Eating Disorders

What are eating disorders?

Are mental illnesses marked by
severe disturbances to a person’s
eating behaviors.
Who is at risk
of eating
disorders?
Eating disorders can affect
people of all ages, racial/ethnic
backgrounds, body weights,
and genders. It affects up to
5% of the population, most
often develop in adolescence
and young adulthood.
 What are common types of
eating disorders?

1 Anorexia nervosa

2 Bulimia nervosa

3 Binge-eating disorder
 What are common types of
eating disorders?

Avoidant Restrictive Food

4 Intake

5 Pica

6 Rumination Disorder
 What is anorexia nervosa?

People with anorexia

nervosa avoid food, severely
restrict food, or eat very
small quantities of only
certain foods. Even when
they are dangerously
underweight, they may see
themselves as overweight.
They may also weigh
themselves repeatedly.
 Two subtypes of
Anorexia Nervosa

Restricting type
- individuals lose weight primarily
by dieting, fasting or excessively exercising.
Binge-eating/purging type
- persons also engage in
intermittent binge eating and purging
behaviors.
 Symptoms include:
✓ Extremely restricted eating and/or intensive
and excessive exercise

✓ Extreme thinness (emaciation)

✓ A relentless pursuit of thinness and

unwillingness to maintain a normal or healthy
weight

✓ Intense fear of gaining weight

✓ Distorted body image, a self-esteem that is

heavily influenced by perceptions of body
weight and shape, or a denial of the
seriousness of low body weight
 Over time, these symptoms may
also develop:
✓ Thinning of the bones (osteopenia or osteoporosis)
✓ Mild anemia and muscle wasting and weakness
✓ Brittle hair and nails
✓ Dry and yellowish skin
✓ Growth of fine hair all over the body (lanugo)
✓ Severe constipation
✓ Low blood pressure, slowed breathing and pulse
✓ Damage to the structure and function of the heart
✓ Drop in internal body temperature, causing a person
to feel cold all the time
✓ Lethargy, sluggishness, or feeling tired all the time
✓ Infertility
✓ Brain damage
✓ Multi-organ failure
 What is bulimia
nervosa?
People with bulimia nervosa have
recurrent episodes of eating
unusually large amounts of food
and feeling a lack of control over
these episodes.
 Symptoms include:
❑ Chronically inflamed and sore throat
❑ Swollen salivary glands in the neck and jaw area
❑ Worn tooth enamel and increasingly sensitive and
decaying teeth (a result of exposure to stomach acid)
❑ Acid reflux disorder and other gastrointestinal problems
❑ Intestinal distress and irritation from laxative abuse
❑ Severe dehydration from purging
❑ Electrolyte imbalance (too low or too high levels of
sodium, calcium, potassium and other minerals), which can
lead to stroke or heart attack
❑ Eating large amounts of food uncontrollably (binging)
❑ Excessive concern about body weight
What is binge-eating disorder?
People with binge-eating disorder lose
control over their eating. Unlike bulimia
nervosa, periods of binge-eating are not
followed by purging, excessive exercise, or
fasting. As a result, people with binge-eating
disorder are often overweight or obese.
Symptoms include:
• Eating unusually large
amounts of food in a specific
amount of time, such as a 2-
hour period
• Eating fast during binge
episodes
• Eating even when full or not
hungry
• Eating until uncomfortably
full
• Eating alone or in secret to
avoid embarrassment
• Feeling distressed, ashamed,
or guilty about eating
• Frequently dieting, possibly
without weight loss
What is Avoidant Restrictive
Food Intake?

Involves a disturbance in
eating resulting in persistent
failure to meet nutritional
needs and extreme picky
eating.
 Symptoms include:
● Significant weight loss (or failure to achieve expected
weight gain in children).
● Significant nutritional deficiency.
● The need to rely on a feeding tube or oral nutritional
supplements to maintain sufficient nutrition intake.
● Poor functioning (such as inability to eat with others)
 What is Pica?

An eating disorder in which a

person repeatedly eats
things that are not food with
no nutritional value. The
behavior persists over for at
least one month and is
severe enough to warrant
clinical attention.
 Symptoms include:
● Stomach upset.
● Stomach pain.
● Blood in the stool (which may be a sign of an ulcer that
developed from eating nonfood items)
● Bowel problems (such as constipation or diarrhea )
 What is Rumination
Disorder?

Rumination syndrome is a
rare behavioral disorder in
which food is brought back
up from the stomach. It's
either rechewed,
reswallowed, or spit out. The
food will be described as
tasting normally. This means
it is still undigested. It's not
acidic-tasting, like vomit.
Symptoms include:

• Effortless regurgitation,
typically within 10 minutes
of eating.
• Abdominal pain or pressure
relieved by regurgitation.
• A feeling of fullness.
• Bad breath.
• Nausea.
• Unintentional weight loss.
 How are
these eating
disorders
treated?
Treatment plans for eating
disorders include psychotherapy,
medical care and monitoring,
nutritional counseling,
medications, or a combination of
these approaches.

Typical treatment goals include

restoring adequate nutrition,
bringing weight to a healthy
level, reducing excessive
exercise, and stopping binge
purge and binge-eating
behaviors.

Complete recovery is possible.

Depending on the severity, an eating disorder is
usually treated in an:
• Outpatient setting - individual, family, and group
therapy
• Inpatient/Hospital setting - for more extreme
cases
 Anorexia Treatment
Three main phases: Restoring weight lost, Treating psychological issues, such as:
distortion of body image, low self-esteem, and interpersonal conflicts; and
achieving long-term remission and rehabilitation.
 Anorexia Treatment

• Hospitalization
(Inpatient) (Extreme cases
are admitted for severe
weight loss)
• Feeding plans for
nutritional needsS
• Weight Gainelfca
• Nutritional Therapyre
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some time for yourself.
 Bulimia Treatment
Primary Goal is to cut down or eliminate binging and purging and
for patients establish patterns of regular eating
Bulimia Treatment

• Psychological support
• Nutritional Counseling
• Medication management
 Binge-eating
disorder treatment
• Cognitive behavioral
therapy
• Interpersonal
psychotherapy
• Dialectical behavior
therapy
• Weight loss therapy
• Medications
 Avoidant Restrictive
Food Intake Treatment
At home, the goal is to reintroduce all the foods that a child has cut
out from their diet, for example through food chaining.
If depression or anxiety is an underlying cause of ARFID, a child
might be prescribed medications or receive cognitive behavioural
therapy.
 Pica Treatment
Treatment for pica involves testing for nutritional deficiencies and addressing
them if needed. Behavior interventions used to treat pica may include redirecting
the individual from the nonfood items and rewarding them for setting aside or
avoiding nonfood items.
Rumination Disorder
Treatment
• The main treatment of rumination
disorder is behavioral therapy. This may
involve habitat reversal strategies,
relaxation, diaphragmatic breathing,
and biofeedback. These types of
therapies can often be administered by a
gastroenterologist .
Taken together, eating
disorders affect up to 5% of
the population, most often
develop in adolescence and
young adulthood. Several,
especially anorexia nervosa
and bulimia nervosa are
more common in women but
they can all occur at any age
and affect any gender.