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Eating Disorders Do Not Discriminate

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Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder driven mainly by the fear of gaining weight. People with Anorexia severely limit the amount of food they eat and can become extremely skinny. Anorexia has dangerous effects on the body and the mind. It has the highest rate of death of any mental illness. Between 5% and 20% of people who develop the disease eventually die from it (Lee, 2008). It may start as simple dieting, but can quickly roller coaster out of control such as not eating at all. The person’s main focus is food, dieting, and the fear of weight gain. Others see them as being very thin but they themselves see a distorted fat image when they look in the mirror. The first victim of Anorexia is often the bones. The disease most commonly develops in adolescence, right at the time when the body puts down critical bone mass. In only six months after anorexic behavior begins, there is already bone loss. But the most life-threatening damage is usually the havoc inflicted on the heart. As the body loses muscle mass, it loses heart muscle at a preferential rate making the heart smaller and weaker. Although the heart and the bones often take the brunt of the damage, anorexia is a multisystem disease. Virtually no part of the body escapes its effects. About half of all anorexics have low white-blood-cell counts, and about a third are anemic. Both conditions can lower the immune system's resistance to disease, leaving a person vulnerable to infections (Lee, 2008). Bulimia Nervosa is

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