Sue Scheff: Teen Eating Disorders

Especially young girls today, the peer pressure can encourage your young teen/tween that being “thin” is in. Teen body image can lead to other concerns, whether your child is suffering with some depression, not being able to fit in at school, or just plain feeling fat and ugly – we need to talk to them and explain about Teens and Eating Disorders, including anorexic. Teen Obesity is another issue parents need to learn more about.

Source: Connect with Kids

“I think that it definitely had something to do with my mom and my sister talking about different diets, and at that age …you don’t understand everything that they are discussing and the way that they’re discussing it, and in my head I blew it up as something bigger.”
– Shay Fuell, recovering anorexic

About 2.5 million Americans suffer from anorexia. Shay Fuell was only nine years old when the fixation began.

“(I) was starting to have body-image issues and looking in the mirror sideways and just pinching my skin seeing if there was fat there,” she says.

A few years later, she was 5-feet-2 and weighed 78 pounds.

“Literally, it becomes [a part of] every thought … in your head,” she says. “You can’t think about anything else. You can’t concentrate on anything. You can’t even hold a conversation with somebody because you are thinking about the last meal that you ate or what you should be doing to work out or how you’re going to be able to throw up without anybody knowing.”

According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the number of girls under the age of 12 hospitalized for eating disorders has more than doubled since 1999.

“I don’t know if they’re actually developing them younger or if it’s that parents are having a greater awareness of what’s going on with their children,” says Brigette Bellott, Ph.D., a psychologist and eating disorder specialist.

What’s going on, typically, is depression, children obsessed with eating or overly anxious about their weight and their appearance.

“Things to watch,” says Bellott, “what do they believe about their own body? I mean I would ask that: “What do you think about your body, how do you feel about it?”

Experts say it’s crucial for parents to catch the first signs of an eating disorder because the fatality rate for anorexic women is 10 to 15 percent.

“Some of them [die] through malnourishment, some through suicide,” says Mary Weber-Young, L.P.C. “It is the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness.”

Shay wasn’t diagnosed until she was 14. It took five difficult years of treatment before she had fully recovered.

“It was an addiction,” she admits. “It was an obsession.”

Tips for Parents

The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) describes an eating disorder as “an obsession with food and weight.” The two main eating disorders are anorexia nervosa (an obsession with being thin) and bulimia (eating a lot of food at once and then throwing up or using laxatives; also known as ‘binging and purging’). Who has eating disorders?

According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders:

Eight million or more people in the US have an eating disorder.
Ninety percent are women
Victims may be rich or poor
Eating disorders usually start in the teens
Eighty-six percent of victims report onset by age 20
Eating disorders may begin as early as age 8
Seventy-seven percent report duration of one to 15 years
Six percent of serious cases end in death

It’s not always easy for parents to determine if their daughter or son is suffering from an eating disorder. But the AAFP does list the following warning signs for anorexia and bulimia:

Unnatural concern about body weight (even if the person is not overweight)

Obsession with calories, fat grams and food

Use of any medicines to keep from gaining weight (diet pills, laxatives, water pills)

The more serious warning signs can be more difficult to notice because people with eating disorders often try to hide the symptoms:

Throwing up after meals
Refusing to eat or lying about how much was eaten
Fainting
Over-exercising
Not having periods
Increased anxiety about weight
Calluses or scars on the knuckle (from forced throwing up)
Denying that there is anything wrong

If left untreated, people with eating disorders can suffer some health problems, including disorders of the stomach, heart and kidneys; irregular periods or no periods at all; fine hair all over the body, including the face; dry scaly skin; dental problems (from throwing up stomach acid); dehydration.

Eating disorders can be treated. The first step is getting back to a normal weight, or at least to the lower limits of the normal weight range, according to Dr. Rex Forehand, a psychologist at the Institute for behavioral Research at the University of Georgia. But more needs to be done, Dr. Forehand says. “Attitudes and beliefs about body weight and eating patterns must also be changed. A comprehensive intervention may be necessary.”

Treatment may require hospitalization. The physician may recommend a dietician. For both anorexics and bulimics, family and individual counseling may be helpful.

