Anorexia and bulimia are two conditions of a relatively new name, but long. Medical texts define the disorder anorexia nervosa as a food in which the person concerned refuses to eat and their weight decreases to seriously compromise health. In almost 90% of cases, patients are women between 10 and 29 years, and although there are few epidemiological studies, experts estimate that affects about 1 percent of the population.
A particular detail of this disease is that anorexia is perceived-weight-fat but is far below for your frame. Were also found cases of anorexia in all cultures of the world, not only in countries of the Western Hemisphere.
For its part, bulimia is a disorder in which affected are food binge and then induce vomiting, laxatives or diuretics administered and strenuous exercise for purge-your-meal. According to data from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of the United States, between 2 and 3 percent of female adolescents have bulimia and physical consequences can be serious.
Although no statistics mark an increase in the incidence of anorexia, it is an increase of cases of bulimia. Moreover, these figures are just variables. Is evidence that the experts have to say that the number of cases of these disorders are often under-reported. For example, work carried out in the University Hospital of the city of Cordova revealed that approximately 23 percent of college students suffering from some form of eating disorder.
Widespread disruption
Despite upheavals that have become popular-and increasingly diagnosed in the last fifteen years, the truth is that - diving in descriptions and anecdotes dating back to medieval times, you can find stories about mysterious diseases that are characterized by a large weight loss, and were caused by a vicious and self-starvation diet.
Until recently, most of the medical community considered the typical pathologies of mental origin, generated mainly by cultural and social factors. But this idea is that, according to experts at the conference spoke of a lot of myth-Cordova. There is little medical evidence to suggest that anorexia and bulimia are disorders caused exclusively by cultural pressures, "says Dr. Frances Connan, chief resident of the Unit of Psychiatry at the Maudsley and Bethlem Hospitals in London. The doctor says something like Oscar Meehan, director of the psychiatric clinic Mira y López and member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, when he says: "now it is thought that anorexia and bulimia nervosa have a concurrent origin: on one hand have a genetic component hereditary and are undoubtedly linked to the process of neural development that occurs during the first months of life of the newborn, shaped by the stimuli it receives from its mother. This explains that if a pair of twins of the sisters has an eating disorder, the risk that the other suffers a similar condition was increased by 60 percent.
Moreover, some research on the neuroendocrine system of patients with bulimia and anorexia showed lower levels of the neurotransmitter known as serotonin and high concentrations of cortisol, a hormone-related bodily response to stress.
In other words, this is the disorders that are deep interaction between genetic factors, the environment where an individual is born and the social environment in which the personality.