Understanding The Effects Of Diverse Eating Disorders by Andy Guides Jr

Many people if asked could not tell the difference between someone who is on a diet and someone who is suffering from an eating disorder. They are however two very different things though. A diet is used as a means to lower your weight in a healthy manner; a disorder however, is an illness which effects the self esteem of the individual suffering from it in a very dangerous way.

Anorexia Nervosa is one of the primary disorders. The phrase itself means "a lack of desire to eat". The sufferer of Anorexia Nervosa believes themselves to be fat, no matter how thin they become. They become obsessed with counting calories and will adopt devious behaviour in order to skip meals and hide food. In common with all of these disorders, Anorexics suffer from low self esteem and tend to use the condition as a means of self punishment.

Commonly linked to Anorexia is Bulimia Nervosa. It shares some of Anorexia's features especially the sufferers' low self esteem. The difference is food is used by the Bulimic as a comfort and is not avoided at all. Bulimics are able to ingest as much food as they wish and rid themselves of it soon afterwards by taking laxatives or making themselves vomit it up again, this is known as purging.

Compulsive Eating Disorder is another similar but different illness. In this condition the sufferers are classed as having an addiction to food and using it as a means to close themselves off from their worries and the outside world.

People who suffer from Compulsive Eating Disorder tend to eat obsessively until they are dangerously overweight. Conditions such as heart attacks and strokes are liable to be a cause for real concern amongst sufferers due to high cholesterol in their diets.

The last of these common disorders ( there are many more but here we are looking at the primary ones ) is Binge Eating Disorder. Binge eating is closely linked to both Bulimia and Compulsive Eating Disorder. The frequency in which the binge eating is done is less than with Compulsive Eating Disorder and the quantity of food consumed is different also.

The same issues with self esteem are very apparent in this illness and the shame the binge eater feels at eating beyond their own bodies calorific needs leads of a cycle of yet more comfort eating. Much like the compulsive sufferer the binge eater will not purge but rather keeps the calories. The only reason they are not generally as large as the compulsive disorder sufferers is they binge less frequently.