Anorexia progresses faster than treatment. The sooner you act, the better the result. A good reason not to be ostrich, as it is unfortunately most often the case, when more and more young girls but also boys suffer from it.
There are hallucinatory looks that a doctor’s life cannot erase. He was 22 years old. For six months, he had only been fed by an infusion. He was a student who, in order to escape compulsory military service, had decided to go on hunger strike as soon as he arrived at the barracks. He had left in September, laughing, after a last party with his friends, persuaded to spend Christmas, free, at home. However, summer was approaching and the helpless intern in medicine watched this body of about forty kilos being let loose by its kidneys. The following Monday he was dead …
Boys too
Recent studies have reminded us that anorexia nervosa is not an exclusive disease of women. It was thought that 90% of cases affected young girls, between 12 and 20 years old. Rather, we are talking about 30% of boys. With the same dreadful prognosis, 5 to 10% mortality at 10 years. The masculine form is said to be even more serious, with ill-defined entanglements with schizophrenia. No culture, no period of our history has escaped this disease, but the rich countries, the most privileged circles, are however more affected, without it being possible to draw definitive conclusions on the real causes. The theory of imitation of starving top models is no more verified than the onset of the disease in infants, as some child psychiatrists claim. Why so many uncertainties and therefore the absence of precise rules of support? Medicine hates to admit its incompetence, especially when it comes to understanding… For people with anorexia and their families, a Stations of the Cross, paved with often contradictory medical meetings…
Leanness, too late a sign
Anorexia nervosa, a fight against hunger and not loss of appetite, fascinates as much as it disturbs. The need to act as quickly as possible to avoid physical exhaustion, which adds a pejorative element in the fight against the disease, clearly poses the urgency of diagnosing the disease. The visible thinness is too late … There remains the weight loss and especially the crossing of a numerical limit, that of the body mass index, the BMI (see below).
Without giving in to the obsession with the bathroom scale, it is important to follow the evolution of this index: below 18, we enter the world of anorexia… Unfortunately, this is not just a simple one. weight story. We often talk about poor self-acceptance and family disagreement, but what could be more commonplace in adolescence. It is a real illness, the outward expression of a deep psychological disorder. Does the adolescent find there a methodical and frightening way of becoming the main character of his life, by freeing himself from a contingency which links him with the adults around him, and which results in refusal to eat?
All the help you need to take
The diagnosis of anorexia is therefore serious. Of course, one in three will heal without sequelae. But one in three will retain eating disorders, and especially a persistent discomfort, a difficult emotional life. The last third progresses badly, towards severe undernutrition and chronic depression. It is estimated that when anorexia lasts more than 10 years, the risk of death is 5-10%. However, there are solutions that require the mobilization of the entire entourage: family, general practitioner who should be the first to sound the alarm and specialists: psychiatrist and nutritionist. If the therapeutic certainties are strangely lacking, the hyper specialists in this disease remain those who are closest to the truth. It is therefore necessary, even more in this area than in others, to consult them without delay.
To know more
BMI, to know where we are in terms of weight
Although it is not completely perfect, doctors around the world now use a simple measure called BMI, the body mass index, which can be used to quantify obesity. It is a reliable measurement if you are 20 to 65 years old, if you are not a super athlete with very heavy muscles, or obviously a pregnant or breastfeeding woman. The calculation could not be simpler! You start by performing a first operation: multiply your height by itself. Take an easy example.
You are 2 meters tall, so this number will be 2 x 2 = 4.
Then you divide your weight in kilograms by that number. We continue with the example.
You are 2 meters tall and weigh 100 kilos, your BMI is 100 divided by 4 or 25.
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