Eating Disorders
Eating disorders are serious conditions related to persistent eating behaviors that negatively impact your health, your emotions, and your ability to function in important areas of life. The most common eating disorders are anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder.
Most eating disorders involve focusing too much on your weight, body shape, and food, leading to dangerous eating behaviors. These behaviors can significantly impact your body's ability to get appropriate nutrition. Eating disorders can harm the heart, digestive system, bones, and teeth and mouth, and lead to other diseases.
Eating disorders often develop in the teen and young adult years, although they can develop at other ages. With treatment, you can return to healthier eating habits and sometimes reverse serious complications caused by the eating disorder.
Anorexia Nervosa • Bulimia Nervosa • Binge Eating Disorder • Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorders
Anorexia Nervosa
Anorexia nervosa is diagnosed when patients weigh at least 15 percent less than the normal healthy weight expected for their height. Hallmarks of anorexia include:
Limited food intake
Fear of being “fat”
Problems with body image or denial of low body weight
Bulimia Nervosa
Although they may frequently diet and vigorously exercise, individuals with bulimia nervosa can be slightly underweight, normal weight, overweight, or even obese. But they are not as underweight as people with anorexia nervosa. Patients with bulimia nervosa binge eat frequently, and during these times sufferers may eat an astounding amount of food in a short time, often consuming thousands of calories that are high in sugars, carbohydrates, and fat.
Binge Eating Disorder
People with binge eating disorder have episodes of binge eating in which they consume very large quantities of food in a brief period and feel out of control during the binge. Unlike people with bulimia nervosa, they do not try to get rid of the food by inducing vomiting or by using other unsafe practices such as fasting or laxative abuse. Binge eating is chronic and can lead to serious health complications, particularly severe obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases.
Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorders
Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorders (OSFED) was previously known as Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (EDNOS) in past editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Despite being considered a ‘catch-all’ classification that was sometimes denied insurance coverage for treatment as it was seen as less serious, OSFED/EDNOS is a serious, life-threatening, and treatable eating disorder. The category was developed to encompass those individuals who did not meet strict diagnostic criteria for anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa but still had a significant eating disorder. In community clinics, the majority of individuals were historically diagnosed with EDNOS.