Eating Disorders in Women after age 30.
"I hate the way I look!" I am so fat!" I hate looking in the mirror!" "I used to be so thin, why can't I look like I did when I was 20?" These phrases are all too familiar to someone who has an eating disorder. Eating disorders generally affect women in their teens to mid 20's. What happens when a woman develops an eating disorder after age 30 or continues to face this terrible illness that has affected her since adolescence.
To fully understand what an eating disorder is, it is important to know the different types of eating disorders. Eating disorders are generally categorized as Bulimia Nervosa, Anorexia Nervosa and Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified. Eating disorders are devastating behavioral dysfunctions brought on by an array of factors. Emotional and personality disorders, family pressures, possible genetic or biologic susceptibility, and a culture where there is an obsession with thinness are all contributing factors to this consuming disease (noah.cuny.edu). .
Bulimia Nervosa is more common than anorexia and works on a cycle of bingeing, eating an enormous amount of food, and then forcibly eliminating the food, identified as the act of purging. The cycle of eating vast quantities of food and then vomiting or using drugs to force that food out of the body is referred to as the "binge/purge cycle" (Sacker and Zimmer 4).
The eating binges average about 1,000 calories but can be as high as 20,000 calories or as low as 100. Patients diagnosed with bulimia average about 14 episodes per week. In general, people with bulimia have a normal to high-normal body weight, but it may fluctuate by more than 10 pounds because of the binge-purge cycle (noah.cuny.edu/wellconn/eatdisorders). Bulimia leaves its victims with a feeling of incredible self-loathing. Patients frequently describe themselves as "disgusting pigs.".
Anorexia Nervosa was first defined as a medical problem in 1873.
