FitnessForU » Solutions to Eating Disorders

Bulimia Symptoms and Treatment

Navin — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:00:04 +0000

Bulimia is an eating disorder. People with bulimia usually have a normal weight, but perceive themselves to be fat. Or they may feel intense guilt or self-disgust when they eat. These feelings are so strong that people with bulimia throw up much of the food they eat.

Bulimia is not exclusively caused by the changes of puberty, nor is it exclusive to women. Although 90 percent of bulimia cases occur in women, and most of these women begin to eat and vomit in their mid- to late-teens, bulimia nervosa can stem from diverse causes. Bulimia nervosa is obsessive compulsive disorder of eating. The person suffering from this disorder has the tendency to consume big amount of food in a short span of time.

Effects of bulimia can be divided into long term and short term side effects. Also you can then subdivide the side effects of bulimia to correspond with the system or the organs bulimia affects: e.g. psychological problems, mental, gastro-intestinal, cardio-vascular system, kidney, skin, bones and hormonal problems.

Bulimia treatments should be followed strictly, if possible it must start from the early stages of the condition. Early treatment is very important, because if a person tries to delay in treating this eating disorder, excessive eating behavior pattern might further become more deeply ingrained and harder to change.

Nutritional Therapy is yet another way to treat Bulimia Nervosa. In this type of therapy, dieticians and other health care providers offer information about a healthy diet. At times, they even help in designing a proper eating plan to achieve a healthy weight and healthy-eating habits.

Bulimia may be caused by a genetic component. Certain genes may predispose a person to developing bulimia. Bulimia appears to run in families—people with relatives suffering from bulimia have a higher frequency of developing bulimia. This may, however, have more to do with family influences and role models than genetics.

Bulimia affects people’s mental and emotional well-being. These problems can come directly from bulimia, or bulimia may be a response to the other problems. People with bulimia may be tired and unable to perform at peak levels from the mental and physical stress bulimia puts on the mind and body.

Bulimia often begins with a dissatisfaction of the person’s body. The individual may actually be underweight, but when that person looks in a mirror they see a distorted image and feel heavier than they really are. At first, this distorted body image leads to dieting.

Bulimia nervosa can cause constipation, diarrhea, and other intestinal problems. The acidic content of vomit damages the teeth and the esophagus. It can also cause stomach ulcers and sores inside the mouth. It can even cause the stomach to rupture.

Physical symptoms of bulimia are observed only after a longer period, while psychological indicators can be seen relatively early. The eating self-abuse is usually kept secret by the patient, a fact which makes identification of bulimia even harder. The person suffering from bulimia eating disorder problems will show fatigue and a general state of weakness. With women, loss of menstrual cycles was often observed, as a consequence of the bulimia eating disorder.

Good Riddance To Your Eating Disorder Problems

Navin — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:19:21 +0000

Problems with eating disorders are a global concern for health issues.

Mental illness affects a person mentally, as well as physically. A person’s eating habits are indicative of his mental state in the usual life.

For example, a person who is depressed because of relationship problems may eat more to relieve the stress. In general, eating disorders totally wears out a person’s life and self-esteem.

Studies show that at least 5-7% of American women are affected by eating disorders during lifetime. With the escalation of high frequency rates of eating disorders and more particularly the eating disorder Bulimia, several clinical treatment of eating disorders have emerged throughout the nation.

These treatment centers treat eating disorders with a different strategy and a plan for each patient. The treatment of eating disorders is different for each patient because each patient reacts differently to treatment.

Bulimia eating disorders in particular, every patient responds differently. It is therefore necessary to find the right treatment center for eating disorders, where you have special care and common sense on how to get rid of the problems of eating disorders.

Fortunately, everything is within your reach now. Internet came up and solutions to your problems that seemed harder to reach can now be looked at with a single mouse click. There are a number of confidence building and well-recognized treatment center that have expertise in treating eating disorders such as anorexia and Bulimia.

These treatment centers have their own websites with laid out plans to help patients who suffer from eating disorders problems. There are only a few trusted sites that provide truly effective solutions. So wait no longer, if you’re tired of eating disorder problems, you should already be searching for these sites to help you get rid of this problem.

