In our continuing series on eating disorders, this article will focus on Anorexia Nervosa.

Anorexia Nervosa is a very serious eating disorder which can be potentially life threatening. It's main characteristic is self starvation and excessive weight loss.

Anorexia Nervosa has four main symptoms and they are as follows:

1. A strong resistance to maintaining a person's body weight at or above what would be considered a normal minimum body weight for that person's age, weight and height.

2. A very strong and intense fear of getting fat or being overweight even though to all appearances the person is at a normal or even below normal weight.

3. A strong disturbance by the shape of the person's body. An obsession with achieving a certain look that, though to all normal appearances, is thin and frail, to the person suffering from this disease looks perfectly normal.

4. A sudden loss of the menstrual cycle in women who are past the age of puberty and in girls who have yet to reach puberty, the cycle never begins.

It is important that to have the best chance of successfully treating a person with Anorexia Nervosa that the disease be diagnosed early and treatment begin immediately.

There are many warning signs that someone is suffering from this disease. They are as follows:

a. A sudden and dramatic loss of weight in a very short period of time.

b. An obsession with counting calories, grams, fat content and a number of other things associated with the food the person eats, reaching the point where they keep daily charts of calorie intake to make sure they don't go above a certain level.

c. A gradual elimination of certain food groups that the person believes to be fattening such as sweets and eventually reaching the point of eliminating essential foods that contain carbohydrates. Eventually there is very little food the person will eat.

d. A person suffering from Anorexia Nervosa will often make comments about how fat they are even though it is apparent that they are in no way overweight. This is usually one of the earliest warning signs.

e. The person may be very hungry and in need of food intake but will deny that they are hungry at all.

f. The person will start to develop odd food rituals such as eating foods in a particular order and arranging the foods in a certain way on the plate. The person will also begin to excessively chew their food in the hopes that more will be digested and less will turn to fat.

g. The person will start to make excuses for missing meals such as, homework, tired or just not hungry. They will do anything to avoid eating.

h. The person will often begin a rigid exercise routine regardless of weather, fatigue, illness or even injury. The person will push themselves to any length to get their exercise in. This in itself can cause great harm if the person is out of shape.

i. A person suffering from this disease will withdraw from friends and activities. They will eventually become totally reclusive.

In our next article we will cover some statistics of Anorexia Nervosa and some statistics of the disease.

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Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Eating Disorders
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