“While more common among girls, eating disorders can affect boys, too. They're so common in the U.S. that 1 or 2 out of every 100 kids will struggle with one, most commonly anorexia or bulimia”(N.A.). Anorexia nervosa is when you starve yourself of food. It can easily be noticed because the person’s body will become extremely thin, and their bones will become brittle. Bulimia nervosa is when a person binge eats and then throw up after. Most common signs of this is when a person finds an excuse to go to the bathroom immediately after eating (N.A. 2009).
Anorexia nervosa is easy to spot among people because their body exhibits the disease by the extreme loss of weight. Where as Bulimia Nervosa is harder to spot because the person who binges and purges tends to stay within a normal weight range. Along with anorexia and bulimia, binge eating disorders, body image disorders, and food phobia are becoming more common among adolescence (N.A. 2009).
Many people who suffer from eating disorders have distorted views on what they actually look like. Thus feeding further into their disease. Along with body image, anxiety disorders, obsessive compulsive disorders, and family strife put adolescence at a higher risk of developing these disorders. “Some research suggests that media images contribute to the rise in the incidence of eating disorders. Most celebrities in advertising, movies, TV, and sports programs are very thin, and this may lead girls to think that the ideal of beauty is extreme thinness. Boys, too, may try to emulate a media ideal by drastically restricting their eating and compulsively exercising to build muscle mass”(N.A. 2009).
“Research shows that 42% of first- to third-grade girls want to be thinner, and 81% of 10-year-olds are afraid of being fat. In fact, most kids with eating disorders began their disordered eating between the ages of 11 and 13”(N.A. 2009). Anorexia effects the body in many ways. Once your body reaches a level of starvation, effects can vary. Blood pressure can drop, hair and fingernail loss is common, you can become anemic, have brittle bones, etc. Bulimia takes a tole on your stomach. You can acquire constant stomach pains, damage your kidneys, damage your teeth, the loss of potassium can cause heart problems and even death, etc. (N.A. 2009)
Questions
How do these facts make you feel?
Do you think that the media plays a role in body image?
Do you think the family plays a large role in eating disorders?
Posted By:Chelsea Lepkowski
Reference
N.A.(2009). Eating Disorders. 28 Oct. 2009 from http://kidshealth.org/parent/emotions/feelings/eating_disorders.html#
P
This post made me think very hard about what may cause eating disorders. I think that it is too hard to generalize what causes eating disorders because each person is different but I do think that the factors you all brought up such as the media and pressures from family can certainly trigger eating disorders. I think a huge factor in what causes eating disorders is low self worth and low self-esteem. I think that when a girl has low self worth these other triggers such as media, and high expectations from family can trigger an eating disorder if the girl does not feel she measures up to these ideals. I have a friend with an eating disorder. She is a brilliant person and goes to an Ivy League University. She often tells me about how she feels she is not good enough or smart enough. She gets completely down on herself if she gets any grade lower than an A in classes. In short she is a perfectionist. So I think that when girls have certain personality traits such as perfectionism or over achieving tendencies this can trigger an ED. For example when they do not measure up in a certain area or don’t perform well at something then they can feel like they are failures or not good enough. This bad self image can foster an ED. The pressure put on by oneself, the media, and family can all be too much for that girl to deal with so she turns to an eating disorder to cope with the stress. I think that eating disorders serve as a defense mechanism. It is one piece of that girl’s life she can control. She cannot control the media, how her family acts, or traumatic events in her life but she can control what food goes into her body. I think that ED’s are complicated disorders and often take a lifetime to battle or overcome but I hope that more research will be done on them to prevent girls from developing these life threatening disorders in the future.
ReplyDeleteTaylor
I think media plays a major role in eating disorders. People tend to want to be like the "it" girl is. So they buy clothes like them, do whatever they do and want to look like them which could affect their weight. Media portrays them as being the perfect woman causing unhealthy visions of themselves to arrive.
ReplyDeleteI think another interesting issue to look at is how some girls try to gain weight to gain more curves. Some develop unhealthy eating habits to try to look like celebrities such as Beyonce.
-Lisa Rodriguez
An intersting idea that is brought up in this post that people often times don't look at is how boys/men are affected by eating disorders. I believe I read somewhere (and I could be mistaken, but I remember this statistic from somewhere) that between 15-20% of all people with eating disorders are men. I have a feeling that number would be higher, but because of the old fashioned idea that this illness strikes only women, and men are supposed to be stronger and not worry about "silly things" like body image, few men come forward to find the help they need and admit to having a disorder.
ReplyDeleteI went to a boarding school in western MA and eating disorders were a huge problem. As disgusting as this is, they had to totally uproot an entire dormitory's plumbing because there was so much vomit in the pipes, the acid had burned holes through the pipes and they were leaking. It was a girl's dormitory, but I also had experience with male eating disorders. One of my best friends was on the wrestling team, and they were very competitive. The team was always at the top, and had a chance to win states my junior year. My friend passed out two days before the competition and had to be rushed to the hospital. After a while, we found out he was taking 3 or 4 laxatives a day, throwing up everything he ate, and working out with layers of sweatshirts and pants to loose weight to move down a weight class before the state tournament. His coach had told the team to do "anything necessary" to make weight, and to my friend, this meant all of these extreme measures, and eventually developing a severe, and dangerous, eating disorder.
- Cassidy
ReplyDeleteWow that is crazy about them having to change the pipes! And you are right there are many articles about girls having eating disorders and many times they do not talk about boys having eating disorders as well.
ReplyDeleteThats terrible how much young girls worry about their weight. They need to have a body image class in middle school to speak to young women.
ReplyDeleteKimberly Wabik