Two severe eating disorders are frequent-occurring, particularly among females which makes them cautious towards their physical appearance. These two conditions are Anorexia nervosa and Bulimia nervosa. Anorexia refers to the state of self-imposed malnourishment, characterized by severe weight loss. Another condition, Bulimia nervosa refers to the customary eating of huge amount of foods, also known as bingeing which is followed by vomiting or purging. Both of these conditions involve same obsession related to weight and shape of their body, arising from the desire to appear thin. The intention; behind such extreme actions which results in these two diseases are discovered to be psychological. This paper compares and contrasts Anorexia and Bulimia and discusses the cause and effect of these diseases.
Though both anorexia and bulimia are dangerous for the health of person, anorexia poses the threat to the life of person suffering from it as it promotes thinness in the individual and anorexics stops eating food altogether and lose weight at fast pace, thereby causing several health ailments. On the contrary, people with bulimia lie in the optimum weight range or are overweight and do not die because of low body weight and other affects as demonstrated in anorexics.
The starvation in anorexia and bulimia are self-imposed and requires understanding of self-imposed starvation as the individual choice derived from identifiable objectives and specific motivation. The condition of starvation is not attributable to any physical illness and has been discovered to be caused as a voluntary action. Nonetheless, there lies no justification for the emaciation in relation to political or religious aspirations. In the absence of any physical illness and any religious or other aspiration, the condition inexorably is classified as mental illness.
Anorexia nervosa term is coined by William Gull, an English physicist in 1874 and means ‘loss of appetite of nervous origin’. It is a serious condition which could prove to be fatal for the person. For example, potassium depletion which is caused due to anorexia can lead to kidney or heart failure. Striking contrast to Anorexia is Bulimia nervosa which is not as dangerous as Anorexia. In Bulimia people suffering from this are not extremely thin as in Anorexia and have optimum weight or are slightly overweight. Such people engage in overeating followed by purging the food consumed unlike the anorexics who don’t consume any food at all. Moreover, the anorexics attempt to lose their weight through laxatives abuse, diuretics usage and vigorous exercise along with lower food intake, bulimics are found to indulge in abuse of laxatives, though their prime activity remains purging. The reason for such severe self-imposed actions is accorded to the desire to appear thin and is encouraged by the idiosyncratic attitude to weight and shape of body. This psychological trait is an absolute essential for the diagnosis of anorexia.
The anorexics are so passionate about their preoccupation about appearing thin that if this interest of anorexics conflicts with other interest likes family or career, the anorexic person prefers the self-imposed food restriction and other pursuits are considered secondary. In contrast to this, bulimics prefers to consume the diet of their choice and maintain a normal social status, however achieve their motive through purging. Whereas anorexics avoid food altogether, bulimics indulge in bingeing, in both the diseases, individuals with their own perceptions, chooses the way to manage their weight, though the methods deployed by them to do so are unhealthy. The mere thought of eating normally and gaining optimum weight causes the feeling of extreme discomfort and intense anxiety in anorexics whereas bulimics are comfortable with their optimum weight and purge to avoid further weight gain. With the progression in this preoccupation, anorexic starts linking their self-esteem and self-respect with their weight and food consumption. Anorexics describe fat of body as disgusting and being thin is considered as morally admirable. Anorexia is identified to stem from identity crisis and the people with anorexia suffers from existential problem which means that anorexics demonstrate this certain behavior due to their attempt to establish their individual identity, to achieve autonomy and self-worth and gain control over their life, on the contrary bulimics display extreme lack of self-control when consuming food as they have described to couldn’t stop them from eating. . The anorexics achieve this through control of their weight and shape. An important characteristic of psychological feature of anorexia is the body image distortion and this distortion is related to the experience of the person with her body. The most common distortion is the appearance as fat or overweight, though in true sense, the anorexic might be emaciated to the dangerous level. In bulimia, the person does not suffer from such distorted body images and the disease is mainly the weight management procedure adopted by bulimics. In 90 per cent of the cases, anorexia occurs in young females or adolescent . The death rate from anorexia is 5 persons death per 1000 people per year whereas bulimia’s death rate annually is 1 death per 1000 people. Anorexia increases the death risk by 6 fold in comparison to depression whereas bulimia increases it by 2 fold.
Conclusion
It can be concluded that to a certain extent, few features of bulimia and anorexia are common in the societal structure. Concerns about dieting and weight may not always lead to these diseases, however when such concerns are combined with separate concerns like identity crisis, they may lead to anorexia and bulimia. Anorexia, in comparison to bulimia face severe threat to the life of person as anorexia comprises of the self-imposed starvation which anorexia patients follow, whereas bulimia patients adopts different approach of eating too much food and then purging it. The key contrasting features of anorexia and bulimia can be summarized as weight loss in proportion to or more than 25 per cent of the clinical body weight, which is the actual weight less than the clinical weight determined by age, sex and height occurs in anorexia whereas in bulimia the weight of person is normal. The individual suffering from anorexia has distorted view about her body shape and grows thin whereas bulimia patients are satisfied with their normal weight and do not suffer from distorted image perceptions.
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