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What Causes Eating Disorders – Most health professionals agree that eating disorders are caused by a combination of socio-cultural, biological, family, and interpersonal factors. This article provides a brief overview of these different factors that health professionals suspect may be responsible for the onset of an eating disorder in some individuals. Remember, every patient is different, so many of these factors may not come into play for some individuals with eating disorders.

Socio-cultural factors that may precipitate the onset of an eating disorder have to do with the media images presented to the public regarding beauty, health, and weight issues. Even the casual observer can find evidence for the fact that our media culture is obsessed with physical appearance, and issues such as weight loss, slowing the aging process, and the general pursuit of physical perfection.

Of course, such perfection is impossible. Many people are not able to achieve the rail-thin standards that are promoted in the media and popular culture. These socio-cultural factors, some experts suggest, may provide the impetus for some individuals who develop eating disorders.

Biological factors that may be responsible for the onset of an eating disorder include a genetic predisposition to certain hormonal imbalances. These include a predisposition to an imbalance in serotonin, a neurotransmitter that is involved in brain function, sleep patterns, and mood. Another biological factor that researchers have identified as possibly contributing to an eating disorder is a propensity in some patients for reduced blood flow to the temporal lobe.

Interpersonal and family factors may also contribute to the onset of an eating disorder. Interpersonal and family factors may include a troubled personal life, including an inability to cope effectively with feelings and personal relationships, a difficulty expressing emotions, substance abuse or alcohol problems, and low self-esteem due to bullying or teasing.

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Children often mirror their parent’s unhealthy patterns. Parents who magnify the importance of their physical appearance may be unconsciously sending an unhealthy message to their kids. Researchers have found that families with a history of sexual or physical abuse may also be more prone to developing eating disorders.

Other individual factors that can contribute to the development of an eating disorder may include depression, anxiety, and issues related to self-esteem. Also, researchers have found that major life changes can greatly contribute to the onset of eating disorders. Death in the family, change in employment, moving, starting college, the end of a relationship. All of these can trigger the onset of an eating disorder if a person is vulnerable.

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What is Eating disorder?

Eating disorders involve extreme disturbances in eating behaviors—following rigid diets, gorging on food in secret, throwing up after meals, obsessively counting calories. But eating disorders are more complicated than just unhealthy dietary habits. At their core, eating disorders involve distorted, self-critical attitudes about weight, food, and body image. It’s these negative thoughts and feelings that fuel the damaging behaviors.

People with eating disorders use food to deal with uncomfortable or painful emotions. Restricting food is used to feel in control. Overeating temporarily soothes sadness, anger, or loneliness. Purging is used to combat feelings of helplessness and self-loathing. Over time, people with eating disorders lose the ability to see themselves objectively and obsessions over food and weight come to dominate everything else in life.

Main causes of eating disorder are:

Family problems. Some individuals with eating disorders come from disordered families. The families of anorexic patients are often characterized by extremely controlling parents and poor boundaries between the parents and the child.

Social problems. Most people who develop eating disorders report having painfully low self-esteem before the onset of their eating problems. Many patients describe going through a painful experience such as being teased about their appearance, being shunned, or going through a difficult break-up of a romantic relationship.

Major illness or injury can also result in an individual feeling extremely vulnerable or out of control. Anorexia and bulimia can be attempts to control or distract themselves from such trauma.

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Gender- It is widely understood that eating disorders usually affect women, although eating disorders in males are on the rise. Because women are affected more often, being female must be considered a risk factor that cannot be controlled.

Dieting- Dieting is one behavior that deserves special attention due to its profound effect on the development of eating disorders

Genetics- Research is always looking for ways in which genetics may make eating disorders more likely. What science is learning is intriguing.

Biological factors- Temperament seems to be, at least in part, genetically determined. Some personality types (obsessive-compulsive and sensitive-avoidant, for example) are more vulnerable to eating disorders than others. New research suggests that genetic factors predispose some people to anxiety, perfectionism, and obsessive-compulsive thoughts and behaviors. These people seem to have more than their share of eating disorders.

Psychological factors- People with eating disorders often are legitimately angry, but because they seek approval and fear criticism, they do not dare express that anger directly. They do not know how to express it in healthy ways. They turn it against themselves by starving or stuffing.

Cultural pressures- Westernized countries characterized by competitive striving for success, and in pockets of affluence in developing countries, women often experience unrealistic cultural demands for thinness. They respond by linking self-exteem to weight.

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Gentle Eating – Begin your meal by closing your eyes and breathing slowly, noticing how you are feeling, Sad, Mad or glad? Locate your hunger on a scale of 1-10. One being starved and ten being stuffed. Spend 15 minutes in silence and put your fork down after each bite. When 15 minutes is completed, take time to stretch and breathe, locate your hunger again and then finish your meal.

Eating disorders indicate the strong combined activity of an underlying sense of lack of personal autonomy and an underlying sense of lack of self-control. The patient feels inordinately, paralyzingly helpless and ineffective. His eating disorders are an effort to exert and reassert mastery over his own life. At this stage, he is unable to differentiate his own feelings and needs from those of others. His cognitive and perceptual distortions (for instance, regarding body image  somatoform disorders) only increase his feeling of personal ineffectiveness and his need to exercise even more self-control (on his diet, the only thing left).

