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Eating Disorders: Anorexia And Bulimia Nervosa

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An eating disorder is an illness that causes severe disruptions to an individual’s normal diet, such as eating unusually small amounts of food or severely overeating. A person with an eating disorder may have started out just eating smaller or larger portions of food, but at some point, a craving to eat less or more twisted out of control. Relentless unhappiness or concern about body weight or shape may also result in an eating disorder. Common eating disorders include anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Anorexia nervosa is an emotional eating disorder characterized by an obsessive desire to lose weight by refusing to eat, and bulimia nervosa is a chronic eating disorder characterized by continual episodes of excessive food intake followed by self-induced vomiting to avoid weight gain. Anorexia and bulimia are both serious eating disorders with similarities and differences in their behavioral, psychological, and physical symptoms. …show more content…

Also, they exhibit an extreme fear of weight gain. Other behavioral and emotional signs of anorexia are refusal to eat, denial of hunger, lack of emotion, and irritability. Other behavioral and emotional symptoms of bulimia are eating unusually large amounts of food with no apparent change in weight, frequent trips to the bathroom after meals, excessive exercise. A person suffering from bulimia engages in bingeing and purging. Bingeing is a period of excessive indulgence, like eating, to excess, and purging involves self-induced vomiting or misuse of laxatives or

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