Anorexia Nervosa

Anorexia Nervosa is a serious, often life threatening eating disorder which usually occurs in teenage girls and young women, but can also occur in men. This psychological disorder is characterized by intense fear of gaining weight and the patient try to lose weight by inadequate calorie intake and excessive energy expenditure. 

The term anorexia means loss of appetite but people with anorexia ignore hunger and thus control their desire to eat. They refuse to maintain a minimal body weight within 15% of an individual's normal weight and like to be slim. The person with anorexia nervosa typically begins dieting with the simple goal of losing weight, but over time even though they achieve their goal and loose weight, they will keep on increasing their goal and eat lesser and lesser. An Anorexic seem to have a greater fear of becoming obese than of dying from starvation. Self induced Weight lose is caused by avoiding fattening foods and doing excessive exercise, using laxatives or diuretics or self-induced vomiting.

Anorexia is not just a problem with food or weight. It is an attempt to use food and weight to deal with emotional problems such as stress, anxiety, unhappiness and the feeling that life is out of control. Anorexia is a negative way to cope with these emotions. One can observe behavioral changes like increasing seriousness and introversion, lose of confidence, less assertiveness, less aggressiveness and more dependency etc. in such people. Medical complications related to this disease are quite serious and can even lead to death. 

The difference between anorexia and Bulimia is that people with bulimia eat a huge amount of food, but will try to throw up to avoid weight gaining through different ways such as taking laxatives or diuretics or by too much exercise. But people with anorexia starve themselves even though they suffer terribly from hunger pains, avoid high calorie food and exercise constantly.