Nutrition Current Topics in Nutrition

What Are Eating Disorders?

Images of super-thin models pervade the image of an eating disorder. But eating disorders are complex diseases that put the people who have them at serious risk for long-term problems.

It is estimated that as many as 8 percent of Americans suffer from an eating disorder. However, very few of these people understand that they have a problem. Dr. John Bunnell, expert on eating disorders and director of outpatient clinical services at the Renfrew Center Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, demystifies eating disorders.

What is an eating disorder?
Eating disorders are complex illnesses and not, as I still think many people believe, choices or a form of bad dieting. The two most talked-about types are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.

What is anorexia?
Anorexia nervosa is a disease in which people restrict or cut back on their food intake. It is usually an intense drive to be thin, a profound fear of fatness or becoming fat. There are two subtypes of anorexia nervosa. The restricting subtype, which is what most people are familiar with, when someone who purely cuts back on food intake. But there's another subtype of people who will self-induce vomiting in order to promote the weight loss.

What is bulimia?
A person with bulimia nervosa will eat an excessive amount of food in a short period of time, usually with a sense of being out of control. Overeating is followed by an attempt to compensate by purging, which may include vomiting, laxatives, diuretics or excessive exercise.

Are there any other types of eating disorders?
There's a third, Not Otherwise Specified (NOS) which broadly covers any other unnatural eating behavior. In fact, that’s the biggest category of people with eating disorders. And it encompasses people with anorexic-like behaviors and features but they haven't perhaps lost enough weight to meet the criteria for a full diagnosis. Or for people who have not been purging frequently enough to get the diagnosis of bulimia. But these are still patients who often are in very severe situations; it doesn’t mean that they’re less ill necessarily.

This also includes binge-eating disorder¾binging without the attempt to compensate. There are actually more people with this eating disorder than with anorexia or bulimia.

Who’s at risk for developing an eating disorder?
The most common for anorexia is a young adolescent between the ages of 12 and 14. For bulimia, it’s closer to 16 or 17. In both cases, your chance of getting it are much higher if you’re female. People with other sorts of psychiatric risks or issues like depression or anxiety are at increased risk for an eating disorder. So, many people with a history of trauma, psychological trauma such as abuse or rape, are at higher risk.

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