Living with Eating Disorders (Teen's Guides) PDF
Preview Living with Eating Disorders (Teen's Guides)
LIVING with EATING DISORDERS Also in the Teen’s Guides series Living with Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Living with Aller gies Living with Anxiety Disor ders Living with Asthma Living with Cancer Living with Depr ession Living with Diabetes LIVING with EATING DISORDERS Sheila A. Cooper man, M.D. with Sara Dulaney Gilber t Living with Eating Disorders Copyright © 2009 by Sheila A. Cooperman, M.D. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information contact: Facts On File, Inc. An imprint of Infobase Publishing, Inc. 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cooperman, Sheila. Living with eating disorders / Sheila Cooperman. p. cm. — (Teen’s guides) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8160-7328-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8160-7328-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Eating disorders in adolescence—Juvenile literature. I. Title. RJ506.E18C664 2009 618.92′8526—dc22 2008028248 Facts On File books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755. You can fi nd Facts On File on the World Wide Web at http://www.factsonfi le.com Text design by Annie O’Donnell Cover design by Jooyoung An Printed in the United States of America Bang Hermitage 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on acid-free paper. CONTENTS ■ ■ 1 What Is an Eating Disorder? 1 ■ ■ 2 A Closer Look at Eating Disorders 14 ■ ■ 3 Causes of Eating Disorders 24 ■ ■ 4 Inside Eating Disorders 35 ■ ■ 5 Dangers of Eating Disorders 44 ■ ■ 6 Recognizing Eating Disorders 55 ■ ■ 7 Treatment for Eating Disorders 68 ■ ■ 8 Managing Eating Disorders 81 ■ ■ 9 Helping a Friend 91 ■ ■ 10 Paying for Care 102 ■ ■ 11 Preventing Eating Disorders 111 ApHpelnpdfuixl :Organizations and Web Sites 121 Glossary 126 Read More about It 130 Index 133 1 What Is an Eating Disorder? At age 12, Andrea felt that her life would be perfect if only she were more slender. Life was pretty confusing right now: She sometimes didn’t even know who she was, and her family seemed to be always in turmoil. Her parents were fi ghting a lot and her brother had just left for the army. Plus, middle school was so much harder than last year, and her best friends had gone to other schools. All AAof a sudden everything seemed to be about her “future”: she was expected to get good grades, be a good athlete, and always look “nice.” Even her body seemed to be turning against her—sometimes she just felt creepy in her own skin! To make things better, Andrea tried to do everything right, but she couldn’t always be perfect—and that made her miserable. Her one escape was into the fantastic celeb- rity world on Web sites, TV, and her favorite magazines. Her favorite personalities looked so happy there. Their lives looked perfect—and they were so thin! So Andrea started a diet. Trouble was, Andrea wasn’t really fat—she just “felt” fat. She also felt that, with so many aspects of her life out of control, one thing she could control was her eating. But once she started the diet, she couldn’t stop. She never seemed to look thin enough in the mirror, no matter how much she starved herself. Andrea has a kind of eating disorder called anorexia nervosa, one of a number of common eating disorders you’ll learn about in this book, in addition to bulimia nervosa, binge eating, and obsessive exercise (athletica nervosa). 1 2 Living with Eating Disorders In recent years, eating disorders (including the awareness that they are about much more than food) have received widespread attention, and that should make dealing with them easier than it was a few generations ago. But that positive turn toward prevention and treat- ment can also add to the confusion about these serious illnesses. For instance, when people approach adolescence, their eating patterns may well change, with tastes shifting and intake increasing. As a teen or preteen, your body is changing shape, too. Girls often gain weight around age 10 or 11 (boys a bit later) in preparation for a growth spurt, and kids may seem to sprout like bean vines overnight. Sometimes people mistakenly apply labels—“fat” or “anorexic”— to what is normal development. Only a small percentage of teens actually develop true eating disorders, but those who do can be in real danger. Families may not want to admit the danger, or they may overlook real problems with a “they’ll grow out of it” attitude. In addition, while all that physical change is going on, young people are bombarded with a lot of misleading visual images and misinformation in the media about what the “perfect” body is and how to achieve it. Studies reported by the National Eating Disorders Association show that 40 percent of girls under 10 say they want to “be thinner,” with twice that number saying they’re afraid of “get- ting fat.” Often a serious eating disorder can begin with something as simple as a person being unhappy with the way his or her body looks in the mirror, or with trying a diet that is “guaranteed to succeed.” These disorders usually include a need to keep them secret, so they are often hidden until they have become serious. Though such illnesses can be dangerous and even fatal, they are treatable, so understanding them matters a lot. The fi rst important step toward living healthily with eating disorders—in a friend, a fam- ily member, or yourself—is to understand what they are, and what they’re not. WHAT ARE EATING DISORDERS? Do you know anyone like Andrea—someone who never seems to eat and keeps getting thinner? Or maybe someone who spends many hours daily in the gym? Or who disappears after meals? Or who has simply become obsessed with being “perfect”? Not everyone who is careful about food, or who starts an exercise program, has a disor- der. A new awareness about their bodies can inspire teens to healthy actions that don’t necessarily lead to problems. But Andrea is a typi- cal example of someone likely to develop an eating disorder. Risk fac- What Is an Eating Disorder? 3 tors include age and specifi c triggers—events and conditions that may precipitate eating disorders. Some 90 percent of those affl icted with eating disorders are ado- lescent and young adult women. More than 1 million American teen- agers and preteens live with an eating disorder—about 3 percent of that population. While it’s mostly girls and young women who suffer either anorexia, bulimia, or binge eating, these serious and potentially fatal disorders now affect children as young as nine and, increasingly, boys and men as well. Change and stress are diffi cult to cope with, and teens experience a great deal of change and stress in their daily lives. Some have more diffi culty than others, and eating disorders may be triggered. For example, Andrea’s environment is disordered, and the only thing she can fully control is her food intake. She is surrounded by messages that say “slim means happy,” and she feels she has to be “perfect” to be accepted in her world. So she makes the decision that she has to lose weight. (Learning to make decisions on their own is a big part of teens’ development, but sometimes they base their decisions on wrong information.) Look at the examples in the sidebar, “What Do You Think?” Do any of them make you think about yourself? Or ask yourself this: When you look in the mirror, are you always happy with what you see? Many teens are not, because they are having to get used to a “new” body. But before they start in on a “magic” diet, they need some important facts. It’s easy to see why it might be especially hard to identify eating disorders in people your age. Teens may have eating patterns—eating constantly it seems, or never—which parents wish were different. True eating disorders go well beyond this: they are medically and psychiatrically recognized illnesses, complex conditions involving mental, physical, and social issues. If there is confusion about food-related problems, that is not sur- prising. Although there are reports of conditions like anorexia and bulimia from many centuries in the past, psychiatric and medical researchers began to study them seriously only a few decades ago. Scientifi c knowledge about them began growing rapidly around the turn of the 21st century, with new brain-research techniques. Today eating disorders have quite specifi c defi nitions. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, eating disor- ders involve serious disturbances in eating behavior, such as extreme and unhealthy reduction of food intake or severe overeating, as well as feelings of distress or extreme concern about body shape or weight. (continues on page 6)
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