why it occurs and how to deal with it

If you are not a nutri­tion­ist, and not a pro­fes­sion­al ath­lete or coach, then I ask you to care­ful­ly read this arti­cle.

Every girl dreams of being beau­ti­ful and slim. Recre­ate in your mind the image of a beau­ti­ful girl. Close your eyes and imag­ine it in front of you. In the mind, as a rule, famous actress­es, mod­els emerge, and they are all thin and sophis­ti­cat­ed. The thin­ness of the waist, arms, legs, shoul­ders …

And you know what’s most inter­est­ing? This image that has sur­faced in our mem­o­ry is not ours. He is bound to us.

Here I want to say about times, about cus­toms …

Standards of beauty in society

Pre­vi­ous­ly, Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe was con­sid­ered the canon of beau­ty. Show her pho­to now to a girl of 16 years old, she will most like­ly say “well, fat…”. And what can we say about the Baroque peri­od, when the mas­ters in the paint­ings, paint­ing the naked charms of the divas of that time, traced every fold and every “cel­lulite”, as it was believed that it was beau­ti­ful! And if we had a time machine and end­ed up in this era, show­ing a pho­to of a mod­ern girl, we would be answered “Oh my God, what a thin one, prob­a­bly turn­ing white with some­thing or times are hun­gry …”.

Soci­ety dic­tates and impos­es a mod­el of beau­ty on us. Movies, adver­tise­ments, social net­works, etc. I’m sure that in your Insta­gram feed you often see an exam­ple of “suc­cess­ful and beau­ti­ful” — a thin girl with long hair against the back­drop of a nice car, always with a bunch of ros­es. Hav­ing slipped, after a while you approach the mir­ror and con­scious­ly or sub­con­scious­ly begin to com­pare your­self in order to “cor­re­spond” to the canons of mod­ern beau­ty. The caus­tic worm of the inter­nal dia­logue begins to prompt “oh, this is why your life is not work­ing out, this is why, you are not hap­py, you are fat, let’s go on a diet.” And the real epic begins with diets, “ves­sels”, baths, phys­i­cal loads, diet pills and break­downs .…

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What is bulimia nervosa

And so a ter­ri­ble dis­ease called bulim­ia ner­vosa can enter your life.

Bulim­ia ner­vosa is a rel­a­tive­ly new dis­ease that is very unusu­al and extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to treat. As a rule, girls and women suf­fer from this dis­ease, how­ev­er, men are also occa­sion­al­ly cap­tured by this dis­ease. Risk group girls 13–25 years old. Until the 60s, the world did not know such a dis­ease, the first descrip­tion of the dis­ease in 1979 by the famous British psy­chi­a­trist Ger­ald Rus­sell. Anorex­ia has been known since the Mid­dle Ages, and it was believed that bulim­ia appears as a result of anorex­ia, anoth­er ner­vous dis­ease asso­ci­at­ed with eat­ing. How­ev­er, today mod­ern sci­ence can say that these two dis­eases can go both in turn in one patient, and they can also occur com­plete­ly sep­a­rate­ly. Dur­ing anorex­ia ner­vosa, a per­son­’s feel­ing of hunger is dulled, and in bulim­ia, on the con­trary, it increas­es a hun­dred­fold, and is char­ac­ter­ized by sud­den bouts of overeat­ing.

How does bulimia manifest?

Bulim­ia ner­vosa is a type of eat­ing dis­or­der that is char­ac­ter­ized by “wolf” hunger, uncon­trol­lable overeat­ing, feel­ings of guilt for what has been done, and fur­ther com­plet­ed attempts to “puri­fy”.

I will tell you this, bulim­ia ner­vosa is now one of the most com­mon dis­eases among young women in Ukraine. It begins, as a rule, at a young age with dis­sat­is­fac­tion with one­self, one’s body, exces­sive fix­a­tion on one’s mass. Trau­mat­ic sit­u­a­tions, fam­i­ly con­flicts, unre­quit­ed love, tox­ic rela­tion­ships, Exhaust­ing diets, exces­sive exer­cise, weigh­ing food and count­ing kilo­calo­ries, etc. — faith­ful pre­de­ces­sors and asso­ciates of bulim­ia ner­vosa.

