Research Paper On Anorexia Nervosa

Anorexia Nervosa
With the topic of Anorexia Nervosa, people will often associate this illness with women. Although mostly women deal with this sickness, men also experience this medical problem. Sabel (2014) actually states that “males may about for 10-25% of anorexia and bulimia cases” (p.209). Anorexia is a psychological disorder that is characterized by reducing ones appetite or they have an aversion to food. Food, eating, and weight control becomes a main priority. With anorexia, one fears the gain of weight and that fear drives them to starve themselves. The result of doing this makes them dangerously thin, which may cause other medical problems. Although anorexia is mostly seen in females, the purpose of this review is to focus mostly on the male's’ perspective of the eating disorder. The suspension of diagnosis is because of “gender stereotypes surrounding eating disorders” (p. 210).
Assessment
For most males that are diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, they often “described an early pattern of skipping meals, selling their school lunches to others, restricting […] food intake and

Victims of anorexia tend to become “extremely thin] (emaciation)” (3). When they do not eat, their bodies do not get all the nutrients it needs to survive. Because men go through anorexia it does not mean that are immune to the medical complications that are caused by it. Just like females, men can develop “arrhythmias, osteoporosis and hepatitis” (Sabel, 2014, p. 209). Osteoporosis is often forgotten in men for the fact that that testosterone protects them from it, however, with anorexia, they have lower levels of testosterone which leaves them defenseless against it. Men are worse off with anorexia than women for the fact that men can lose weight more rapidly than a woman can which puts men in harm’s way earlier. Because of the loss of testosterone and other sex-related hormones, the male also loses his sex drive, as do women as