EATING DISORDERS.

I’m going to talk about eating disorders. Today, this is a very common issue, especially in women and teenagers.

Eating disorders are mental illnesses that cause serious dispersions on a person's daily diet. It can manifest as eating extremely small amounts of food or eating excesively. People with these disorders, besides having serious health problems also may suffer mental illnesses, such as depression. Three eating disorders are the most common: Anorexia, Bulimia and Obesity.

 ANOREXIA:

Anorexia is a mental illness that consists in lose weight voluntarily by a pathological desire to lose weight and an intense fear of obesity.

People that suffer this disease normally do the following things to lose weight :

       ·        Reduction of food, especially food that contain more calories.

·        Excessive physical exercise.

·        The use of medicins that reduce the appetite, and the use of laxatives and diuretics.

·        Vomiting intentionally.

In this way, there is a progressive malnutrition and, physical and mental disorders can be very serious and even cause the death.

 In the last ten years the number of people affected by anorexia has increased a lot. Today, in developed countries, anorexia affects about one in every 200 young people between twelve and fourteen years old.

BULIMIA:

Bulimia is a disease of nervous type that produces alterations in the behavior and in feeding habits. The patient feels the need of eating large amounts of food, usually food high in calories. Once the patient has eaten, it will invade him strong feelings of guilt. This, leads him to mitigate the effects, induced vomiting or taking laxatives, diuretics, and also excessive exercising. All this occurs at least twice a week for three months.

 OBESITY:

Obesity is a chronic disease characterized by excessive fat in the body and it occurs when the body mass index in adults is greater than 30. It is the most common nutritional disease in developed countries.

Previously, an obese person was seen as a person who was in good health, but now, we know that obesity has multiple consequences in our health: it’s strongly related to cardiovascular, dermatological, gastrointestinal or musculoskeletal diseases, etc..

In adittion, an obese child or an obese teenager has a lot of possibilities of becoming obese adults in the future. These two stages of life (chilhood and adolescence) are critical periods in the possible occurrence of this disease.

                                                                                                  Natalia Valera Iniesta