Eating Disorders: Types, Symptoms, and Treatment Options
Eating disorders affect people of all backgrounds and can pose serious health risks. Explore common myths, key symptoms, different disorder types, and effective treatment options to help guide yourself toward recovery and a healthier relationship with food.
What are Eating Disorders?
If someone has an eating disorder, it means that they experience a constant disruption in eating patterns that leads to an abnormal absorption of food. This causes impairment in their physical or psychological health.
A common misconception about eating disorders is that food is the core of the problem. However, there is usually a larger, deeper psychological issue at play that manifests as disordered eating.
Examples include lack of ability to manage emotions, negative body image, or negative relationships with others.
Another misconception is that there are only two eating disorders: anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.
However, binge eating disorder and avoidant restrictive food intake disorder also exist in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR) and can pose a severe risk to a person’s physical and mental health. . .
What are Eating Disorders?
Types of Eating Disorders
Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are two of the most-known eating disorders types.
Anorexia Nervosa
Anorexia nervosa is characterized by an intense fear of becoming fat, extreme self-criticism of one’s weight, and restriction of calories such that the person’s weight is less than what is considered the minimum for a healthy person of their age and sex.
There are two types of anorexia nervosa: restricting and binging/purging. The restricting type involves dieting, fasting, or excessive exercise and the binging/purging type involves binging on food and then purging it, such as by self-induced vomiting or the use of laxatives.
Bulimia Nervosa
Bulimia nervosa is defined as recurrently consuming significantly large amounts of food over a very short period. There is also a sense of a lack of control during such binging episodes.
To prevent weight gain, these episodes are followed by purging behaviors to compensate for the binging. Like with anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa also includes negative body image. Unlike anorexia, people with bulimia are rarely severely underweight and most are considered to be of normal weight.
Binge Eating Disorder
Binge eating disorder, on the other hand, does not have body dysmorphia as a criterion. Those with binge eating disorder typically do not have a distorted body image. Also, it includes binge eating episodes but without purging behaviors.
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Anorexia Nervosa
Anorexia nervosa is characterized by an intense fear of becoming fat, extreme self-criticism of one’s weight, and restriction of calories such that the person’s weight is less than what is considered the minimum for a healthy person of their age and sex.
There are two types of anorexia nervosa: restricting and binging/purging. The restricting type involves dieting, fasting, or excessive exercise and the binging/purging type involves binging on food and then purging it, such as by self-induced vomiting or the use of laxatives.
Bulimia Nervosa
Bulimia nervosa is defined as recurrently consuming significantly large amounts of food over a very short period. There is also a sense of a lack of control during such binging episodes.
To prevent weight gain, these episodes are followed by purging behaviors to compensate for the binging. Like with anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa also includes negative body image. Unlike anorexia, people with bulimia are rarely severely underweight and most are considered to be of normal weight.
Binge Eating Disorder
Binge eating disorder, on the other hand, does not have body dysmorphia as a criterion. Those with binge eating disorder typically do not have a distorted body image. Also, it includes binge eating episodes but without purging behaviors.
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