Non-Disciplinary, Holistic & Natural Anorexia Treatment

What is Anorexia Nervosa?

Anorexia Nervosa (Anorexia) is a complex mental, emotional and physical disorder usually acquired early in life, during childhood or adolescence. It is subsequent to a negative body image developed through media, peers, bullying or parent’s preoccupations over their own weight or the child’s weight. Persons with anorexia suffer from anxiety fixated on the fear of eating and gaining weight. These persons commonly present with a history of child abuse. Anorexia is a serious illness and needs to be treated as soon as it is diagnosed. Parents should suspect that their child is anorexic if they are underweight, reluctant to eat and express the fear of gaining weight.

Negative Body Image and Anorexia Recovery

Anorexia is a chronic perception of being overweight regardless of how underweight one is. Normal weight is defined as the middle range on the BMI scale, an accepted standard body weight formula distributed into underweight, normal weight, overweight and obese.

Ideal weight is based on studies correlating weight and mortality. Ideal weight is the weight with the lowest risk of mortality. There is a current debate as to whether ideal weight is above normal BMI or just in the middle. Persons with anorexia typically maintain a BMI in the underweight segment of less than 18.5. Anorexic people do not accept their body shape and obsessively try to control their food intake to obtain a thinner body. Often, the literature refers to people with anorexia as having a “distorted body image”. “Distorted body image” is a superficial judgment reflecting the perspective of the speaker. To our understanding of the condition, patients with anorexia always see themselves as too fat because of their constant negative perception of their body weight in conjunction with an unattainable ideal weight or figure.

Fear of Food and Anorexia Treatment

Anorexia is a chronic intense fear of food, associated with the fear of gaining weight.

For someone with anorexia, food has become an enemy inspiring suspicion and mistrust. Food is the poison causing the feared disease: weight gain. The fear of food is the leading destructive force in the experience of the person suffering from anorexia. The fear of food can lead to a fatal outcome.

Feeding is our number one survival behavior. Normal feeding behavior is based on a positive relationship with food. We want food when we get hungry, food tastes good, and satiety generates pleasure. Our body and brain are wired to complete the hunger-satiety cycle successfully. In anorexia, the hunger-satiety positive feedback is turned into a negative feedback, threatening the most powerful drive of the human instinct to survive.

Rejection of Nourishment, the Emotional Component of Food

Feeding is more than the chemical transformation of food for our physical survival. Feeding is a psychological and spiritual behavior associated with mother’s love and physical contact early in life. Several unfortunate experiments accidentally provided the evidence that a positive human connection is a vital component in the early life feeding behavior. As an adult, nourishment becomes an accepted gift of sustenance from nature. Nourishment sustains our life force and is essential for our will to live. Without nourishment, we wither away. Our industrial foods devoid of vitality, certainly do not support or encourage human need for nourishment.

Persons suffering from anorexia and his or her consequent refusal of food, expresses the refusal of nourishment from the mother, to get control back from her and punish her. The action of refusing nourishment in physical form through food deprivation is also in direct correlation to the refusal of other forms of love and nourishment. This deprivation is strongly linked to the person feeling unworthy of nourishment and feelings of “I am not good enough” in several facets of his or her life.

Fear of Body Fat

Fear of body fat is associated with the fear of eating fatty foods. Feared food are oils or foods high in oil like nuts or avocados. Other foods may be feared that have been associated with negative events in the past, such as allergic reactions or panic attacks. These persons eliminate these foods from their diet, by fear of the consequences they associate with that particular food.

Restricting Feeding Behavior

Persons with anorexia restrict the amount of food and type of food intake constantly. Restrictive behavior may include dieting, fasting, counting calories and avoiding some types of food to avoid getting fat. Another type of restriction can be decreasing dietary intake to nearly nothing or completely void of food for days. Restriction leads to a chronic state of hunger, a shrinking of the stomach causing premature satiety and ultimately malnutrition. Restriction has biological consequences such as stomach stasis, (lack of peristalsis), decreased production of digestive fluids, slow gastric emptying, and relaxed lower esophageal sphincter that may lead to acid reflux/GERD. These in return, cause early satiety, spontaneous vomiting, sometimes binge eating, and rebound anxiety.

Prolonged restriction leads to starvation which can be fatal.

Other Compensatory Behaviors to Control Weight

Laxatives

Purging (vomiting) After a Meal

Vomiting may be induced with fingers, performed with a hose inserted in the stomach or may happen spontaneously with intense anxiety coupled with a lax lower esophageal sphincter.
Regurgitation of the stomach content after eating, may cause esophagitis and changes in the cells of the lower esophagus that lead to Barrett esophagus, a risk factor for esophageal cancer.

Over-Exercising

Persons with anorexia is obsessed with burning calories. Behaviors like standing constantly instead of seating, obsessively running or walking maybe a sign of wanting to control weight and prevent absorption of the food ingested.

Eating is a Stressful Behavior

Considering the fact that a person with anorexia feels better not eating, eating becomes a very stressful behavior. Therefore, avoiding to eat is a strategy to feel better. When eating, the feeding process is associated with fear and anxiety. The person may want to interfere with the absorption process as a last resource to feel better leading to the action of purging.

Control of the Body Vital Mechanism

A person with anorexia gains satisfaction in dominating the body and controls it constantly. Control of hunger sensations, control of desired foods, control of feared foods, control of emotions, control of the mother control. Since food is associated with maternal love, refusal of food is intertwined with the relationship with the mother. This desire for control strongly relates to a persons feeling of lack of control or helplessness in other aspects of his or her life. Sometimes this desire for control is a way to take back the reigns after a prior experience in life of not feeling listened to, not in control, or external expectations that the person has adopted as his or her own.