Concetti Chiave
- Anorexia and bulimia, prevalent among adolescents, involve harmful eating habits, with anorexia characterized by refusal to eat and extreme weight loss.
- Anorexics display an irrational fear of weight gain, often resorting to extreme measures like inducing vomiting or excessive exercise to maintain low weight.
- Bulimia involves consuming excessive food quantities, with sufferers struggling to stop eating once started, and employing similar compensatory behaviors as anorexics.
- Both disorders share similarities, but bulimics tend to be more impulsive and unhappy with their condition, aspiring to thinness but unable to maintain strict dietary control.
- Media portrayal of ideal body types and the availability of junk food contribute to these disorders, with deeper causes rooted in a lack of affection and self-esteem issues.
The bad habits in food consuming are present in any age, but the affects are seen frequently among young people. We may ask ourselves “How Come”?
Anorexia and bulimia are always on the rise among adolescents.
Anorexia and bulimia appear to be apparently two opposing phenomena. We must analyze it summarily before jumping into conclusions.
Anorexia is refusal to eat, and as a result the lowering of the weight of your body, under a percentage of 85% of expected weight on the basis of its constitutional characteristics.
The anorexic decided to slim down, and show an irrational fear of regaining the lost weight even if their body has undergone an obvious malnutrition.
This phenomenon affects very young girls, who often suffer, as a consequence, amenorrhea, or jump menstruation for periods of at least three months. The nervous anorexia can become chronic when meals are completely abolished. The body, however, has its defenses, and so induces a sense of hunger unbearable, to make up for the lack of food. At this point the anorexic often opposes the sense of hunger inducing vomiting, taking laxatives or diuretics, drugs or exaggerated physical activity plays in the desperate attempt to continue to control his/her weight.
Sometimes the anorexic surrenders to the sense of hunger and starts binge eating.
Someone anorexic, paradoxically, might become bulimic.
Bulimia is the condition of those who consume food in quantities far above the norm. Often the person that suffers from binge eating is matched to the unpleasant sensation of not being able to stop once he/she has started eating.
Paradoxically the bulimic adopts the same anorexic behaviors to compensate for binge eating and prevent subsequent weight gain: then induces vomiting, abusing laxatives and diuretics, drugs and making long fitness sessions.
However, in addition to the similarities, differences that should be noted are few. For example, the person suffering from nervous bulimia is more instinctive than the person who suffers from anorexia, he/she has less power and, unlike the anorexic, is extremely unhappy about his condition, since even the bulimic want to be skinny. A bulimic girl has in fact often identical ambitions of an anorexic girl, but can't stand the strict discipline required to dramatically reduce food intake.
Now that we've analyzed the two phenomena and shown how they can be partly interchangeable with each other, we could ask ourselves what are the causes of such unbalanced attitudes towards food.
Probably the media offer a collection of physical models, with which the adolescent, particularly, compare themselves, losing self-esteem and self-confidence when they have an obvious discrepancy between those models and his own physical appearance. On the contrary, advertising of certain snacks, so-called junk foods, causes disproportionate consumption. In fact, the bulimic binges are often fed by this kind of food.
It is likely that the root there is still a lack of affection and consideration, that kids are living on their own skin; they assume to find confidence in friends and in adults, and then, unable to react in any other way, express these attitudes with self-inflicted harm.
It is right that a teenager, but not only him, to maintain his appearance and manage his power and, in fact, be autonomously controlled, without being determined by mode or by the collective suggestions, in the knowledge that our Singularity makes the society and humanity in total richer and more varied.
Domande da interrogazione
- ¿Cuáles son las principales características de la anorexia?
- ¿Cómo se manifiesta la bulimia y en qué se diferencia de la anorexia?
- ¿Qué similitudes existen entre la anorexia y la bulimia?
- ¿Qué papel juegan los medios de comunicación en el desarrollo de estos trastornos alimenticios?
- ¿Cuáles podrían ser las causas subyacentes de la anorexia y la bulimia?
La anorexia se caracteriza por la negativa a comer, lo que lleva a una pérdida de peso significativa, por debajo del 85% del peso esperado según las características constitucionales. Las personas con anorexia tienen un miedo irracional a recuperar el peso perdido y pueden sufrir de amenorrea.
La bulimia se manifiesta por el consumo excesivo de alimentos, seguido de comportamientos para evitar el aumento de peso, como inducir el vómito o usar laxantes. A diferencia de la anorexia, la bulimia es más impulsiva y la persona suele estar insatisfecha con su condición.
Ambas condiciones pueden incluir comportamientos como inducir el vómito, el uso de laxantes y la realización de ejercicio físico excesivo para controlar el peso. Además, una persona anoréxica puede llegar a desarrollar bulimia.
Los medios de comunicación presentan modelos físicos con los que los adolescentes se comparan, lo que puede llevar a una pérdida de autoestima. Además, la publicidad de comida chatarra puede fomentar el consumo excesivo, contribuyendo a los atracones bulímicos.
Las causas pueden incluir una falta de afecto y consideración, lo que lleva a los jóvenes a buscar confianza en amigos y adultos. La incapacidad de reaccionar de otra manera puede resultar en actitudes autodestructivas hacia la alimentación.