Anorexia Nervosa
By: Amna Khan
What is Anorexia?
Anorexia is an emotional disorder that causes a desire to lose weight by a lack of food. Typically people with Anorexia have a fear of becoming overweight or obese. It is a general loss of interest in food and lack of appetite.
What are the effects of Anorexia?
Some effects are extreme weight loss, fatigue, dry skin, intolerance of cold and or dehydration. These are common effects of Anorexia. Many people avoid food courts, kitchens, restaurants and other places that might tempt them. They find other things to replace meals.
What causes Anorexia?
Body Image
In order to look like a model ,people become anorexic which causes them to want to lose a lot of weight.
Self Esteem
Anorexia not only takes lives, but it takes away people's self esteem. As the tireless road of anorexia can get a person's self esteem begins to crumble.
Peer Pressure
To "fit in" people want to lose weight and then got to the extreme. When people are skinny or are less weight than others, Anorexia tends to happen a lot in these types of cases.
How many people are affected ?
According to national eating disorders.org, approximately 30 million people are affected by Anorexia. That is more than the amount of autistic and schizophrenic people in the world. Many people start with a major depression and than the number increases vastly.
Personal Response
While I was researching, I learned many depressing facts. We have so many people in the world who hurt their selves both physically and emotionally , because of what other people might say. It hurts me to think about how many people die each year because of lack of food. I feel that if we as people weren't so judgmental on how other people look, Anorexia would never exist. I feel if we could as a whole unity end this problem many lives would be saved. I hope that in the future we can eliminate this problem as a whole. If we could just maybe instead of teasing people we could tell them their pretty instead or compliment them.
Has the Number of Anorexic people increased over the years?
Yes, in recent years studies show that anorexia has increased by 45% in the last 3 years.
Kate Dillion
Model Kate Dillon struggled with Anorexia for most of her life. She was told to lose more weight by photographers and eventually stopped eating altogether. Years later Kate decided to accept the true body she had and became a plus size model. She know raises money for Anorexia awareness.
Ariana Grande
Ariana Grande, one of the world's most popular celebrity was diagnosed with Anorexia in the year of 2011. She said she lost weight for herself and not anyone else. When she began to lose weight at a high rate many people questioned her and her modeling and singing career took off.
Kirsten Haglund
Kirsten Haglund former Miss America, developed Anorexia as a teenager. She had treatment for 2 years, after treatment Kristen went back into the pageant to showcase her main topic eating disorders. She know wants to be a role model for girls and hopes to eliminate Anorexia.