Eating Disorders
Eating Disorders
The Healthy Teen Project
Adolescent Eating Disorders such as Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa and Binge Eating Disorder are treatable. Recommended treatment for adolescent eating disorders usually involves a multidisciplinary approach. Treatment should include medical; psychiatric; individual, group and, in particular, family therapy; along with nutritional rehabilitation aimed at restoring health and body weight and eventually modifying behaviors related to eating and exercise.
Anorexia Nervosa
Teenagers with Anorexia Nervosa may take extreme measures to avoid eating and control the quantity and quality of the foods they do eat. They may become abnormally thin, or thin for their body, and still talk about feeling fat. They typically continue to diet even at very unhealthy weights because they have a distorted image of their body.
Signs of Anorexia Nervosa may include:
- A distorted view of one’s body weight, size or shape; sees self as too fat, even when very underweight
- Restricting, hiding or discarding food
- Obsessively counting calories and/or grams of fat in the diet
- Denial of feelings of hunger
- Developing rituals around preparing food and eating
- Compulsive or excessive exercise
- Social withdrawal
- Pronounced emotional changes, such as irritability, depression and anxiety
Physical signs of Anorexia Nervosa include rapid or excessive weight loss; feeling cold, tired and weak; thinning hair; absence of menstrual cycles in females; and dizziness or fainting.
Teenagers with Anorexia Nervosa often restrict not only food, but relationships, social activities and pleasurable experiences.
Bulimia Nervosa
Teenagers with Bulimia Nervosa typically ‘binge and purge’ by engaging in uncontrollable episodes of overeating (bingeing) usually followed by compensatory behavior such as: purging through vomiting, use of laxatives, enemas, fasting, or excessive exercise. Eating binges may occur as often as several times a day but are most common in the evening and night hours.
Teenagers with Bulimia Nervosa often go unnoticed due to the ability to maintain a normal body weight.
Signs of Bulimia Nervosa may include:
- Eating unusually large amounts of food with no apparent change in weight
- Hiding food or discarded food containers and wrappers
- Excessive exercise or fasting
- Peculiar eating habits or rituals
- Frequent tips to the bathroom after meals
- Inappropriate use of laxatives, diuretics, or other cathartics
- Overachieving and impulsive behaviors
- Frequently clogged showers or toilets
Physical signs of Bulimia Nervosa include discolored teeth, odor on the breath, stomach pain, calluses/scarring on the hands caused by self-inducing vomiting, irregular or absent menstrual periods, and weakness or fatigue.
Teenagers with Bulimia Nervosa often have a preoccupation with body weight and shape, as well as a distorted body image. The clinical diagnosis commonly defines Bulimia Nervosa if they binge and purge on average once a week for at least three consecutive months.
Binge Eating Disorders
Binge Eating Disorder is characterized by a sense of uncontrollable excessive eating, followed by feelings of shame and guilt. Unlike those with Bulimia Nervosa, however, teenagers with Binge Eating Disorder typically do not compensate for their binges.
Teenagers with Binge Eating Disorder may feel like they have no control over their behavior and eat in secret when they are not hungry.
Signs of Binge Eating Disorder might include:
- Eating an unusually large amount of food in a distinct period of time (within 2 hours)
- Hiding food or discarded food containers and wrappers
- Eating in secret because of feeling embarrassed by how much they are eating
- Eating when stressed or when feeling uncertain how to cope
- Feeling that they are unable to control how much they eat and disgusted with themselves afterwards
- Experimentation with different diets
Most of the physical signs and symptoms associated with Binge Eating Disorder are long-term, including weight gain, high blood pressure, diabetes, irregular menstrual cycle, skin disorders and heart disease.
Similar to Bulimia Nervosa, Binge Eating Disorder is commonly diagnosed if teenagers binge on average once a week for at least three consecutive months.