Acupuncture Can be a Solution to Eating Disorders

Navin — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 08:05:58 +0000

Many western health care providers do not agree with the potential advantages of alternative treatment methods. When there are natural treatment options where a person can stop using medications and try to use natural alternatives, these options should be explored. This is very true when it comes to eating disorders.

The two most common eating disorders are anorexia and bulimia. Anorexia is a condition characterized by a person believing themselves to be overweight no matter how thin they are. They are unable to keep their weight at what would be considered healthy.

Bulimia is similar, but when a person suffers from this eating disorder they actually tend to overeat. Immediately after eating, they feel they must purge their body of all the food they have eaten. This is done by either throwing up the food or using excessive amounts of laxatives. These disorders are commonly seen among young women.

Another eating disorder, one not given as much publicity, is binge eating. With this disorder the person overeats, more then they feel comfortable eating, but do not purge their systems. People with this disorder just continue to gain excessive amounts of weight.

Before anyone can be treated, it must be understood that these are not medical issues alone. They are the behavior of a troubled person, unhappy with their picture of their own body. Acupuncturists will tell you that they can help. Acupuncturists claim they can rebalance the body’s energy and replace the harmony needed in a person to change their eating to a healthier happier place.

Most often people suffering from eating disorders are told to see councilors. After a full medical workup they are then given advice on how best to improve their health with better nutrition. They may even see a nutritionist to help work out eating plans.

It must be remembered that these people are having problems coping in the world they are living in. Trying anything to help them seems the right thing. Acupuncture is a method that could make a difference. It can treat the stress the patient is feeling. If it does no more than that, it will be a benefit worth aiming for. People with eating disorders are unhappy and anything that can make them feel better should be considered.

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Acupuncture is one of the oldest, most commonly used medical procedures in the world. Originating in China more than 2,000 years ago, acupuncture began to become better known in the United States in 1971, when New York Times reporter James Reston wrote about how doctors in China used needles to ease his pain after surgery.

The term acupuncture describes a family of procedures involving stimulation of anatomical points on the body by a variety of techniques. American practices of acupuncture incorporate medical traditions from China, Japan, Korea, and other countries.

The acupuncture technique that has been most studied scientifically involves penetrating the skin with thin, solid, metallic needles that are manipulated by the hands or by electrical stimulation.

Acupuncture can also relieve the physical discomforts that accompany eating disorders and can be one of the solutions to eating disorders. The damage that the patient has been doing to their bodies can cause problems with their body’s normal systems.

Acupuncture can help alleviate nausea, diarrhea, reflux, constipation, bloating and the pain that comes with these disorders. It can improve the overall health of the patient by restoring the body’s natural energy and become a solution to eating disorders.

Is Emotional Eating an Eating Disorder?

Navin — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 04:20:47 +0000

If you use food to manage your mood or if you eat in response to your feelings, you may be someone who is suffering from emotional eating disorder. Emotional eating usually occurs when you eat on impulse because of a triggered feeling.

Although it is not defined as an eating disorder, some medical experts think that it is still akin to an eating disorder because the patient has an unbalanced outlook or relationship with food.

An emotional eater eats because of a triggered emotion and normally not because he or she feels hungry. If you are not sure if you are an emotional eater, you might want to ask yourself some guiding questions.

Do you normally eat even if you are not hungry?
Do you eat when you are feeling down, lonely, stressed out or if you just don’t have anything to do?
Do you usually grab food right away and chomp down?
If faced with a problem, do you usually find yourself eating instead of dealing with the problem on hand?
Do you find it difficult to draw the line between being truly hungry and just having some snacks?

If your answer to the said questions is mostly a yes, then you have experienced or may even still be experiencing emotional eating. Emotional eaters’ attention usually gets curbed because of food.

For emotional eaters, there are ways of managing this disorder. Emotional eaters can follow some steps in order to develop a healthier relationship with emotions and food.

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First off, a person should understand that while food is important to survive, to have too much passion for it is not healthy. Food should not be used as means to appease feelings of sadness or loneliness.

Secondly, a person should become a more wary eater. More thought or attention should be given whenever one is eating. A person should check his or her eating habits and learn new and other skills in order to better the current ones.

A person who thinks he or she may be an emotional eater can try keeping a food journal. Keeping one can help a person keep track of the food he or she eats, when and why.

