Often the desire to acquire harmony turns into serious health problems. Surprisingly, most often try to lose weight as much as possible, those who do not need this especially: the victims of their own ideas about a beautiful figure are girls and women with normal weight, which leads to a disease called "anorexia."
What is anorexia?
Passionate, reaching the manic desire to lose weight leads to the fact that a woman suppresses the appetite, gradually reduces the amount of food, and then completely abandons it, and the need for its reception causes disgust, nausea and vomiting. Even a small portion of food is perceived as overeating. All this is a disease of anorexia, which engenders a whole series of ailments associated with the disruption of the functioning of the body systems and mental disorders.
How does anorexia begin?
As a rule, there are no obvious reasons for losing weight in female representatives, who subsequently suffer from this disease. Most of them are teenage girls and young women who are not burdened with extra pounds, but are convinced that they need to lose weight. Often the relatives, friends, loved ones speak about it. The main phrase in conversation with them: "I am fat."
Gradually, the desire to lose weight becomes manic, and this obsession replaces common sense, even when patients with anorexia look at themselves in the mirror: there they cease to notice the emaciated body, often representing a skeleton, covered with skin, mutilated limbs, the face of a hungry man. The disease begins to progress and changes from stage to stage, exacerbating the condition of the diseased.
Stages of anorexia
Anorexia is a dangerous mental illness that can lead not only to loss of health, but also to death. The disease can have a latent course: the development of the disease occurs gradually, and the diseased, if no measures are taken to treatment, gradually "fades away" without noticing it. At the same time he is in full confidence that you need to continue losing weight.
- At the first stage, a person begins to imagine that he has excessive fullness, because of which he became the object of ridicule and humiliation, which causes extreme depression. He is constantly concerned about the issue of weight loss, so weighing and his results take him most of all - these are the first symptoms that indicate that anorexia begins to develop. Stage 1 of the disease is treatable, so it is important not to miss it.
- When there comes the 2nd stage, anorexia is characterized by a determined mood of the patient to lose weight: the depression goes away, but there is a strong certainty that the patient really has excess weight, which simply needs to be got rid of. Weighing becomes a daily procedure, with the weight loss slider falling ever lower.
- If the patient no longer needs food, categorically refuses food, he develops a steady aversion to it, it can be argued that the third stage has come: anorexia causes weight loss up to 50%. But this does not stop the patients: they continue to insist that their weight remains large enough. Talk about food now causes only annoyance, and they themselves claim that they feel fine.
Anorexia - the causes of
The causes of anorexia are not so small, as it may seem at first glance, because the history of the disease is different for all. That's why different experts define the reasons for its occurrence in their own way. Some people think that the fault that occurred in the digestive system of the body is to blame for everything, according to others, the disease appears against the backdrop of stress and depression . However, a thorough study of the nature of the disease makes it possible to distinguish the following causes of anorexia:
- the desire to imitate "podium models", considering them a model of beauty;
- absence of a firm vital position, insufficient formation of the person;
- frequent depressions and stressful conditions, conflicts with relatives and peers, not passing a sense of anxiety;
- chronic diseases of the gastrointestinal tract;
- reaction to taking medications;
- alcoholism and drug addiction.
Symptoms of anorexia
The fact that the disease begins its destructive effect may be indicative of the first signs of anorexia:
- constant talk about the need to lose weight;
- refusal of high-calorie products;
- some have a hunger strike;
- repeated depressive states.
If at this stage, help, including psychological, is not available, soon signs of the second stage of the disease appear:
- the set of foods in the diet is sharply reduced, but the amount of water being drunk increases;
- from the eaten food is often disposed of compulsorily, causing vomiting;
- To accelerate weight loss is often used enemas;
- actively used diuretic and laxative drugs.
At the third stage, changes occur that are visible to the naked eye:
- the skin becomes thin, flabby and flaky;
- Muscular tissue is thinned, and the fat layer completely disappears;
- Bones of the skeleton are seen through thin skin;
- spoil your teeth;
- hair and nails become dull and brittle.
There are violations in the activity of internal organs: there is a drop in blood pressure and body temperature, the pulse is significantly below normal. Perhaps the development of gastritis and flaccidity of the intestine, there is a degeneration of the heart muscle. There is increased weakness and fatigue, a reluctance to learn or work.
Symptoms of anorexia in girls
According to experts, in girls, the disease can identify itself before the clinical signs appear. At the same time, they are often not paid attention to, writing off for a variety of reasons for poor health: physical and mental fatigue, family conflicts, problems at work, not realizing that it shows its symptoms of anorexia and manifests itself thus:
- mood swings;
- manifestations of unmotivated aggression;
- propensity to provoke conflicts;
- irritation with adults who are overweight.
Types of anorexia
If the psychology of anorexia is known, then there are possible ways to overcome it in a timely manner, and because of the fact that the disease has various factors of occurrence, several of its types are distinguished:
- mental, which appears with nervous overload and mental disorders, contributing to loss of appetite and as a result of taking psychotropic drugs or alcohol;
- symptomatic, which is a sign of severe somatic damage to one or more body systems;
- nervous, or psychological, caused, like mental, by stress, and characterized by a conscious refusal of food and discontent with one's own body;
- drug, which was the result of exceeding the intake of various drugs.
Primary Anorexia
According to experts, the sources of anorexia are hidden in childhood and are most often associated with a violation of the child's diet. If he took food at different times, he was overfed or used tasteless or inedible foods, forced to eat violently, in childhood the foundations of the disease were laid. The primary stage is laying the foundations of the disease, which will be felt by adults with anorexia.
Anorexia nervosa
If the primary symptoms can be perceived as the first bell about the onset of the disease, then a manic, unhealthy desire to reduce weight at any cost is already perceived as the beginning of a mental disorder. This type of anorexia is extremely dangerous in adolescence, but if timely action is taken to correct behavior, recovery is possible. It is a nervous anorexia, the symptoms of which confirm the seriousness of the problem:
- the desire to get rid of the food eaten by artificial vomiting and washing of the intestines;
- increased physical activity, leading to weight loss;
- reception of fat-burning and diuretic drugs.
Psychogenic anorexia
The disease is similar to anorexia nervosa, however it is caused, as a rule, by any serious mental trauma and is accompanied by neuroses, hysteria and disturbances in the functioning of individual body systems and the occurrence of diseases caused by nervous disorders. Mental anorexia arises as a response to serious mental trauma, resulting not only in the refusal of food, but also in the appearance of paranoid abnormalities of the mental state.
Medicinal anorexia
Anorexia from taking medications can occur when taking certain medications that are not related to their indications with weight loss, or are specifically taken for weight loss. In order not to provoke the disease, it is necessary to know the drugs that cause anorexia. Among them: antidepressants, diuretics, laxatives, psychotropic drugs and drugs that enhance the sense of satiety with minimal food intake.
Anorexia - treatment and consequences
It is not easy to treat anorexia, because it is based on many psychological problems. The main difficulty will not even be treatment, but an opportunity to convince the patient of its necessity, and this is an archetypal task. If it is solved, then with the help of psychologists, psychiatrists, nutritionists and therapists, the disease can be defeated, but this process will be long enough.
In each case, there will be recipes for how to treat anorexia. The consequences of anorexia can be of the most tragic nature, this disease gradually kills a person not only mentally, but also physically: the protective systems of the body are destroyed, their working capacity gradually fades, the psyche passes into a twilight state and the patient's death becomes a natural result.