes anorexic people to perceive themselves as grossly obese despite protruding ribs, sunken cheeks, and the evidence on the scale. Anorexic people may severely cut the amount of food intake in order to lose weight and may use self-induced vomiting or laxatives to purge their system of unwanted calories. About 5-10% of people who have anorexia nervosa die as a result of suicide or starvation. Many of these deaths are sudden and likely due to cardiac arrhythmias. Also, some of them die due to coma caused by low blood sugar. Most likely anorexia may develop in white people. Those who went through some psychological and emotional experiences (such as losing a loved one through illness, death or divorce) are likely to develop this disease. Many of those with anorexia have depression and have no obvious symptoms and are proud of their weight loss. You may often find those individuals complaining about the need to lose even more weight. Abusing laxatives and diuretics may also cause fluid depletion associated symptoms, electrolyte imbalances. In other cases, people with anorexia always deny that they have any problems, so they must be taken for medical attention by a family member as soon as possible. The doctor usually asks questions about eating and exercise habits and asks the patient about her attitude towards body shape and desired weight. Various blood tests, physical exams and other laboratory studies will be done to rule out other possible causes of weight loss. To treat anorexia people need to be hospitalized in a psychiatric unit that specializes in treating eating disorders in order to monitor any medical complications that develop in the course of treatment. On regular basis, patients may be pressed to gain weight with a normal diet; sometimes the treatment begins with intravenous line or a nasogastric tube. Patients with anorexia also may be offered psychotherapy and behavioral therapy to achieve weight goals. Usually patients stay at a hospital until they achieve normal weight.
|
| Category |
Disease Conditions > A
|
| Related Searches |
anorexia nervosa treatment, anorexia nervosa symptoms |
| Date Submitted |
30-Jul-2005
|
|
