Why are there eating disorders

The doctor may order tests to see if there is another reason for the eating problems and to check for problems caused by the eating disorder. Eating disorders are best treated by a team that includes a doctor, dietitian, and therapist. Treatment includes nutrition counseling, medical care, and talk therapy individual, group, and family therapy. The doctor might prescribe medicine to treat binge eating, anxiety, depression, or other mental health concerns.

The details of the treatment depend on the type of eating disorder and how severe it is. Some people are hospitalized because of extreme weight loss and medical complications.

Tell someone. Tell a parent, teacher, counselor, or an adult you trust. Let them know what you're going through. Ask them to help. Get help early. When an eating disorder is caught early, a person has a better chance of recovery. Make an appointment with your doctor or an eating disorders specialist. Go to all appointments. Treatment takes time and effort.

Work hard to learn about yourself and your emotions. Ask questions any time you have them. Be patient with yourself. There's so much to learn, and change happens a little at a time. Take care of yourself and be with people who support you. Larger text size Large text size Regular text size. What Are Eating Disorders? Over one-half of teenage girls and nearly one-third of teenage boys use unhealthy weight control behaviors such as skipping meals, fasting, smoking cigarettes, vomiting, and taking laxatives.

Family, friends, acquaintances, media, and most prominently now, social media, can have an impact on how we perceive and feel about our body. Additionally, people in environments that are focused on appearance such as modeling, sports, entertainment, dance or those who receive negative and unsolicited feedback about their appearance are also at an increased risk.

And, as we mentioned, people with body image struggles may also struggle with food. Here are a few things to look out for to assess if you or someone you know has an unhealthy relationship with food:. The National Eating Disorder Association has an online screening tool with some simple questions you can answer to assess your risk and get the help you need.

These could include:. When it comes to our mental health, people who struggle with negative body image feel that their bodies are inferior to others, and are more likely to suffer from feelings of depression, isolation, and low self-esteem.

Beyond just mental and physical health, having an intensely negative body image can lead to lack of participation in and withdrawal from social plans, as well as shying away from intimacy, potentially eroding communication and trust in friendships and relationships. In most cases, eating disorders can be treated successfully by appropriately trained health and mental health care professionals. Additionally, our article Tips for Body Positivity: Ways to Feel Better About Our Bodies, offers resources and information to help you or someone you know get help and feel better about themselves.

How to tell if you or a loved one has a healthy body image? Share this resource Facebook. Understanding Food and Body Image Struggles. If you have a positive body image, you have a clear, realistic perception of your body. You may have trouble accepting how your body looks and how much it affects your self-worth.

Other research has suggested that risk factors for purging disorder are similar to those for bulimia nervosa and binge eating. Identifying actual causal factors for a specific eating disorder is complicated. Determining whether these factors are present in an individual can be difficult. Also, the presence of these factors predicts higher risk but does not guarantee the development of an eating disorder.

Coming from a family with a history of eating disorders can increase a person's risk of developing an eating disorder. A portion of this increased risk could be due to the modeling of eating disorder-linked behaviors within a family e. This research could provide more information about the genetic profile that contributes to eating disorders. These findings do not imply that there is a single eating disorder gene, or even that genes cause eating disorders.

Some individuals may inherit traits such as anxiety, fear, perfectionism, or moodiness that have been associated with the development of an eating disorder. These aspects of temperament have also been linked to a number of other disorders. For some people, variations in several different genes contribute to traits that, in turn, increase or decrease their risk for eating disorders. Some people with eating disorders are able to identify several other family members who also had eating disorders.

There are certain families in which the risk of eating disorders is much higher than in the general population, but such families are relatively rare. Even a high-risk family history indicating an increased genetic risk does not mean that a person is destined to develop an eating disorder. Conversely, not everyone who has an eating disorder can identify another family member with one. A clear majority of eating disorder cases are sporadic, with no family history.

In addition, eating disorders are stigmatized diseases, and family members often do not share their struggles with their disorder. Much of the earlier research on eating disorders examined environmental risk factors.

As a result, they are frequently blamed for causing eating disorders. Influences such as gender, ethnicity, or certain athletic settings can strengthen or lessen other environmental factors.

One model for understanding some of the socio-cultural risk factors for eating disorders is the tripartite model. It proposes that exposure to media, peer, and parental messages all contribute to whether a person idealizes thinness and engages in social comparison. These two factors idealization and social comparison may potentially lead to poor body image and various forms of disordered eating. Society and culture do influence eating behavior as well as our concept of ideal body shape.

However, such environmental factors cannot fully account for the presence of eating disorders. Some environmental factors could help protect people from developing eating disorders. These could include family meals, eating breakfast, emotional regulation skills, and mindfulness techniques. Techniques that help groups and individuals question and challenge unrealistic ideals of beauty including the glorification of thinness and the stigmatization of overweight people are also helpful and protective.

Many of these environmental changes, such as improving the status and power of women, reducing the objectification of both men and women, and increasing respect for people of all sizes and shapes, will benefit everyone , not just those at risk for eating disorders. These changes help create kinder and safer—and likely more protective—communities.

Neither genes nature nor environment nurture cause eating disorders on their own. Eating disorders are likely the result of a complicated interplay of these factors. Even when a precipitating factor such as a traumatic event can be identified, there is almost always a combination of other contributing factors.

The precipitating factor is most likely the trigger that tripped a cascade of events. Genetic susceptibility may influence their response to certain stressors. For example:. The emerging field of epigenetics, the study of whether, how, and when genes are expressed, offers further insight.

Epigenetics explains that certain environmental factors determine the expression of genes or even turn certain genes on or off in the next generation. Thus, stress to a parent alters not only their behavior but can actually turn genes on and off in offspring who were not even exposed to that stressor.

In terms of eating disorders, there is evidence that the longer a person has anorexia nervosa, the greater the chance they will have alterations in how their genes are expressed.

It appears that malnourishment could turn on or off certain genes, which influence the course of the disorder. However, epigenetic studies of eating disorders are in their infancy. Just as environmental factors can increase a person's susceptibility to an eating disorder, the converse is also true: Changing the environment can facilitate prevention and recovery.

For example, growing up with warm, nurturing parents could mitigate genes that predispose someone to anxiety.