What is an 'eating disorder'? .
An eating disorder is a condition when a person has abnormal eating habits that involves either eating extremely small amounts of food, or severely overeating. It is considered as a psychological problem because it usually comes from your thoughts of fear concerning your body image. Most teens are afraid of being fat and therefore try to lose weight in an extreme way, causing danger to its health. .
The two most common eating disorders for teens are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Anorexia nervosa is considered to be the most common of it all and it is the act of self-starvation and excessive weight loss. On the other hand, bulimia nervosa is the act of eating a large amount of food in a short period of time and afterwards making themselves vomit to clear the food that they had eaten. Both of these eating disorders can have unhealthy consequences, which can be really dangerous to ones' body. Weighing too little is a problem, so as gaining too much at once.
How many people suffer from eating disorders?.
According to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), in 2005, 10,000,000 Americans were suffering from eating disorders. The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD) states that 7,000,000 women and .
1,000,000 men are affected by eating disorders in America. As for the rate in teenagers, Eating Disorders Coalition (EDC) reports from the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry that between 2.5 and 4% of teens have either anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa. ANAD also reports that the age a person starts to have eating disorders is at the age between 11 and 20. As you can see, it is more likely for young teenagers to be affected as a victim of eating disorders. .
The same goes for UK as well. B-eat estimate that 160,000,000 people in the UK suffer from eating disorders, and that 20% of them become seriously ill.