Simply write down the food that you have eaten in a day, where you ate them and why you ate them. Was it because you were truly hungry or because of a whim? The food journal can help you keep track of your emotional eating patterns.

Once you keep a record of your eating patterns and of the reasons behind every eating session, you can fully assess the possible ways for you to deal with emotional eating.

Overeating as an Eating Disorder

Navin — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 04:12:28 +0000

As commonly known to most of us, Anorexia and Bulimia are the most common forms of eating disorders. While this is true to a large extent, Compulsive over Eating is another type of an eating disorder which is slowly becoming very common too.

The symptoms are the exact opposite to that of Anorexia and can cause serious damage to one’s health. It too is basically a mental problem and has been found to be difficult to surmount. Let us try and understand this disorder more thoroughly.

Firstly, gender is not a bias for those affected by this disorder and therefore both males and females are affected. Recent studies have however shown females being more afflicted. Over eating can be described as going on a food eating binge and literally gorging on food.

This binge in most cases is caused by accepting eating as a comfort from mental stress and is followed by a period of guilt and depression.

A person affected continues eating even after they are full and does this regularly every day, every meal. All of us tend to pig out on food at times, but when one overeats every single time, it is cause for worry and also for a check up to ensure you too are not becoming a compulsive over eater.

Some common pointers to one being a compulsive over eater are

Finishing your meal well before others and a desire to virtually attack the food on your plate.
Eating when not physically hungry that is eating without any hunger pangs or eating just for the heck of it.
Eating to a point when you feel distinctly uncomfortable. Every time you get up after a meal you realize you have over eaten but cannot help it.
Realizing that you are experiencing the symptoms mentioned above regularly and are yet not able to stop yourself.

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Although compulsive overeating may not seem like a major problem or serious enough to cause worry, it has a very large number of negative effects on your health. Heart disease, heightened cholesterol level, type II diabetes and obesity can result from this disorder.

The mental affect of having low self esteem is a major fall out and can have serious consequences. Proper counseling and guidance is required to relieve this mental strain.

The best option in case someone you know is affected by this disorder is to make him/her open up to discuss the problem with you or an expert. While discussing such a problem be very serious, sympathetic and compassionate.

Understand the physical and mental stress the person is undergoing and make sure you do not ridicule him ever. If symptoms are left untreated it can have serious consequences and it is therefore highly advisable to consult a specialist for counseling.

Compulsive overeating is a disorder affecting a large number of people, especially in large towns and cities and we need to tackle such symptoms early.

Top 5 Elements That Make an Eating Disorder Treatment Successful

Navin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:21:47 +0000

If you suffer from an eating disorder or obesity and are searching for a solution, it’s important to know that not all help is similar. Eating disorder treatment is extremely expensive (up to $1,000 a day) and so is on-going therapy. To top it all, there is no surety that the treatment will work.

There are 5 key points that are crucial for successful treatment. When researching your options, have this checklist available. The closer your options come to meeting these criteria, the better your chance of success -

1. Be cautious of over night cures -

Cured is a tricky term so before you buy anyone’s claim to cure you of your eating disorder you should do a little digging. An anorexic who gains weight and a bulimic who stops purging may be considered cured, so may an obese person who loses significant weight.

Eliminating the immediate symptom does not end the more persistent compulsion and obsession with food and weight which is another significant component of the problem. A life time of obsession and dependence on the eating disorder as a life coping tool cannot be cured in 30 days.

This doesn’t mean someone has to struggle with food the rest of their lives either. But recovery requires vigilance in self-awareness and self improvement.

Don’t be tempted by a quick fix. Seek a real solution based on ongoing inner and outer change and you will come to appreciate the life’s lesson that eating disorder is here to teach you.

2. Seek help from those who have been there -

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We have been used to being told by well meaning therapists, doctors, dieticians and coaches to just eat less, exercise more, moderate your portions, etc. It’s sound advice but close to impossible to follow at times if you’re a real emotional eater.

There is a disconnect when you are trying to get help from someone who doesn’t truly know how you feel. Somebody who has not lived the hell you are living (the self-hatred, the insanity of the food obsession and the powerlessness to control oneself, etc.) will have trouble reaching you because in the back of your mind you are thinking: they don’t really understand. It’s too easy to tune them out feeling even more isolated and alone with problems than ever.

