THE ANOREXIA

I decided to present you the subject of the anorexia. It is the disease which is translated by a refusal to feed, and which can have grave consequences. It touches between 2 and 10% (percent) of the women, in particular between 12 and 15 years and 18 and 23 years. This disease is exceptional among the men, these last ones representing only 10% of the referenced cases. Through thisaccount, we are going to try to understand how this disease starts, then what it provokes, and finally how to be cured.

INTRODUCTION

The anorexia is a Food Behavioural Problem, as the bulimia and the food compulsion. These three disorders are not to be confused. The bulimia is the consummation at time short of an important quantity of food. That without pleasure, without hunger norsatisfaction, with a strong feeling of loss of control and culpability. It is sometimes followed by vomits, as well as by strategies to burn the gulped down calories. The crisis is associated with a disgust of one who can lead to the suicide. The compulsive food absorbs important quantities of food at least twice a week. It can be one kilo of peanut or two patches of chocolate. She chooses rather a foodto please. She tries to escape feelings and doesn’t any more succeed in controlling herself. Obsessed by the food, she avoids to eat in table and eats relatively little during meal. Now that these notions were clarified, we are exactly going to study more the anorexia.

1. How starts this disease?

In the great majority of the cases, the anorexia has an only release mechanism: the obsessionof the thinness. It is on the base a wish to slim which degenerates and turns into disease. The most common anorexia is the anorexia nervosa. It corresponds to a refusal to feed bound to a particular mental state. The loss of appetite is secondary, bound to the voluntary and often unconfessed limitation of the food. We differentiate two kind of anorexia nervosa: • • restrictive anorexia: thepatient eats almost nothing anorexia-bulimia: the patient eats little and compensates for the possible crises of bulimia with vomits

Nowadays, the frequency of the anorexia is in increase in the western societies where the « thinness » looks like ideal. It shows itself classically at the high and average social classes within families for which the social advancement and the success at school have abig importance. But various referenced cases, in particular in North Africa in 1990, showed that this disease doesn’t touch that these classes. Four main causes in the anorexia were listed: • At the biological level: a genetic predisposition would have been revealing by studies on the twins At the psychological level: personality’s problems as perfectionism, a tendency to get excited for nothing,weak one self-respect, difficulties in the relations in the others At the sociocultural level: the current culture based on the thinness and the beauty. These elements are seen as signs of success and happiness At the family level: because of family dysfunctions as the incest, the ill-treatment or the alcoholism Another not scientific cause can be given: the effect of fashion, with the feminineideals, the models who are more and more thin. Today it exists as a dictatorship of the thinness.

In to have given all these explanations onto the anorexia, we are now going to approach the consequences which this disease can have.

2. The consequences of the anorexia

It is about a serious illness which can, according to certain doctors, cause the death in 5 in 10% of the cases. The firstdisorders appear when the loss of weight becomes too important. The first symptoms are the lack of vitamins and calcium brought normally by the food. For the young teenagers, the anorexia can provoke a stop of the growth. This lack of food is going to weaken the body, to make it more sensitive to the infections. Nails and hair can become dry and breakable. Cardiac and hormonal disorders can also…