Eating Disorders: The Causes and Concerns By- Alabhyaa Bhambri

What are Eating disorders?

Eating disorders are characterised by severe and long-term changes in eating patterns, as well as troubling thoughts and emotions. They can become fatal illnesses that disrupt physical, psychological, and social functioning. Examples of eating disorders include anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, other specified feeding and eating disorders, pica, rumination disorder etc.

Eating disorders frequently co-occur with other psychiatric conditions, including mood and anxiety disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder, and issues with alcohol and drugs.

Causes of eating disorders

The causes of eating disorders are complex, and include factors such as genetics and environmental conditions. Eating disorders are frequently linked to food, weight, or shape obsessions, as well as anxiety over consuming certain foods or the consequences of the same. Due to ranging myths and stereotypes, understanding the causes of these disorders is extremely important.

Oversimplified reasons, such as the media's promotion of the beauty standard of impossibly thin bodies, or poor parenting, are frequently blamed by the general public for eating disorders. These explanations are believed by several health professionals as well. However, research suggests that families, who have traditionally been blamed for eating disorders, are not to blame; at least not in any clear, obvious way. Many factors have been and still are under consideration as potential factors in the development of eating disorders. Of all types of eating disorders, factors related to mental health and physical image can play an important role in the development of an eating disorder.

It may also be associated with trauma such as anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, child sexual abuse, and social stressors such as peer pressure and bullying.

Body image elements may include weight-related teasing or weight-criticizing comments, an inclination towards a thin body, overeating, alcohol ingestion, or gastrointestinal problems as a child; or dissatisfaction with the body type.

Mythbusters for stereotypical statements

Many people believe that patients with eating disorders can be easily identified from their looks, whereas even a “healthy-looking” person can have an eating disorder. Families and mothers are most commonly accused for their impact on a child undergoing eating disorders, but research shows that eating disorders are caused by a complex interplay of genetic and environmental factors and that family can be a major source of support in recovery. Stereotypes suggest that eating disorders are a choice and are regularly disregarded as illnesses of choice and vanity, or the result of a deliberate adoption of an intense diet. However, those issues have far more complicated origins. They aren't simply an inflexible eating regimen that a person can effortlessly choose to abandon. Low weight and restrictive eating patterns naturally control and become deeply ingrained in an individual's psyche. Common beliefs say that society is to be solely blamed, but eating disorders are caused by a variety of factors that are complex and poorly understood. According to current studies, about 40% to 60% of the risk of anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder is genetically determined. Chance and bad luck play a part, and hereditary risk varies from person to person. A very false, yet widespread belief about eating disorders is that they are untreatable and present for life, whereas if and

when detected in time, eating disorders are treatable and can be cured.

Why is it critical to seek help for these conditions?

Suicide, organ damage, heart arrhythmia's, heart failure, and obesity-related diseases like diabetes, hypertension, gallbladder disease, heart disease, depression, and substance abuse are only a few of the prominent life-threatening consequences of eating disorders. Due to these implications, it is necessary to create a body-friendly environment, where everyone can feel comfortable with their bodies as well as feel free to discuss such disorders out in the open, forming a safe atmosphere for patients undergoing any eating disorders.

(If you or anyone you know is having doubts about or undergoing an eating disorder, please seek out for help from the given link:

https://www.eatingdisorderhope.com/treatment-for-eating-disorders/international/india )