The bottom line is that getting help from those who have actually been there and overcome it (that’s important) is the only way to receive help in the deepest way. Not only will the information make sense because it’s based on personal experience and not book knowledge (which has never worked for us) but it will penetrate into our hearts. Our hearts open when we believe that those who are helping us truly understand what we are going through.

3. Help must have a spiritual component -

Much of the help available today primarily addresses the psychological and physical aspects of eating disorders. Unfortunately, this isn’t enough. People spend years in therapy and yet continue working with dieticians to harm themselves with food. Their brains are filled with sound psychological insight as well as information about calories, exercise, eating schedules and nutrition, yet they continue to give in to cravings for hamburgers and ice cream!

The truth is that eating disorders, emotional eating and addictions are driven by a soul-sickness that no amount of intellectual understanding or personal will power can heal. A person must be given spiritual tools they can use and rely on when their own personal resources fail.

It’s important to note that there is a difference between spirituality and religion, and in this case I’m suggesting the use of the former. By being encouraged to cultivate a belief in a higher power that is loving and ever-available for support and strength, a person can begin to depend on that power for the intervention and grace that can help them stop their destructive behavior.

4. The solution must address the underlying causes -

There is no hope of overcoming an eating disorder without looking beyond the eating disorder. Obsession with food and weight and other addictions are symptoms of deeper problems. They conveniently distract us from extreme unhappiness and self-loathing that lie underneath the surface. Any treatment program that focuses primarily on food, body image and weight management is missing the point.

A person must be supported in looking at the cause of the self-loathing and subsequent self-destruction. (We don’t ever just happen to hate ourselves.) We are engaging in destructive thoughts and actions that cause us to believe we deserve punishment. By changing these thoughts and actions (most of which have little to do with food and body) we can feel deserving of better self-care. Anyone who has struggled for more than a few years with an eating disorder, if honest, will be able to admit that their problem really isn’t about food. Finding a program that reinforces this and addresses the real problem is essential.

5. Recovery includes changing your life -

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How we live determines how we feel about ourselves. How we feel about ourselves determines how we eat. Therefore, in order to eat differently we have to live differently. Many treatment centers consider a person to be cured, or well on their way, if their symptoms of anorexia, bulimia or obesity lessen while in treatment. (If anorexic, they gain a few pounds; if bulimic, their episodes decrease or stop; and if obese, they lose some weight.) The problem is that they eventually have to leave treatment and return to the same life that perpetuated or caused their problem in the first place. This is why relapse is so common.

Eating disorders are a symptom of living a life that is severely out of balance. Recovery comes when a person makes concrete, significant changes in her life. Change must be deeper than body behavior and diet. Change includes communication, thoughts, relating to people, priorities and attitude.

There is no 30 day program that will automatically cause a person to overcome an eating disorder or help a person lose weight for good. It is the hard, but necessary, ongoing changes in one’s life that enable a person to break free. Be sure that the help you seek isn’t skin-deep. There is no success without a commitment to real life change.

Bonus: It needs to work! -

Does the treatment work? Believe it or not, people forget to consider this critical question when evaluating options. They also forget to ask this of themselves after receiving help. People turn to treatment centers, doctors and counselors for answers but never stop to ask if the help they are receiving is actually making a dent in their actual behaviors.

They may feel comforted, supported and heard, but is it actually changing their symptoms? And if the answer is yes, ask how much are the symptoms changing. Most people feel that going from purging 7 times a day to 3 is good enough. But how good can one’s quality of life be when one is still purging (or bingeing)?

I am well aware that progress of any kind is never to be discounted. In light of the knowledge that a person can be totally free of their eating disorder, settling for a little less self-destruction doesn’t seem like such a great deal after all. Be sure that the help you’re seeking isn’t just a feel-good measure, but an actual solution that shows results.

These 5 (and a bonus) key elements for seeking help for eating disorders are crucial for true success. Many people search for decades and spend thousands of dollars on programs that don’t give them results.

It’s easy to let the desperation of this disease drive you to spend money now and ask questions later. It’s important to let your head and intuition not your emotions make your decision. You deserve to be (and can be) totally free from your problems. While only you can issue the permit for freedom, getting the right help along the way can make all the difference in the world.