Bulimia Nervosa On The Brain

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The Effects of Bulimia Nervosa on the Brain
According to CBS News, we see about 5,000 advertisements a day. That is quite the overload of information coming into our brains even when we do not think they are effecting the way we think and view different things. The majority of these ads depict beautiful people with very thin physiques. Most ads are sexual overkill which in turn can really affect the way people view their own bodies. Women in particular are more susceptible to being affected by beauty and age defying advertisements. Ads on television, billboards, radio or bus stops mainly target adolescents or young women. These ads give off unrealistic ideals of what attractive women should look like. Many times the pressures of looking thin drive women to extremes such as eating disorders. While there are many different kinds of eating disorders my research will focus on Bulimia and how it effects the brain.
Bulimia is defined as a serious physical and emotional illness in which particularly young women eat large amounts of food (binge eating) and then force themselves to vomit in order to not gain weight or to maintain their current weight (www.miriam-webster.com). While this disorder can cause many different injuries to the physical body I also believe that it can cause just as many deficits to the human brain if not more. While there are many things that can go wrong with the physical body of a Bulimic woman the mental effects appear to be even worse. Bulimia is commonly associated with mood disorders, obsession issues, and poor impulse control (Pichika, Buchsbaum, Bailer, Hoh, DeCastro, Buchsbaum, & Kaye, 2013). This emotional illness can last for many years and often leads to wo...

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...nt state of anxiety due to their surroundings.
Patients who suffer from Bulimia experience extremely low levels of serotonin which ends up making them feel depressed and often leads them to have very low self-esteem. When Bulimic patients binge eat on sweets or carbs those foods actually increase the serotonin levels in the brain which makes these individuals actually feel good. This in turn continues the unhealthy cycle of binge eating then regurgitating the food due to feelings of guilt. This disruption in serotonin levels can eventually lead to depression and anxiety, which are known side effects of malnourishment found in individuals who are known to eat too little or too much (www.something-fishy.org).
While these chemical imbalances can really affect the way the brain reacts to this disease there is also a link bewtwwen physical brain leasions and Bulimia.

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