Emotional, Physical or Sexual trauma in childhood is ‘violence’ that does not require force. The child is thrown into a state of shock. For some the memories remain conscious, while others drive them beneath the conscious level. The coping mechanisms the child used are carried into adulthood and impact the person’s life on every level?Emotional, Physical, Mental, Behavioral, Spiritual, Sexual and Relationships. While these coping mechanisms were appropriate then, they are a ‘problem’ in adulthood.

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Regular yoga practice will increase the overall fitness level of the human body, improving the immune system and giving it a good chance of fighting illnesses. This is helpful with Anorexia, for example, because the sufferer’s body will experience lower energy levels, and the condition reduces bone density.In dealing with eating disorders, the yogic system identifies them as a problem related to the first chakra. There are different yoga poses that can be used to balance it: eg. staff, crab, full wind, and pigeon.

Eating disorder which includes anorexia, bulimia and compulsive overeating are some of the serious forms of mental illness. Living a life with this illness imparts a feeling of insecurity, shame, anxiety. Mostly, the individual is left to struggle alone because of the complicated combination of physical and mental symptoms, but with proper medication, this illness can be cured. People with eating disorder feel that they are overweight and continue eating less and become malnourished. Most women, especially the teenage girls are affected badly by eating disorder because in order to look good they want to lose weight by starving themselves, which is totally unhealthy way of weight loss.

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What is Eating disorder?

Eating disorders involve extreme disturbances in eating behaviors—following rigid diets, gorging on food in secret, throwing up after meals, obsessively counting calories. But eating disorders are more complicated than just unhealthy dietary habits. At their core, eating disorders involve distorted, self-critical attitudes about weight, food, and body image. It’s these negative thoughts and feelings that fuel the damaging behaviors.

People with eating disorders use food to deal with uncomfortable or painful emotions. Restricting food is used to feel in control. Overeating temporarily soothes sadness, anger, or loneliness. Purging is used to combat feelings of helplessness and self-loathing. Over time, people with eating disorders lose the ability to see themselves objectively and obsessions over food and weight come to dominate everything else in life.

Main causes of eating disorder are:

Family problems. Some individuals with eating disorders come from disordered families. The families of anorexic patients are often characterized by extremely controlling parents and poor boundaries between the parents and the child.

Social problems – Most people who develop eating disorders report having painfully low self-esteem before the onset of their eating problems. Many patients describe going through a painful experience such as being teased about their appearance, being shunned, or going through a difficult break-up of a romantic relationship.

Major illness or injury can also result in an individual feeling extremely vulnerable or out of control. Anorexia and bulimia can be attempts to control or distract themselves from such trauma.

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Gender- It is widely understood that eating disorders usually affect women, although eating disorders in males are on the rise. Because women are affected more often, being female must be considered a risk factor that cannot be controlled.

Dieting- Dieting is one behavior that deserves special attention due to its profound effect on the development of eating disorders

Genetics- Research is always looking for ways in which genetics may make eating disorders more likely. What science is learning is intriguing.

Biological factors- Temperament seems to be, at least in part, genetically determined. Some personality types (obsessive-compulsive and sensitive-avoidant, for example) are more vulnerable to eating disorders than others. New research suggests that genetic factors predispose some people to anxiety, perfectionism, and obsessive-compulsive thoughts and behaviors. These people seem to have more than their share of eating disorders.

Psychological factors- People with eating disorders often are legitimately angry, but because they seek approval and fear criticism, they do not dare express that anger directly. They do not know how to express it in healthy ways. They turn it against themselves by starving or stuffing.

Cultural pressures- Westernized countries characterized by competitive striving for success, and in pockets of affluence in developing countries, women often experience unrealistic cultural demands for thinness. They respond by linking self-esteem to weight.

Related posts:

1. Eating Disorders – It’s Main Causes
2. Eating Disorders – An Overview Of The Types And Causes
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There are several different types of eating disorders. The most common being Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa and Binge eating. With Anorexia Nervosa the person starves themselves allowing their body weight to get to 85% or less than what it should be for their height and age.

A person with Bulimia is trapped in a downward spiral. They diet to a point where they feel so hungry that they have to eat, so they binge and then purge all of the food out because they feel guilty for eating. They go back on their diet and promise they will never do it again but when they break their promise the guilt means that they repeat the cycle.

Binging is where the person eats large quantities of food frequently and on more than one occasion. When a person binge eats they feel out of control and feel as if they cannot stop eating all the while feeling guilty about what they are doing. Those that suffer from this eating disorder have a tendency to be obese and depressed.

A number of factors can trigger an eating disorder. It can be anything from psychological to genetic. Genetic factors actually account for more than half of the causes for developing Anorexia. Interestingly, a person who’s mother or sister suffered from Anorexia Nervosa are twelve times more likely to develop the eating disorder than someone with no family history.

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Eating disorders can affect both sexes. For every four women who suffer from Anorexia Nervosa there is one man who suffers from it as well. Likewise one male to every eight to eleven females suffer from Bulimia.

When it comes to binge eating it is nearly an equal ratio of male to female victims of the disorder. Granted, the number of men reporting symptoms of eating disorders is on the rise but this can be attributed to a number of factors. This could be because there is a greater awareness of the possibility that they can suffer from it or because they are in activities that have a strict weight requirement. These men might be involved in a profession or sport that have a strict weight requirement like Law Enforcement, horse racing and wrestling. Interestingly, many men who develop eating disorders were overweight as a child.

Eating disorders are serious illnesses that can kill. The friend or loved one requires professional mental and physical help. What they are going through is not a fad that will pass away with time. As a loved one you can be there for them without judgment or condemnation being a gentle positive influence on how they perceive themselves.

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