Eating disorders like bulimia, anorexia, and binge eating disorder – contain extreme attitudes, emotions, and behaviors surrounding weight as well as food problems. Eating disorders are considered as serious physical and emotional problems that could have life-threatening consequences for both men and women.
If you are looking for information about different types of eating disorders, then the following list will offer you a brief summary of the types of eating disorders commonly available. Read on to learn more about eating disorders as well as their symptoms – collected by Wikiyeah.com!
Different Types Of Eating Disorders – 5 Most Common Kinds

1. Anorexia Nervosa
In regard to types of eating disorders, anorexia nervosa is featured by the refusal to eat. It impacts people at all ages and of different genders but disproportionately impacts young women most commonly in their teens and twenties. With those people with anorexia nervosa, food, eating, and weight control become obsessions. They typically weigh themselves repeatedly; eat small quantities of special foods and portion foods carefully. Some individuals with this disorder might also engage in binge eating followed by excessive exercise, extreme dieting, self-induced vomiting, diuretics, or misuse of laxatives or enemas.
The symptoms of anorexia nervosa contain:
- Sever food restriction
- Very low body weight
- Unwillingness to maintain a healthy or normal weight
- Extreme fear of increasing weight
- Distorted self-esteem and body image that is strongly affected by the body weight and shape
- Lack of menstruation among women or girls
For those with this disorder, they recover with treatment after just a single episode while other might get well yet still have relapses. Some people might have a more long-lasting, chronic form of anorexia nervosa, in which their personal health reduces when they battle the ailment.
In addition to the common symptoms above, there are other symptoms as well as medical complications associated with, such as:
- Brittle nails or hair
- Bone thinning (osteoporosis or osteopenia)
- Yellowish and dry skin
- Growth of hair throughout the body
- Muscle wasting, weakness and mild anemia
- Severe constipation
- Damage to the function and structure of the human heart
- Multi-organ damage
- Brain damage
- Lethargy, feeling tiredness or sluggishness all the time
- Infertility
- Reduced body temperature
[Read: best foods to eat before bed]
2. Bulimia Nervosa
Individuals with bulimia nervosa tend to have recurrent or regular episodes of consuming large amounts of food and also experience a lack of control during these episodes. This disorder is mainly followed by the behavior which compensates for the problem of overeating lie excessive use of diuretics or laxatives, fasting, vomiting, excessive exercise, or a combination of those behaviors.
This disorder is not like anorexia nervosa as the sufferers often maintain a normal or healthy weight, whilst some might be slightly overweight. However, similar to those with anorexia nervosa, they are usually afraid of gaining weight, want to lose weight desperately, and are intensely obsessive to their own body shape and size. Oftentimes, the bulimic behavior is completed secretly as it is usually associated with the feelings of shame or disgust. The purging cycle could happen anywhere from a few times per week to many times per day.
The symptoms of bulimia nervosa consist of:
- Swollen salivary glands within the jaw area and neck
- Chronically inflamed along with sore throat
- Acid reflux or other gastrointestinal issues
- Intestinal irritation and distress from laxative abuse
- Dehydration from the purging process of fluids
- Damaged tooth enamel, and highly sensitive and decaying teeth resulted by exposure to stomach acid
- Electrolyte imbalance
[Read: worst foods to eat before bed]
3. Binge-Eating Disorder
When it comes to different types of eating disorder, binge-eating disorder might be the most common one. People with this disorder tend to lose control over their own eating. Dissimilar to bulimia nervosa, the episodes of binge eating are not associated with compensatory behaviors such as excessive exercise, purging, or fasting. Consequently, those with binge-eating disorder usually are obese or overweight. And, sufferers who are obese might be more likely to developing cardiovascular disease as well as high blood pressure. also, they experience shame, guilt, and distress regarding to their problem, which could result in more binge eating.
The indications that the binge eating is out of control like eating without feeling hungry, eating to the point of discomfort, or eating alone due to the shame about the problem. [Read: how to stop binge eating disorder at home naturally]
4. Anorexia Athletic
This might be a less-common type among many types of eating disorders. Anorexia athletic is a constellation of disordered behaviors on the eating disorders spectrum which is distinct from Bulimia nervosa or anorexia nervosa. Despite not recognized formally by the experts, the term of anorexia athletic is popularly used in mental health literature in order to denote a problem featured with obsessive, excessive exercise. Aka sports anorexia, compulsive exercising, and hypergymnasia, anorexia athletic might be most popularly found in the pre-professional as well as elite athletes; despite it could exist in most normal people as well.
Those sufferers might engage in both excessive exercising and workouts and calorie restriction. Thus, this puts them at the risk of malnutrition, decreased bone density or delayed menarche in younger athletes.
The symptoms of anorexia athletic include:
- Obsession with fat, calories, and weight, particularly when compared with elite athletes
- Over–exercising
- A lack of comfort from exercising
The advanced cases of this disorder might cause psychological, physical and social results because the sufferers deny that their excessive patterns of exercising are a real problem. [Read: low calorie snacks to eat on the go]
5. Night Eating Syndrome (NES)
This syndrome is considered as an emerging problem which is gaining enhanced perceive among medical professionals. The clinical importance of this syndrome is related to obesity because a lot of people with NES are obese or overweight and these problems are associated with many negative health problems. despite not classified as one of the types of eating disorders, NES, as a syndrome, is considered as a constellation of symptoms of disordered eating featured with most majorly by a delayed circadian timing of consumed food.
Those with NES tend to not eat in the morning and even very little during the first half of daytime. Usually, they eat in the evening hours. They also are not able to et back to sleep after eating or might undergo frequent awakenings during the sleeping process. Nevertheless, they are strongly aware of their own eating episodes.
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