What Is Anorexia

Anorexia, or anorexia nervosa to use its full name, is a disabling and potentially lethal health condition whereby the victim will suffer from and exhibit a number of objectively flawed and erroneous beliefs about themselves which in turn, means that they will come to resent and even fear food as they perceive it to be the root cause of their deepest fear: weight gain. Terrified by the mere prospect of weight gain, people who suffer from anorexia will oftentimes go to extreme and self-harming behaviour in an attempt to avoid gaining additional weight and so may willfully deprive themselves of food, or eat food and then purge it at some later time.

It should be noted that for the purposes of medical classification and definition, anorexia is typically classified as a mental health disorder and treated as such, however, it is a mental health disorder that will manifest itself in physical manners as well due to the fact that the victim will deliberately interfere with and sabotage the body’s natural eating process. Tragically, out of all of the various mental health disorders that are in existence, anorexia nervosa happens to be the one that has the highest rate of death associated with it.

Some people have described the condition as the silent killer and the reason for this is that the victim who suffers from it will typically go to extreme lengths to avoid any sort of detection and so they come especially adept at camouflage, subterfuge and generally deflecting concern and suspicion. Rather than being a ploy to allow the disease to take full control, this is more often driven by a need for the victim to avoid censure and feelings of shame that would result.

People who suffer from anorexia nervosa should ensure that they increase their intakes of zinc whether this is in the form of supplements or food itself, as this will help to encourage the weight gain process.

Increasing the amount of fatty acids in the diet specifically, omega 3 fatty acids has also been identified by physicians and nutritionists as being an important nutrient to include in the diet.