Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder where a male or female, with 85-95% being females, starve themselves and lose a significant amount of weight (Anorexia nervosa fact sheet | womenshealth.gov, 2012). They will usually have an extremely low body weight, and have a distorted view of their body. A person with anorexia is obsessed with food, and limits their intake. It is more than an issue with food. Most anorexics have anxiety and depression and want/need a way to feel “normal”. By being able to limit their intake, they get relief by knowing they have control. They may binge and purge, use laxatives, and restrict food to lose weight. While a person with bulimia nervosa binge and purge, a person who vomits and is anorexic is usually well
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Because anorexia is so complex, and the patient usually has many other mental health issues, treatment is difficult. The anorexia cannot be treated by itself, all the health issues have to be addressed and then they all have to be treated at the same time (Jantz, 2014). For obvious reasons this can be quite difficult. Most anorexic patients try and get help because they have anxiety and depression. They are then prescribed medication and because of the mindset of an anorexic, they are more susceptible to prescription drug addiction (Jantz, 2014). While their anxiety and depression might be somewhat masked, they have a whole new problem to deal with which is drug addiction. As the drug addiction get treated, the anxiety comes back and so does the anorexic tendencies (Jantz, 2014). The best treatment is for the patient to be seen as an individual and to not just treat one issue at a time, but like stated above, treat all issues combined for the best approach (Jantz, …show more content…
There is another point to consider in genetics and anorexia. It is that maybe genetics and environment together can cause the onset of anorexia. There are two ways this can happen. One is gene-environment interaction, which basically means that if a person has a certain gene and is placed in the right environment, then that gene could be activated and could potentially cause anorexia. The other way is epigenetic effects. This is when the environment changes gene expression and can alter the phenotype (Culpert et al., 2015). There have been studies on these types of factors contributing to anorexia, but there has not been many with whom have any empirical evidence. As with the GWAS the sample sizes have been too small, and so replication has not happened. So for now these two factors are not risk factors for anorexia, but future studies with larger sample sizes will hopefully be done to show replication (Culpert et al., 2015).
All this to say that these potential factors should not be ruled out. As we have seen with twin studies, where twins are both predisposed to a specific gene of say depression. If one twin is adopted and lives in a horrible neighborhood and is abused, that can trigger the depression gene. Whereas, the twin that was not adopted lived a happy life with no abuse and in a decent neighborhood, the gene may not be activated due to the positive
Because anorexia is so complex, and the patient usually has many other mental health issues, treatment is difficult. The anorexia cannot be treated by itself, all the health issues have to be addressed and then they all have to be treated at the same time (Jantz, 2014). For obvious reasons this can be quite difficult. Most anorexic patients try and get help because they have anxiety and depression. They are then prescribed medication and because of the mindset of an anorexic, they are more susceptible to prescription drug addiction (Jantz, 2014). While their anxiety and depression might be somewhat masked, they have a whole new problem to deal with which is drug addiction. As the drug addiction get treated, the anxiety comes back and so does the anorexic tendencies (Jantz, 2014). The best treatment is for the patient to be seen as an individual and to not just treat one issue at a time, but like stated above, treat all issues combined for the best approach (Jantz, …show more content…
There is another point to consider in genetics and anorexia. It is that maybe genetics and environment together can cause the onset of anorexia. There are two ways this can happen. One is gene-environment interaction, which basically means that if a person has a certain gene and is placed in the right environment, then that gene could be activated and could potentially cause anorexia. The other way is epigenetic effects. This is when the environment changes gene expression and can alter the phenotype (Culpert et al., 2015). There have been studies on these types of factors contributing to anorexia, but there has not been many with whom have any empirical evidence. As with the GWAS the sample sizes have been too small, and so replication has not happened. So for now these two factors are not risk factors for anorexia, but future studies with larger sample sizes will hopefully be done to show replication (Culpert et al., 2015).
All this to say that these potential factors should not be ruled out. As we have seen with twin studies, where twins are both predisposed to a specific gene of say depression. If one twin is adopted and lives in a horrible neighborhood and is abused, that can trigger the depression gene. Whereas, the twin that was not adopted lived a happy life with no abuse and in a decent neighborhood, the gene may not be activated due to the positive