Anorexia - The Effects
Women’s Health. 2012.
Anorexia is an eating dissorder which affects the mind and body. This leads to malnutrition and the addiction to losing weight to change your appearance. A lot of cases are driven by society and the desire to look like models we see in the media.
The heart is affected as it has to work harder to pump blood around the body. This sort of stress on the heart encourages palpitations and even heart failure because the body isn't gaining any energy it needs from food.
As the body isnt getting the nutrients it needs, problems such as kidney failure are responsible for the yellow skin appearance.
Without coinsuming any fibre, the body becomes constipated, making the body feel bloated and uncomfortable. This can also be very painful.
The womens menstrual cylcle stops, causing her to become infertile and unable to have children. These hormones also affect the mood and emotions of the person, often resulting in depression.
Skin, hair and nails, all become visibly run down. Hair and nails appear dry and brittle. Skin is also dry, making it crack, bleed and flake off.
Anorexics have a very thin, fragile appearance, they appear skeletal and gaunt as their flesh hugs the skeleton.
Lanugo - a condidtion where the skin of an anorexic suffer developes a fine layer of hair as a defect of trying to keep the body warm as there is not body fat to do this job.
Langley, J 2006,
Health issues such as thyroid are extremely common. In this case, thyroid becomes much more dangerous as all sorts of parts of the body stop functioning, such as, growth, fertitlty hormones and bone density.
Other signs of anorexia
Eating too little for a long time can also result in physical symptoms, such as:
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bloating or constipation
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headaches
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feeling lightheaded or dizzy
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feeling very tired
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feeling cold
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discoloured hands and feet caused by poor circulation
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dry skin
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hair loss from the scalp
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abdominal pain
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problems sleeping
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fine downy hair (lanugo) growing on the body
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brittle nails
'When I looked in the mirror, a mound of blubber stared back'
"The pressure of being the only girl with hormone-raging teenagers was enormous. I had no self-confidence, and my body became a focus of paranoia."
"My weight dropped from 8.5st to under 5st. My hair fell out, my skin cracked and bled, my bones ached and my periods stopped. I was also cycling between 13km (8 miles) and 24km (15 miles) a day to satisfy anorexia's need for exercise. But I still didn't believe I was thin enough. When I looked in the mirror, a mound of blubber stared back."
NHS, 2014.
NHS Choices, (n.d)
Abraham, S. 2008
The heart rate is low due to the body trying to conserve energy. The body is put through exercise to continue to lose weight, so her heart rate increses, making them feel dizzy and even faint.
Some appear blue in skin tone as there is no body fat underneath the skin to keep warm. The affected areas are usually the hands and feet.
What does the body look like?
When fat is lost beneatht he skin, it begins to sag and wrinkle, giving the impression of older skin.
Bone structure bceomes more visible, giving the most obvious signs of anorexia and bulimia. This gives a bowed impression of the legs, as there isn't a substantial amount of muscle and fat to make the legs appear healthy.
The skin colour also changes as the subcutaneous layer of fat becomes lost, meaning there are no blood vessels beneath the skin giving it it natural pink-like colour.
The bones develop osteoporosis, making them weaker and more prone to breakage due to loss of bone density. It is importrant to have vitamins such as Vitamin D for calcium levels to help teeth, nails and hair remain stronger.
Stomach acids erode the tooth enamel from constant vomiting. This also erodes the gums, making them receed, revealing more tooth which eventually leads to tooth loss.
This fine layer of hair develops as the body tries to adapt itself to enable the body to keep warm.
Sonenklar, C. 2011
'Starve on'
After reading a blog of an anorexic author, a different view reflects a'positive' look on anorexia and how it benefits losing weight.
This blog in particular enourages readers and bloggers to starve themselves to lose weight as it has worked for themself.
I found this particularly shocking as the simplicityof those words are obviosly affecting the readers as this person is continuing to blog in thanks to their readers.
Ana, 2013.
