Eating Disorder

Eating Disorder 

What are Eating Disorders?

Disordered eating occurs in affluent cultures and especially in America, where anorexia nervosa (voluntary starvation) and bulimia nervosa (binge-eating followed by purging) now afflict one in ten people.

Most are young women in their teens and 20s, but the disorders are also increasing among young men.

Among the most baffling of conditions, eating disorders take on a life of their own so that eating, or not eating, becomes the point of everyday existence. Both anorexia and bulimia are powered by a desire for control.

There is no magic cure for these conditions, which are often resistant to treatment, and anorexia can be acutely life-threatening, requiring hospitalization and forced nourishment.