How To Distinguish Between Anorexia Nervosa And Other Eating Disorders?
Eating Disorders (ED) are psychological disorders that affect the individual’s normal relationship with daily food intake, the perception of one’s own body or one’s eating habits. Furthermore, they are among the most severe psychopathologies with the greatest capacity to damage the individual’s quality of life.
The most common EDs are anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder, and due to some similarities between them, many people are not entirely clear about the essential differences between them all. Therefore, here you can find a summary on how to distinguish anorexia nervosa, the most “famous” and dangerous ED, and the rest of EDs. But first, let’s see what anorexia nervosa consists of.
Anorexia nervosa is one of the most harmful Eating Disorders that exist and its essential characteristic is a drastic weight loss on the part of the person who suffers from it, and consequently, an alarmingly low body weight linked to malnutrition.
People with anorexia nervosa They have a distorted perception of both their weight and their body and they develop an absolute obsession to control their caloric intake at all times, for fear of becoming fat and gaining weight.
The psychological aspect and emotional distress generated by anorexia nervosa is another of the fundamental pillars of this disease, since the person who suffers from it constantly suffers from the fear of gaining weight and from the distorted view they have of their physical appearance.
In order not to gain weight, people with anorexia nervosa usually put into practice all kinds of unhealthy strategies that can significantly affect their health, among which we can highlight the use of laxatives, dietary supplements, diuretics or obsessive physical exercise.
In addition to that, the continued practice of vomiting after a meal is also common, caused by social pressure not to leave anything on the plate (that is, as something planned), and the obsession with the consumption of calories ingested, even reaching count at all times and in detail the calories contained in each food they consume.
The physical symptoms of anorexia nervosa are related to the state of starvation that people who have this disease end up experiencing and the most common are: extremely thin appearance, fatigue, frequent dizziness or fainting, low blood pressure, constipation and loss of menstruation in women.
On the contrary, the main emotional symptoms that people with anorexia nervosa present are: irritability, anxiety, stress, depression, low self-esteem, anguish, difficulty sleeping and discomfort when eating.
The keys to distinguishing between anorexia nervosa and the rest of the main eating disorders
EDs are especially prevalent among the younger population, particularly among young or adolescent women, and have a truly devastating effect on both their psychological and physical health. Therefore, it is important to know how to recognize your symptoms and seek professional help as soon as possible when identifying them, to obtain a diagnosis and begin treatment.
With the aim of knowing in depth the main characteristics of the main eating disorders that exist, below we will review the keys to distinguish between anorexia nervosa, on the one hand, and bulimia and binge eating disorder, on the other.
Bulimia is an eating disorder characterized by periods of compulsive eating, followed by moments in which the person feels guilt, discomfort and distress about all the food eaten, and by periods of self-induced vomiting or other forms of purging to try to “compensate” for overeating, such as taking diuretics or exercising a lot.
The main difference between bulimia and anorexia nervosa is the presence of binge eating, which precedes use of compensation strategies such as vomiting or improper use of diuretics, laxatives or daily fasting.
In addition to that, generally people who have cases of bulimia do not have such a distorted perception of their own body or their weight, and their most defining characteristic is the sudden and continuous changes in their body volume. Besides, Damage to tissues such as the upper digestive tract, teeth or fingers often occurs due to self-induced vomiting. On the other hand, bulimia nervosa is more associated with malnutrition than malnutrition, unlike anorexia nervosa.
Binge eating disorder
Binge eating disorder is one of the least known EDs, which is why it can be confused with any of the two EDs mentioned above.
As its name indicates, binge eating disorder is characterized by episodes of compulsive eating or binge eating in short periods that have a great impact on the person on an emotional level.
These frequent binges cause great psychological discomfort, mainly due to the consequences that this will have on their physical appearance and also causes anguish, disgust and shame, which is why they usually do them secretly.
The main difference with bulimia and anorexia is that after binge eating, people with binge eating disorder do not induce vomiting or adopt another compensatory strategy, and they do not have a very distorted perception of their physical image and body weight.
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