Week 4 Assignment
PSY 240
November 13, 2013

To Eat or Not to Eat Hello everyone. My name is Ruth and I want to talk to you guys about eating disorders. An eating disorder is essentially an illness that disrupts a person’s every day diet which can cause a person to pretty much stop eating or over eat, depending on the illness. These illnesses are more apparent in the teenage years and in to young adulthood (Pinel, 2011), which makes sense because this is when we start becoming more aware of our bodies as well as other people’s bodies. We might want to look like the model we just saw on TV and will do anything to get that body, right? But an eating disorder is not the way to go; we will get in to the effects of
Following the binge eating is forced vomiting, excess use of laxatives, excessive exercise or a combination to get rid of the food because of the guilt that is felt from eating so much; this is often called binge-purge syndrome or binging and purging (Pinel, 2011). Believe it or not, people with bulimia nervosa often maintain what would be a healthy weight or even might be slightly overweight in some cases. People with bulimia nervosa binge and purge for the same reason that people with anorexia nervosa do not eat: for a fear of gaining weight and being unhappy with their size and shape. This binge and purge cycle can happen anywhere from once or twice per week to a few times per day (Pinel, 2011).
With bulimia nervosa, you have pretty much all of the side effects of anorexia nervosa plus a few more. You will have a chronic sore and inflamed throat because of the stomach acid coming up, as well as swollen salivary glands in the throat. The enamel on your teeth will also wear down because of the stomach bile as well which will cause tooth decay and teeth that will easily break. You will develop acid reflux disorder as well as other gastrointestinal problems and intestinal pain and irritation from the use of laxatives. Severe dehydration will occur from purging all fluids as well as an electrolyte imbalance which can lead to a heart attack (Pinel, 2011). Stomach acid it incredibly damaging to esophagus and mouth so throwing