Explained: The Difference Between Different Eating Disorders
Food is essential to maintaining physical and mental health.
Duh.
But eating nutritious food in proper quantities is key.
Ideally, someone would eat three or four small meals a day, balancing starches and proteins with fruits and legumes. But not everyone can maintain a balanced diet or a healthy eating schedule.
At least 9% of the world’s population suffers from some type of eating disorder. This equates to about 28.8 million people in the United States alone.
Eating disorders can act like mood disorders or addictions.
Unlike other addictions, someone displaying addicted behaviors towards food can’t simply quit the addiction. They need to eat to live. Because of this, it is hard for someone to change their eating habits into a healthy lifestyle.
Most mood disorders have a multitude of causes. Sometimes our environments, such as bullying, harassment, or a traumatic event, can trigger a mood disorder.
Disorders can also be genetic due to the lack of production for different chemicals in the brain. 28-74% of risks related to eating disorders are through genetic heritability.
Both extremes of eating disorders can be life-threatening. There are 10,200 deaths each year, which are the direct result of an eating disorder. That’s one death every 52 minutes. Someone can die from essentially starving themselves. Overeating and extreme excess fat can also kill you.
Due to the severity of different disorders, it is important for parents, and students, to educate themselves about the signs and differences of various food-related illnesses.
Anorexia Nervosa
Unfortunately, anorexia is one of the most common types of eating disorders. Anorexia is often characterized as restricting food intake, often to the point of self-starvation.
Most age groups seem to have a stable number of people suffering from the disorder. In this case, stability means that the rate of diagnosis remains relatively the same. However, for 15 to 19-year-olds, the rate of diagnosis has been increasing over the last few decades. Experts agree that this age group for women is high risk.
People with this disorder have a fear of gaining weight. In fact, they often exhibit a sense of extreme concern with their body weight and shape. This can be due to poor self-esteem and self-worth. This is often connected to their weight due to their distorted perceptions of themselves.
Unlike popular belief, this does not mean restricting all food all day long.
Another characteristic of anorexia includes restricting the consumption of one particular food. For example, someone diagnosed with anorexia may only eat legumes to restrict the volume of food eaten or caloric intake. These individuals often monitor their weight to see if they are “restricting enough”.
Since someone with anorexia is limiting the volume of food eaten or the number of calories their body consumes, you will often find someone with the disorder underweight.
However, this isn’t always the case. In milder cases, people showing symptoms of the disorder may not experience weight loss. Similarly, their peers and families may not see a physical weight change.
Nevertheless, people with this disorder often feel “fat” or overweight despite being underweight compared to their peers and people of similar height.
There is a subtype of Anorexia Nervosa that involves binging followed by purging. This means that someone will restrict their food intake most of the time. However, they also experience times of eating too much and then either vomiting or taking laxatives to quickly remove the food from their bodies.
Bulimia Nervosa
The rate of bulimia diagnoses for women is higher than for men. An estimated 1.5% of women in the United States suffer from bulimia for the duration of their lives. It is also worth noting that black teenagers are 50% more likely than their white peers to exhibit bulimic behavior.
A common characteristic of bulimia is to quickly remove food from the body as a means to reduce the number of calories consumed. This removal of the food from the body is often done through forced vomiting. Some people achieve this by excessive exercise, diuretics, enemas, or excessive exercise.
Some bulimics purge to reduce feelings of physical pain due to eating. Why would someone be in pain from eating?
In these instances, people with bulimia will eat large quantities of food to satisfy their hunger. They don’t consume a healthy amount of calories so it makes sense that they would be hungry. Because their stomachs are shrunken from little food intake, when they eat a “normal” sized meal, their stomachs can’t handle the quantity of food. The stomach expands to the point of pain, motivating the individual to purge.
There are key differences between bulimia and the binge-purge subtype of anorexia. People with anorexia are underweight but people with bulimia maintain normal body weight. People with bulimia don’t normally restrict their food intake. Think of it as the bipolar version of an eating disorder.
There are three common symptoms that most people with bulimia experience.
Eating large quantities of food in a short time frame. This quantity of food is significantly more than what a healthy person would eat in a similar quantity of time.
