What Are the Differences Between Bulimia and Anorexia? Millions Suffer From These Eating Disorders

There are two main types of eating disorders known as anorexia and bulimia. It is highly thought that these are caused by dieting, but dieting is just a side effect. There are differences between bulimia and anorexia, and millions of people suffer from these eating disorders.

There are about 2 million people in the United States that are suffering right now from one of these eating disorders. These illnesses are more often occurring in girls and women than in men. However, there are many male patients that are battling these eating disorders as well.

Anorexia is an eating disorder where a person thinks that they always look fat. People have been programmed to think that they need to be thin to be attractive, and thus tend to starve themselves in order to be thin.

Anorexia is showing up more and more in teenagers. The teenagers are often girls of middle to upper class families. Teenage boys suffer from anorexia but not as often.

An anorexic person does not want to eat when in order to survive. There are anorexia patients who avoid eating food, and they do strenuous exercises or activities like grueling physical exercises so they will lose weight and not gain any. Usually their weight is already below normal. Gaining weight is the worst fear of a person with anorexia. The excessive weight loss that anorexics usually have will cause hormonal disturbances and a number of other health problems can occur. Anorexics hardly eat at all.

The cause of anorexia is not known yet. There are health experts who believe that biological, nutritional and psychological causes combined lead to this disorder. There are social and environmental causes like puberty, a death in the family or other stress related situations which could lead to anorexia. Psychological and family support is needed for an anorexic to understand their eating.

Bulimia nervous is a common eating disorder where the person has a tempting urge to eat. They have repeated episodes of binging in a very short amount of time. Bulimics eat a lot. They often eat in secret because they can not stop eating. Bulimic people are very afraid of obesity and this leads them to self-induced vomiting in order to get the food out of their body. To be diagnosed with bulimia, a person must be binging and purging regularly, at least twice a week for a couple of months. It is much different from stuffing yourself at a party or on Thanksgiving. Bulimics feel that they must purge their bodies of all the food.

Bulimics will also try laxatives, diuretics, strict fasting, and dieting of any kind. They will also want to do hard physical exercises for their body to prevent the weight gain.

Although anorexia and bulimia are very similar, people with anorexia are usually very thin and underweight but those with bulimia may be of normal weight or even overweight.

Anorexia and bulimia are much more often seen in girls rather than boys. Like anorexia, the cause of bulimia is not known. Having the support of family very helpful for the anorexic and bulimic person. Both anorexia and bulimia are dangerous and life threatening unless help is sought and counseling is followed. Although there are differences in bulimia and anorexia, there are similarities in that millions suffer from these eating disorders.

See how a mother discovered a home treatment program for her anorexic bulimic daughter who nearly died from anorexia-bulimia.
http://anorexia-bulimia-disorders.info

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