Eating Disorders Causes

In nations where food is plentiful, the average person won’t have many issues when it comes to eating.  They will eat when they are hungry, and won’t eat when they aren’t hungry.  However, there are some groups of people that are unable to eat normally.  They either starve themselves, eat non-food items, overeat and/or purge any food that has been ingested.  The reason behind such behavior is usually psychological, though occasionally there are health conditions that are the culprit.  For example, pica, (a condition where a person eats materials that are not food), is caused by a nutritional deficiency.  Other health conditions might deteriorate a person to the point that they naturally don’t have an appetite or possess too much of an appetite.  But in these situations, they are not eating or eating too much because their body is not properly registering appropriate hunger feelings.  For individuals that have eating disorders, the physiological mechanisms controlling hunger are normal, so they do have ravaging hunger if they are starving themselves.
 

Surprisingly, eating disorders have been around since ancient times.  For example, Egyptian, Hebrew and Greek cultures had incidents of bulimia.  Anorexia was acknowledged in the 1600s.  Yet, back then people didn’t have as much knowledge of psychology, so it was not understood that these conditions signify mental problems.  This type of classification didn’t occur until 1980, when the medical community determined eating disorders to be psychological in origin. 

So, what is happening psychologically when a person becomes a victim of an eating disorder?  Usually, they are preoccupied with trying to attain a false standard of thinness, though this is just the ‘surface’ reason of why they do what they do.  Underlying reasons reach deeper into a person’s psyche.  They could be using an eating disorder as a way to establish ‘control’ in their lives, especially if they are going through something where they feel out of control.  An eating disorder could also be used to gain self-esteem, since the victim falsely believes they will be ‘beautiful’ if they keep losing weight.  Of course, things are a little different if an eating disorder involves overeating without purging the contents.  In these situations a person is using food to fill emotional voids.  Yet, with either type of eating disorder, if help is not obtained quickly, the victim’s health could be at risk.  For example, anorexics or bulimics can lose the ability to have a period in the intermediate stages of their illness.  Bulimics could ruin their digestive tract through the obsessive vomiting.  Overeaters that do not purge become obese, putting their body at risk for heart attack, stroke or diabetes.  And all of these eating orders can lead to the ultimate consequence… death.  This is why if an eating disorder is suspected by family members, action must be taken so a person can become healthy again.  The road to recovery for both the victim and their loved ones will not be easy, but it is one that must be traveled on if the victim wants to reclaim their life.