Feeling that they don’t have control over food consumption during an episode of bulimia.
Regularly engaging in inappropriate behaviors, such as purging, to avoid gaining weight as a result of the overeating episodes.
Many people don’t know that there are physical consequences to these actions. If someone forces themselves to vomit regularly, then the regular exposure to stomach acid begins to erode tooth enamel. Teeth can even start to decay and rot after continual exposure.
Similarly, stomach acid attacks the esophagus, causing frequent sore throats. The acid can also cause holes to form inside the mouth, often forming ulcers. These ulcers can release fluids that can irritate someone’s throat even more.
If the stomach is frequently releasing food and stomach acid into the esophagus, the muscles that keep the stomach closed may begin to malfunction. This turns into gastroesophageal reflux disease.
Gastroesophageal reflux disease, also known as acid reflux, is a chronic digestive disease where the liquid content of the stomach refluxes into the esophagus, the tube connecting the mouth and stomach.
Another common side effect is severe dehydration. Food often provides our bodies with liquids. Additionally, people often drink while eating food. If someone with bulimia doesn’t eat regular meals, then they are likely not drinking enough as is. If they are purging food intake, then they are also purging themselves of water. The combination of these issues can cause a severe lack of fluids in the body.
Binge Eating Disorder
Binge eating disorder (BED) is often said to be the most common eating disorder. More specifically, it is common among males and older individuals. In fact, 2.8% of adults in America have suffered and will suffer from BED in their lifetimes.
Compulsive overeating is the primary indicator that someone is suffering from BED. The disorder involves periods of uncontrolled, continuous consumption of food. Additionally, the rate at which they eat is significantly faster than in someone without the disorder.
BED differs in that someone will continue to eat uncontrollably despite feelings of being full. They might eat even if they don’t feel the slightest bit hungry. It also differs in that someone with this disorder does not purge the food they eat, even if they feel sick due to eating too much in one sitting.
To compensate, many people will diet and restrict themselves from eating. This is because overconsumption causes some amount of weight gain. Some people with this disorder are on the upper end of normal weight while others suffer from severe obesity.
A common side effect of BED involves feelings of shame, self-hatred, and a low sense of self-worth. Feelings of disgust or guilt are also common. As such, many people will isolate or secretly eat to avoid the sense of embarrassment.
These negative emotions towards their eating habits are commonly accompanied by other mood disorders, such as anxiety disorders or depression. How common are these dual diagnoses? An NIH study found 53% of participants had anxiety disorders in addition to binge eating disorders.
Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified (EDNOS)
Think of EDNOS as the catchall for anyone exhibiting a strange relationship with food, weight, and body image that does not meet all of the criteria for the other food disorders.
For example, should a doctor diagnose a woman with anorexia if she is exhibiting most of the symptoms?
Maybe not.
If she continues to regularly menstruate despite the weight loss and other side effects, there is a chance something else is causing the behaviors. Similarly, if someone appears to show signs of weight loss, but remains the same weight on the scale, they will not receive the anorexia nervosa diagnosis either.
Another example of an EDNOS diagnosis could include the need to purge when eating a small amount of food, like a cereal bar. A doctor would not classify this as bulimia since one of the main characteristics of that disorder is overconsumption.
Similarly, if someone chews a large quantity of food but does not swallow it, this will not fall under bulimia since it has a characteristic of purging consumed food. Spitting out the food is not considered consumption.
Even if someone doesn’t meet the exact criteria for a specific eating disorder like binge eating or bulimia, they must receive treatment for their disorder.
Conclusion
You should now have a general idea of what different eating disorders look like. The more you educate yourself, the better prepared you will be.
Eating disorders are the second deadliest mental illness there is. Only opioid overdoses kill more people in the mental health world.
If you see someone exhibiting some symptoms listed above, contact your primary physician. About 26% of people with eating disorders attempt suicide, so the sooner you raise a red flag, the better. Ask your doctor questions about the behaviors you have noticed. If the physician agrees that something is amiss, try contacting the person’s family and explain your concerns.
If we look out for each other and the well-being of our community, we have a better chance of combating common disorders like the ones above. We can also support people battling these disorders so that they may make a full recovery.