References
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
American Academy of Family Physicians
National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders

Is it a Diet or An Eating Disorder

Source: Health A to Z

Your teenager skips meals, becomes obsessed with weight loss and goes on wacky diets. You wonder if this is a passing phase or one of those eating disorders you hear so much about.

While it's a leap to link a teen's poor eating habits to an eating disorder, experts contend poor dieting, if taken to the extreme, can in fact lead to a health-threatening, life-threatening eating disorder.

Pamela Guthrie, an outreach director for the American Anorexia Bulimia Association (AABA) a nonprofit organization dedicated to the prevention and treatment of eating disorders, characterizes eating disorders and disordered eating as different degrees of eating abnormally. Disordered eating may mean frequently missing meals, yo-yo dieting, popping diet pills (diuretics) and cutting out whole groups of food. Eating disorders, she explains, are not triggered solely by the desire to be thin.

"Eating disorders are about food, but they're really not about food," she says. "They are usually about psychological problems, low self-esteem, stress and depression."

People with eating disorders tend to use food to gain a sense of control when they feel out of control, to gain a sense of self-esteem and self-worth, to manage depression and to express anger and rebellion, according to Guthrie, who as outreach director travels around high schools and colleges to educate students about eating disorders.

A growing problem

Both disordered eating habits and eating disorders have grown to be a major problem among teenagers, according to both psychiatric and nutrition experts. And both, they say, are dangerous.

A teenager who has poor eating habits misses out on important vitamins and minerals that help prevent disease later on down the road. A teenager who has an eating disorder runs the risk of serious malnutrition, dehydration, heart disease or heart attack and other serious health consequences, according to AABA.

It's estimated that 90 percent of high school juniors and seniors have been on a diet, although only between 10 percent and 15 percent are overweight, Guthrie says. What's more, 80 percent of 10-year-old girls and 50 percent of 9-year-old girls have been on a diet, according to the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination, a nonprofit organization in New York.

As for true eating disorders, the American Psychiatric Association estimates that between 1 percent and 4 percent of teens and young adults have one type of eating disorder or another, such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa. Nutritionist Frances Berg, editor of the "Healthy Eating Journal" and author of the book "Afraid to Eat: Children and Teens in Weight Crisis," cautions parents that their own eating habits, particularly if they are rabid dieters, can set their children up for poor and even dangerous eating practices. "Adults keep running after every new weight-loss program or product while their kids watch their bizarre behavior and think it's normal," Berg says.

Eating disorder characteristics

How can you tell whether your child's dieting practices have gone too far and may be signs of an eating disorder? Guthrie says it's important for parents to first educate themselves about good nutrition and eating disorders.

The characteristics of the two eating disorders associated with obsessive weight loss:

People who have anorexia eat very little even though they are thin. They have an intense fear of body fat and weight gain.
People with bulimia tend to binge and purge. That is, they will get rid of food that they have just eaten by vomiting or taking laxatives or diuretics (water pills). They also have a fear of body fat even though their size or weight may be normal for them.
"With an anorexic, the first things to look for are the physical signs. They will show distinct weight loss," Guthrie says. "The signs are harder to see with a bulimic. A parent should look for behaviors, such as a constant obsession with food and weight or constant comments about foods being too fattening."

Another sign of someone having bulimia is not wanting to eat with the rest of the family. "They may want to eat in private, or they go to the bathroom (to purge) after they eat," Guthrie adds.

They may also offer excuses for why they don't want to eat. "They say they're too busy to eat. They're not hungry in the morning. They don't like cafeteria food," Guthrie says.

Parents and school coaches should also be on the lookout for what experts call "exercise bulimia." "Too much exercise can be just as dangerous as purging," Guthrie contends. "If they eat a piece of cake, they think they have to work that off. They exercise several hours every day."

Finally, Guthrie advises parents to look for signs of depression or antisocial behavior closely related to eating disorders. If you suspect your teenager has an eating disorder, don't keep your suspicions to yourself. "Sit down with your child and let them know you're really worried about them," she says.