Eating Disorders: Bulimia Nervosa

Today, nearly ten to fifteen percent of adolescent boys suffer from an eating disorder in today’s population (Ray, 2004), and nearly thirty-five to fifty- seven percent of adolescent girls suffer from one as well (Boutelle, Neumark-Sztainer, Story, &Resnick, 2002; Neumark-Sztainer&Hannan, 2001; Wertheim et al., 2009). One of the most common forms of eating disorders is bulimia nervosa. This is a psychological disorder that has nutritional and physical consequences to someone (Smolin). This disorder consists of an individual consuming an excessive amount of calories in a short amount of time and shortly after consuming, forcing them self to remove the food from their system. ("Bulimia nervosa fact," July). In today’s society young girls, adolescents, and early aged women are structured by society to have this certain look to them. This then leaves a lasting impact on these young women and girls. They feel they need to look a certain way just to be noticed and accepted (Viinamäki, 2013). While most people believe eating disorders are only to be prevalent in women, but in all actuality men suffer from this problem as well. Young boys, adolescents, and early aged men suffer from self-esteem issues and seeking to have that “perfect masculine” body type, that they even conform to seeking eating disorder manners (Ray, 2004). Overall, bulimia nervosa is a much more common disorder than we believe it to be, it impacts many adolescent girls as well as boys. It affects them psychologically, and leaves a lasting impact on them.
In 1979, a psychiatrist named Gerald Russel from Britain came up with the name bulimia nervosa. He stated that one partakes in these bulimic manners due to three factors. Having this urge to overeat, an ultimate fear o...

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...ncludes excessive amounts of exercise and fasting. Induced vomiting is the most common form of a purge because it is the easiest and fastest way to discard the food from the body. The individual either uses their own finger or a smaller instrument to enhance a gag reflex. By pushing your finger to the back of the throat, this will cause an initial gag feeling and nausea, and will hopefully cause one to throw up (“’How to”’, 2014). Since water is nearly half of our total body weight, bulimics take diuretics to help reduce the water weight in their body. On average, women have about 50% water weight and men have about 60% water weight (Parks, 2013). The last way a bulimic may engage during a purge is taking laxatives. This produces an increase in watery diarrhea and allows the individual to think no nutritional factors of the food were absorbed by the body (Smolin).