Anorexia

Anorexia nervosa is defined as self-starvation leading to a loss of body weight to a level 15 percent below normal, accompanied by hyperactivity, hypothermia, and amenorrhea. Hypothermia results when the body fat is lost and the victim becomes cold all the time. Amenorrhea is defined as the absence of at least three menstrual cycles.

Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder that affects from 5 to 15 percent of young women. Girls with bulimia may appear normal in weight and personality, but they are preoccupied with their appearance and actively dislike their bodies. Bulimia is stimulated by society's emphasis on thinness; some doctors feel parents may also contribute by emphasizing appearance, by pushing food on children, and by over-restrictive parenting.

Bulimics go through periods of secret binge eating during which they consume large amounts of food. They then use vomiting or laxatives to purge the food from their bodies. Bulimia need not be a lethal condition in itself, but it often leads to anorexia.

Technically, anorexia is not a medical condition until weight loss has begun to damage the body physically. Before that, it is a psychologi

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90 percent of reported cases of eating disorders are in women, the rate in men appears to be increasing. Men are more likely to conceal an eating disorder than women, so the incidence may be underreported. One recent study of navy men reported a 2.5 percent prevalence of anorexia, 6.8 percent of bulimia, and 40 percent of other eating disorders. A study of civilian men with eating disorders reported that 42 percent of those with bulimia were homosexual or bisexual and 58 percent of the men with anorexia were asexual. The other risk factors in men, including depression, personality disorder, and substance abuse, paralleled those in women with eating disorders. The correlation with depression is very high, and current medical treatment of anorexia includes diagnosis and treatment of any depression found to be present. A male taste for thin female bodies does not explain why young men will also begin starving themselves to death. The social expectations and the female body image idealized by the media may be important factors in the causation of this syndrome, but they cannot be the complete explanation. Another peculiarity of anorexics is that they are not distributed evenly across the socioeconomic categories of American society. W
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