What is an eating disorder

  In today’s society, “thin” has become a synonym for judging women’s confidence, beauty and success. In order to have a slim body and gain public recognition, many women start to blindly lose weight. However, behind these glamorous figures lies an invisible killer – “eating disorders” is quietly pre-empting women’s health. From Britain’s Princess Diana, the American singer Karen Carpenter, to China’s “Supergirl”, regardless of dignity, eating disorders have become an important problem that plagues modern women.  Eating disorders are a group of syndromes characterized by abnormalities in eating attitudes and behaviors. The main manifestation is the excessive restriction or control of eating behavior, disorder of eating habits, often there is excessive concern for their own body shape, weight, resulting in internal pain and damage to the body (malnutrition, endocrine and metabolic disorders, body organs and systems dysfunction, etc.), disrupting the normal order of life, and even life threatening. Such behavioral abnormalities are not secondary to any physical or mental illness, but fear and attempts to counteract the “fattening” effect of food are often the most obvious pathological aspects of most patients.  Eating disorders mainly include anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and vomiting nervosa, with an age of onset mainly between 15 and 30 years, with the number of female patients being about 10-20 times higher than that of male patients, 50%-75% of whom also suffer from depression. In recent years, the number of residents of large cities in China has increased significantly, especially among adolescent girls in economically developed areas. Since the early stage of the disease is often characterized by malnutrition, gastrointestinal and endocrine symptoms such as wasting, constipation, vomiting, amenorrhea, etc., and patients intentionally conceal their psychological experience of being “afraid of fat”, these patients are often initially seen in gastroenterology, endocrinology, gynecology, Chinese medicine, etc., which delays the diagnosis and treatment of the disease and even causes serious consequences such as death. This delays the diagnosis and treatment of the disease, and may even lead to death and other serious consequences.  Early detection and intervention is the key to treating eating disorders. On the surface, although patients with bulimia do not appear to lose as much weight as those with anorexia, the physical and psychological effects of both are equally serious. Anorexia and bulimia often alternate. Often, just as anorexia patients begin to resume eating and their nutritional status improves, they develop a strong desire to eat again, entering a vicious cycle of binge eating and binge vomiting. When the focus and theme of life is torn between “eating and not eating”, be alert to the possibility that eating disorders may have crept in.