Mental Care Facts & Health Tips

Eating disorders affect thousands of people each year. The majority of sufferers are young females, though men, boys, and older women also suffer from eating disorders. Any unhealthy eating pattern that one permanently participates in could be considered an eating disorder. Many people have an eating disorder for quite a while before they realize it. Here are some common eating disorders explained.

Anorexia Nervosa

Anorexia Nervosa is probably the most widely discussed eating disorder. It is the eating disorder that results in the most obvious physical changes for the sufferer. Though sufferers of bulimia may maintain a normal body weight, anorexics are unable to maintain a normal body weight because of their refusal to eat.

Anorexia Nervosa is characterized as a complete refusal to keep body weight above 85% of what is considered normal. Anorexia Nervosa typically involves extreme calorie restriction in one’s daily diet. Many sufferers of this illness go through phases of bulimia.

Anorexics typically have extremely low self esteem. This disease is common in those who are considered “perfectionists” by outsiders. Though many anorexics have an intense fear of gaining weight, a lack of control over life seems to be the determining factor in what creates an anorexic. Anorexia often occurs in the lives of young adults who are struggling with stress and anxiety. They feel that they have no control over their lives and are spinning out of control. Living on an extremely low calorie diet and maintaining an abnormally thin figure becomes a way of controlling their environment.

Bulimia Nervosa

Bulimia is characterized as the binging and purging of food. Many anorexics also go through phases of bulimia. Bulimics may purge through vomiting or overuse of laxatives.

It is important to note that simply purging food would be more a characteristic of anorexia, where the sufferer will sometimes make themselves vomit or overuse laxatives to completely empty the system after a day of barely eating. Bulimics purge after an episode of intense binge eating and this is a very important characteristic of their disorder.

Recent research indicates that there is likely a genetic factor involved in bulimia though it is likely triggered by an environmental catalyst. Bulimics are often people who are overwhelmed by the emotions of everyday life. They have an incredibly difficult time dealing with intense emotions and seek out a means of punishment for what they feel they have failed at. Bulimics may be suffering because of how they feel toward themselves or how they feel toward an event that has occurred.

Compulsive Overeaters

Though anorexia and bulimia are the two eating disorders that seem to get the most attention, eating disorders are not simply related to weight loss. Eating an abnormal amount of food on a regular basis is also considered an eating disorder.

People who use food as a means of hiding their emotions or seem to have a food addiction are considered compulsive overeaters. Compulsive overeaters are sometimes called emotional eaters.  Though many people eat when they are feeling down, compulsive overeaters take it to the extreme. The underlying cause of compulsive overeating, like all eating disorders, is a lack of self esteem. Compulsive overeating is very common in sufferers of sexual abuse.

Reference Something-Fishy

If you didn’t have enough evidence to suggest that it is time to kick the smoking habit new research from Australia may give you extra incentive. Current research has found a link between women who are depressed and cigarette smoking. Contrary to popular belief that the cigarette smoking came after the depression, the opposite may be true.

Previous Theories

Healthcare professionals and laymen have long felt that cigarette smoking and depression somehow went hand and hand. There is a far higher incident of smoking among mental health patients in the United States and there has been for some time. Now there is proof to back up the theories that cigarette smoking may be a cause for depression rather than a symptom.

Prevalence of Smoking

Of the general population around 21% of adults smoke, this is half of what it was forty years ago, though certainly not as low as it should be. The startling part about this statistic is that women who suffer from depression are twice as likely to smoke as women who do not have underlying mental health problems.

Cigarettes as Self Medication

When it comes to which comes first, the depression or the cigarettes, it is has been very hard to call for the past few decades. It has often been argued that there is such a high incidence of cigarette smoking within the sector of society that suffers from depression because they are trying to self-medicate. They may feel that the cigarettes offer some sort of calming or deadening experience to accompany their emotions. This is one reason that physicians within the mental health field have been slow to do anything about the overwhelming amount of smokers they have as patients.  Many feel that taking away this crutch, no matter how detrimental it is to their physical health may cause their patients to spin out of control or delve into other substances as a form of self medication.

Current Evidence

Now there is evidence to support the belief that women do not smoke because they are depressed but rather are depressed because they smoke. This is what the latest study done in Australia seems to indicate. It turns out that major depressive order in women often seemed to come after they began smoking.

The extensive Australian study followed women for ten years. It showed that women who began smoking were more likely to later develop depression. Those who were heavy smokers going through a pack or two a day were far more likely to suffer severe or major depression then women who occasionally smoked or did not smoke at all.

This research indicates what many scientists have previously believed. Cigarette smoke either increases or agitates the underlying condition of depression in many, especially women. This means that by continuing to smoke women are making themselves suffer from depression, this is the opposite of what many folks previously believed.

Though ceasing to smoke may not result in women being able to completely lose symptoms of chronic clinical depression it is very likely that will help immensely. Even women who only occasionally get the blues and would not meet the requirements for a diagnosis of clinical depression are more likely to smoke. This further supports the evidence that smoking is a major contributing factor to depression in women.