Anorexia
and
Obesity
Anorexia
A person with anorexia
has an intense fear of gaining
weight.
Someone with anorexia thinks
about food a lot
and limits the food she or he eats,
even though she or he is too thin.
While anorexia mostly affects
girls and women (90–95 percent),
it can also affect boys and men.
An anorexic:
*has a low body weight
for her or his height
*resists keeping
a normal body weight
*has an intense
fear of gaining weight
*thinks she or he is fat
even when very thin
Symptoms
She or he may use
extreme measures to
lose weight by:
* stunted growth
* thinning of the hair
* taking diet pills
* constantly feeling
"cold"
* not eating or eating
very little
* pallid complexion and
sunken eyes
* moving food around
the plate
* headaches, dry skin
* brittle fingernails
* dry or chapped lips
Treatment
The treatment of this disorder is
often difficult, some individuals
are notoriously difficult to help.
This is because of the disorder's
insidious nature, which wreaks
havoc not only with the body, but
just as seriously with the
individual's negative selfperception.
Obesity
Categories:
*
*
*
*
25 – 30
30 – 35
35 – 40
> 40
Overweight
Obese
Severe Obesity
Morbidly Obese
Morbid obesity is associated with a number of
conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure,
high cholesterol and sleep apnoea.
When discussing obesity, doctors tend to talk
about your Body Mass Index or BMI. The BMI is the
ratio between a patient’s weight in kilograms divided
by their height squared.
In addition, certain cancers are much more
common in obese patients such as oesophageal
cancer, breast cancer, ovarian cancer and prostate
cancer. Often these cancers are detected at a later
stage in obese patients and therefore they have
poorer outcomes.
Take hours in front of the TV or playing video
games, add snack foods, chips and sugary soft
drinks and you have the recipe for what is becoming
an epidemic of weight problems in children today.
Recent UK research has shown that as many as a
fifth of 7 to 11 years old are overweight and more
than a tenth are obese.
The end... :)