Anorexia - Symptoms, Causes and Treatment

Anorexia nervosa is a psychiatric disorder that is influencing people to resort to desperate measures to lose weight, including long-time starvation, abuse of laxatives or diuretics, or excessive exercise until exhaustion. Anorexia can affect people of any age or sex, and teenagers are the ones who suffer from this disease most.
Weight loss is a progressive and usually starts with a normal diet for weight loss. If the diet continues for several months then it is a concern because weight loss is extreme. Patients have a modified whole picture of their bodies and they have a fear of gaining weight, even though they are underweight.
Those who suffer from anorexia tend to hide symptoms, so it can pass enough time until they realize it. Here are some signs: they skip meals or eat and drink very little during the meal, the skin becomes yellowish, they lost several pounds in a short time, always complain about being fat, they eat in a strange way.
Lack of menstruation 2-3 months in a row may be a sign of anorexia. Poor nutrition produces large mineral and nutritional deficiencies in the body. This in turn affects the endocrine system and hormone production responsible for maintaining the normal menstrual cycle.
Sooner or later, every woman becomes dissatisfied with her physique, but she does not become obsessed with her looks. If you have a very bad opinion about your body and you consider overweight, even though you have a weight far below the standard, it means that you have a distorted body image. This disorder accompanies anorexia and should be treated by a psychologist.
Possible causes of anorexia: public infidelities of their parents, family scandals, pregnancy of mother or sister, a parent's illness. They can also occur when a person begins a relationship involving interpersonal intimacy and sex. Emotional disturbances have as an internal causes emotional distress installed over time, manifested hidden in several states like anxiety, panic, and depression.
Anorexics are isolated and distress and sadness are common. Many studies have shown that suicide is the most common cause of death in anorexia. Anorexic react with hostility to parents and therapists, involved in his fragile defense mechanisms.
Love and affection, lack of care and support in relation to the mother or grandmother, is shown by organic starvation. Anorexic is concerned about the food. There are different ways to deal with food. Sometimes fascinated by food, he adopts various attitudes like cooking for others. Other anorexic persons manage to remove their thoughts about food, by an intense intellectual activity.
If not treated in time, anorexia puts you in danger of death and may even lead to death, so it is very important to seek help from the very beginning. Anorexic person must follow a therapeutic approach and to understand where it comes from, what does it mean, and to find solutions for his own life.
Treatment includes counseling by a nutritionist to learn how to eat healthy and how to exercise safely, psychological help because the patient must learn to have a healthy self-image and respect his own body, medication for the side effects, such as osteoporosis or heart problems.