The dif­fi­cul­ty in diag­nos­ing lies in the fact that very often peo­ple suf­fer­ing from bulim­ia ner­vosa are silent about their ill­ness. And even when they come to the doc­tor, they try to hide their prob­lem. They are very ashamed of them­selves, but they can­not do any­thing with them­selves …

Clin­i­cal­ly, bulim­ia ner­vosa man­i­fests itself as fol­lows:

• The patient is exces­sive­ly fixed on her body weight, dis­sat­is­fied with her­self, and although her body weight is with­in her con­sti­tu­tion­al norm, dis­sat­is­fac­tion comes to the fore. Strict diets begin, fix­a­tion on your diet.
• And then sud­den­ly an uncon­trol­lable attack of wolf hunger appears and the patient overeats. Hunger is the strongest and any prod­ucts can be used, rang­ing from deli­cious meat­balls or cakes to not tasty raw pas­ta. It all depends on the sever­i­ty of the con­di­tion. At the moments of overeat­ing, as a rule, a per­son seems to turn off and start eat­ing every­thing, which is why “parox­ys­mal” overeat­ing is con­sid­ered.

How­ev­er, some­times it also hap­pens that the patient care­ful­ly plans how and what she will eat while she is left alone with­out pry­ing eyes, she goes to the super­mar­ket, picks up a lot of food, pre­tend­ing that for the whole fam­i­ly and in two hours, hav­ing come eats every­thing home. Fur­ther, when he real­izes what hap­pened, a wild feel­ing of guilt and shame comes, self-fla­gel­la­tion, self-loathing and the only way out is “purifi­ca­tion”!

The patient inde­pen­dent­ly induces vom­it­ing, uses med­ica­tions that remove flu­id from the body and / or lax­a­tives. A long stay in the bath is not as alien as one of the “cleans­ing” options. Chron­ic vom­it­ing leads to prob­lems of the gas­troin­testi­nal tract, destruc­tion of tooth enam­el, enlarge­ment of the parotid glands, elec­trolyte imbal­ance in the body, ede­ma, and so on.

There are dis­tur­bances in all organs and sys­tems, pri­mar­i­ly the gas­troin­testi­nal tract, the ner­vous sys­tem (con­vul­sions devel­op), the car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem (arrhyth­mias, block­ades, car­diomy­opa­thy, etc.), and renal fail­ure is increas­ing. Very often, bulim­ia ner­vosa becomes com­pli­cat­ed by depres­sive symp­toms up to a sui­cide attempt. Low self-esteem leads to a dis­tor­tion of a per­son­’s per­cep­tion of his reflec­tion in the mir­ror. Even with a nor­mal weight, the patient believes “that she is fat and needs to lose weight.”

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Why do people get bulimic

The cause of bulim­ia ner­vosa is a com­plex of phys­i­o­log­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal and social fac­tors. It is believed that there is a cer­tain bio­chem­i­cal pre­dis­po­si­tion in the brain that can lead to break­down under the influ­ence of trau­mat­ic sit­u­a­tions.

There­fore, ther­a­py in the treat­ment of bulim­ia ner­vosa must be com­plex in order to achieve remis­sion and heal­ing. So, psy­chi­a­trists pre­scribe anti­de­pres­sants (they help restore the bio­chem­i­cal strip in neu­ro­trans­mit­ters), behav­ior cor­rec­tors (so that there are no com­pul­sive overeat­ing), anti-anx­i­ety, as well as psy­chother­a­peu­tic ther­a­py aimed at increas­ing self-esteem, cor­rect self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and lib­er­a­tion from food addic­tion. An exam­i­na­tion by a gas­troen­terol­o­gist, a ther­a­pist is impor­tant, and a dietit­ian is required! The task of spe­cial­ists is to restore healthy eat­ing habits. The prog­no­sis for recov­ery is favor­able. How­ev­er, such patients are quite dif­fi­cult to treat such patients, “I can han­dle it myself,” but, alas, it will not work to defeat bulim­ia on my own. If you already clear­ly under­stand how many kilo­calo­ries are in 1/4 straw­ber­ries, then I would rec­om­mend that you con­sult a psy­chi­a­trist, a psy­chother­a­pist. Or at least start with your fam­i­ly doc­tor, who will refer you to a spe­cial­ist.

Prevention of bulimia

First of all, it is nec­es­sary to devel­op suf­fi­cient self-esteem, since self-esteem is a nom­i­nal sys­tem of con­scious­ness. I under­stand that in words it sounds easy enough, but in prac­tice it is very dif­fi­cult. How­ev­er, you need to accept your­self and stop try­ing in every pos­si­ble way to “fit” some­one. You are so per­fect! Next, be sure to fol­low a bal­anced diet that includes healthy foods: fruits, veg­eta­bles, fish, meat. And, of course, exer­cise. How­ev­er, to play sports not for the sake of “being in shape”, but for the fact that “I am high on my sport”. And it does­n’t have to be a gym, sports can be a way of life. For exam­ple, wake­board, surf or kitesurf. And of course, the good old run, because at the 5th kilo­me­ter of con­tin­u­ous run­ning, your body begins to work in a new way, and you feel a surge of hap­pi­ness!

The most impor­tant thing is that you, my dear read­er, find what you like and intro­duce healthy habits into your life. Every­thing will work out!