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Stress And Eating Disorders – Bulimia Nervosa

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Money Trouble And Stress

 
When you are having money trouble the stress and anxiety it causes often touches every aspect of your social, familial and personal life. Consider the current recession and the high levels of pressure and stress it is placing on families and individuals nationwide. Unemployment and the lack of affordable housing have resulted in a pervasive sense of uncertainty and fear among much of today’s middle and lower-middle class families.
 
Money trouble and the uncertainty it can cause can lead to chronic stress, anxiety, and depression. It can also lead to the eating disorder known as bulimia nervosa.  
 

Understanding Bulimia Nervosa

 
Bulimia Nervosa is a destructive cycle of excessive intake (bingeing) and immediate and obsessive voiding (purging) which is triggered by a combination of stress and anxiety associated with an obsessive preoccupation with ones physical image – specifically weight and appearance. However, as you will learn, binging and purging is often a misguided attempt to cope with the misery of stress.
 
People with eating disorders obsess over the details around the eating process - what they should or shouldn’t eat to remain skinny. Many bulimics just avoid eating all together. At the same time however, their calorie restriction triggers intense physical cravings—the body’s way of asking for nutrition. Not getting what it needs, the body will start to shut down.
 
Despite the fear of becoming fat, being underweight is not a standard feature of bulimia. Interestingly, a recent study found that people with bulimia are often of normal weight. It is the perception of being overweight however that matters, not the actual weight a person is carrying. 
 

Bulimic Tendencies

 
Most psychologists agree that certain features of the disorder can be present when the person becomes obsessed with their body weight and strict dieting becomes a way of life. Other features of this eating disorder include being afraid that eating may result in not being able to stop eating. And of course there are the intense feelings of guilt, shame and even contrition for having consumed food. Some bulimics feel forced to dash for the restroom to vomit before their body can absorb the food they just ingested. Others resort to taking laxatives in the hope of speeding up the digestive and voiding process.
 
People with eating disorders work very hard in covering-up their bingeing and purging cycles. They often feel weak and ashamed of not being able to control themselves on something as so basic as food intake.
They eat so no one notices. They hide food, have late night eating orgies and usually have a detailed plan on how to get rid of the food before it gets digested. But despite all the secrecy, a bulimics friends and family usually can tell the signs and symptoms of a serious eating disorder quite easily.
 

Effects of Chronic Bulimia

 
Eating disorders that turn chronic present severe health risks including disease, sickness and death. The most life-threatening conditions caused by bulimia results from the body’s loss of vital fluids during the purging process which often result in serious dehydration.
 
Dehydration can cause kidney failure. It also can reduce the bodies badly needed potassium levels which can result in a number of declining bodily functions beginning with the presence of lethargy and disorientation, leading to confused thinking, arrhythmia, shock and even death.
 

Treatment For Bulimia

There is no one treatment, medical procedure, therapy or medication that can cure every case of bulimia. The most common and successful type of treatment for these types of eating disorders has been medication based, mostly in the form of different types of antidepressants.
 
The therapeutic use of antidepressants has been very successful in the treatment of bulimia. When combined with talk therapy, antidepressant medications can help reduce binge eating and reduce the stress and anxiety associated with the bulimic behavior.
 
Talk therapy can be a very effective in dealing with depression and low self-esteem that so often is associated with these types of eating disorders.
 
Finally, not all bingeing leads to a diagnosis of bulimia. If a person binges and purges but is profoundly underweight, that person most likely suffers from anorexia, rather than bulimia. For more information on eating disorders like bulimia and anorexia, treatment options, available therapies and live counseling at GotTrouble.com.
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