If we think anorexia is just a whim of weight loss, we’re actually looking at the tip of an iceberg, it’s a complicated disease and one of the highest mortality rates, so we should never confuse the disease with a single disease. Symptom.
We are not aware that this need to be thin is a form of self-destruction, many people start from a problem they cannot control, to iron and control the fire of their food, as a way to protect themselves from their fears and insecurities. Therefore, there is a need to find a positive reinforcement in your body image, a need that is above even self-esteem for life, a love of survival.
- But why is this happening?Today we will give some answers to these questions and discover how this obsession with thinness is only a small part of what anorexia really means.
Anorexic people consciously try to reduce their food intake and even achieve a degree of discipline in which some even manage to avoid almost any food completely. The less you eat the better.
So can we talk about a mental disorder? The truth is that this term can be confusing, so what we can safely say is that the disorder occurs as an effect of compulsive behavior in which there is great concern about the consequences of the diet.
This shows that the brains of anoreachical people do not work in the same way as a healthy person, we all have a system of response to pleasure and reward that is very important for our survival, in the case of anortoxic people this system is modified.
For example, every time a healthy person is hungry and eats, their brain will produce a positive response. Therefore, their relationship to food is healthy. The same is not true of a person with anorexia, as they will not be able to differentiate the negative stimulus from the positive.
But that’s not all. Many neurobiologists claim that people with anorexia have a change in the functioning of neurons responsible for communicating with this part of the brain that detects hunger, this area coincides, curiously, with the region where the emotions, sensations and perception we have of our own body are found. Reside.
Our hormones also play an important role in this whole situation. In people with anorexia, many hormones that stimulate appetite and weight have low levels, resulting in a significant breakdown of the relationship with food.
So far, we’ve seen anorexia produce brain changes that reflect a modified reward system, but how does this happen?
What is known is that people with this disorder have similar psychological traits, some of them may be more pronounced in some people than in others, and in some cases they do not all appear together.
These are some of the characteristics that people with anorexia may have, although there are many others that can manifest, as we can see, the self-esteem component is very important, this, combined with other underlying problems, makes the person want to stop eating.
At this point, what we are sure of is that anorexia is not a whim, so dealing with the disease and alone and without the intervention of specialists, simply wanting to force the yourself to eat as the only strategy, without working on other aspects, such as brain building and self-esteem, will only make the person able to improve their concealment and deception skills.
Think of it as something that draws attention, but it suggests a much deeper problem, it is not just a matter of appearance, eating or not eating, behind anorexia there is an injured person, with deep problems in their inner world, who also must. Of course, the lack of nutrients can lead to the death of a person, but that does not mean that we have to treat only this symptom, forgetting about the pain and everything that it causes and what caused it.
Anorexia does not mean being thin to look better, anorexia involves problems, insecurity, pain and sadness, not eating is just a way that does not even make you feel good, but simply avoids feeling worse, strengthening behavior happens to avoid suffering, far from feeling that your will is weak and that you are useless.
In this way, the anorexical person ends up fearing food as if he fears a lion or a snake, because he sees them as the worst enemy in the controllable world they are trying to build. A world in which, for them, the only hope is to find a gray day in the midst of so many dark days.