What is bulimia nervosa?
Bulimia (say “boo-LEE-mee-uh”). Bulimia is a kind of eating disorder. People with bulimia will eat a bigger amount of food than most people would in a similar condition, in a short period of time (spree). Then, in order to stop weight gain, they will do something to get relieve of the food (purge). They may vomit, exercise too much, or use medicines like laxatives.
People who have bulimia judge themselves cruelly on their body weight and shape. In order to help them manage with these feelings, they follow a severe diet to try to lose weight. But over time the hunger from the severe diet triggers them to binge eat. After binge eating, they feel out of control, embarrassed, guilty, and afraid of ahead weight. This distress causes them to wash out, in hopes of “undoing” any possible weight gain from the bender.
Lacking of treatment, this “binge and purge” cycle can guide to serious, long-term health problems. Acid in the mouth from vomiting can cause tooth decompose, gum disease, and loss of tooth enamel. Any kind of purging can guide to bone thinning (osteoporosis), kidney damage, heart problems, or even death.
If you or someone you know has bulimia or a different eating disorder, get help. Eating disorders can be risky. And determination alone is not enough to overcome them. Treatment can help a person who has an eating disorder feel better and be healthier.
Medical Definition of Bulimia:
Bulimia: Also call bulimia nervosa. An eating chaos characterized by episodes of enigmatic excessive eating (binge-eating) followed by unsuitable methods of weight control, such as self-induced vomiting (removal), abuse of laxatives and diuretics, or excessive exercise. The voracious appetite of bulimia is often episodic by periods of anorexia.
Like anorexia, bulimia is usually thought to be a psychological eating chaos. It is another condition that goes further than out-of-control dieting. The cycle of overeating and removal can quickly become a fascination similar to a habit to drugs or other substances. Although bulimia has been extensively considered to be psychological and sociocultural in origin, not everyone is vulnerable to developing bulimia.
There is now a considerable literature showing that bulimia is powerfully familial and that the marked familial nature of bulimia is due mainly to the additive effects of a number of genes. One bulimia vulnerability gene is known to be linked to chromosome 10p (the short arm of chromosome 10). Another defenselessness gene for bulimia may be on chromosome 14.
What causes bulimia?
Researchers have more than a few theories about the causes of bulimia nervosa; yet no single theory financial records for all possible causes and symptoms. Most of the present theories about the disorder relate to self-perceptions about body image (size, shape, and weight), mood and despair, and genetics, but researchers and clinicians do not know why one demanding person develops the chaos while another person with a very similar profile does not. Researchers are studying likely cause-and-effect relations between bulimia nervosa and other mental disorders usually associated with it. Analytic the causes of bulimia nervosa has established hard because the disorder has both mental and physical mechanism, and it develops in many age groups, races, socioeconomic classes, and both sexes.
Types of Theories:
One popular theory for the expansion of bulimia nervosa, the “cognitive behavior model” theory, presumes that the pretentious person is miserable with his or her body size and shape and connections feeling full with being fat. This insight triggers emotions of nervousness, depression, anger, and self-loathing. To the individual with bulimia nervosa, removal or excessive exercise becomes a way of removing the “fat feeling” and unwanted feelings and emotions that go with it. The pretentious person feels better meaningfully after the purging or exercising, and the feeling of superior well-being positively reinforce the behavior. Some emotional risk factors, according to this model, are an individual’s anxiety with his or her body size, shape, a propensity for thoroughness, and obsessive traits.
Several other theories can be group under “interpersonal and sociocultural models.” These theories stalk from the observation that bulimia nervosa often co-exists with another cerebral disorder, such as despair and that an individual feels pressure from the social order to be thin. This pressure, along with other interpersonal problems and depression, may activate the bulimia nervosa behavior.
The “pathophysiologic model” suggest that brain chemistry causes the disorder. Levels of chemicals such as serotonin, some kinds of opioids, endorphins, estrogen, and a peptide called cholecystokinin, or CCK, have been found to be uneven in individuals with bulimia nervosa. Irregular levels of some of these chemicals are also establish in people with other psychological disorders. Eating can also cause changes in the levels of these chemicals. Though, researchers have yet to show that these imbalances cause bulimia nervosa—the irregular levels could be a result, rather than cause, of the behavior.
Models for the biologic basis of eating disorders are being explore through family, twin, and molecular hereditary studies. Family and twin studies have time after time shown that bulimia nervosa runs in families (as do other eating disorders). Many new molecular genetic studies have recognized several possible genes, but no consistent relationship between a particular gene and bulimia nervosa has been decisively proven. For example, a Japanese study in print in late 2005 recognized a particular gene (a type of growth hormone secretagogue receptor, GHSR) that occur much more often in bulimia nervosa patients than in the study’s manage group of individuals without an eating chaos or in the study’s other two groups individuals with other types of eating disorders.
The researchers completed that this gene was a risk factor for bulimia nervosa, but not for the other eating disorders. These findings require corroboration by additional studies. Other studies from Japan and Europe in print in 2005 suggested brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) as a vulnerability gene for eating disorders, and researchers have found lower than usual levels of BDNF in patients with bulimia nervosa.
Symptoms of Anorexia Nervosa:
Anorexia nervosa is a disease where a woman is fanatical with food, body, and being thin, sometimes to the point of fatal self-starvation. This situation may cause her to exercise extremely or simply not consume enough food to meet her daily calorie needs.
Physical symptoms of anorexia may include:
- Underfed, even withered appearance with protruding bones or a hollow appearance to the face
- faintness or fainting
- Brittle nails
- Hair that thins, breaks or falls out
- Menstrual irregularity or loss of menstruation (amenorrhea)
- Baby fine hair coat face and other areas of the body (lanugo)
Emotional and behavioral cryptogram of anorexia nervosa may include:
- negative response to eat
- Denial of hunger
- extreme exercise
- Eating only a few sure “safe” foods, more often than not those low in fat and calories
- Adopting unbending meal or eating ritual, such as cutting food into minute pieces or spitting food out after masticate
Symptoms of Bulimia Nervosa:
Bulimia describe a disease where the victim moves through cycles of bingeing and removal. A woman with bulimic symptoms will eat a big amount of food in a short amount of time and then try to get purge of the extra calories by vomiting, laxative abuse or extreme exercise. In between these binge-purge episodes, she may eat very little or skip meals in total. Weight is not one of the main signs of bulimia nervosa, as wounded may be underweight, normal weight or overweight.
Symptoms of bulimia may include:
Abnormal bowel performance
Sores in the throat and mouth
Scarring on the back of the hand/fingers used to induce removal
Swollen salivary glands (creating “chipmunk cheeks”)
Menstrual irregularity or loss of menstruation (amenorrhea)
Irritation and irritation of the gullet (heartburn)
Behavioral symptoms of bulimia may include:
Hiding food or food wrappers
Eating in clandestine
Eating to the point of uneasiness or pain
Frequent bathroom trips after eating
Difference between bulimia and anorexia:
Both anorexia nervosa and bulimia are characterize by an overrated drive for thinness and a disturbance in eating behavior. The main difference between diagnose is that anorexia nervosa is a condition of self-starvation involving important weight loss of 15 percent or more of ideal body weight, while patients with bulimia nervosa are, by definition, at normal weight or above.
Bulimia is characterized by a cycle of dieting, binge-eating and compensatory removal behavior to prevent weight gain. Purging behavior include vomiting, diuretic or laxative abuse. When underweight persons with anorexia nervosa also connect in bingeing and purging behavior the diagnosis of anorexia nervosa supersedes that of bulimia.
Excessive exercise aimed at weight loss or at prevent weight gain is common in both anorexia nervosa and in bulimia.
What forms of treatment are effective for anorexia nervosa?
Treatment of anorexia nervosa involve behavioral monitoring and dietary rehabilitation to normalize weight. Psychotherapy is meant at correcting illogical preoccupation with weight and shape and prevent relapse. Interventions include monitor weight gain, prescribe an adequate diet, and admit patients who fail to gain weight to a field inpatient or partial hospitalization program. Specialty programs combining close behavioral monitoring with psychological therapy are usually very effective in achieving weight gain in patients unable to gain weight in outpatient settings. The fear of obesity and body displeasure characteristic of the disorder tend to put out gradually over several months if aim weight is maintained, and 50-75% of patients finally recover. No medications have been shown to make possible weight gain. In the case of patients under 18 years of age, family therapy has been establish to be more effective than person therapy alone.