The me­dia plays a huge part in the lives of this gen­er­a­tion’s teens. So­cial me­dia apps are flood­ed with pic­tures of glam­orous peo­ple liv­ing even more glam­orous lives. Teens are usu­al­ly en­gulfed by the false re­al­i­ties por­trayed on these ap­pli­ca­tions, a huge part com­ing from the way they view them­selves. While the In­ter­net does a lot to pro­mote body pos­i­tiv­i­ty, the men and women who ap­pear on these apps, mag­a­zine cov­ers and on TV are usu­al­ly sport­ing the bod­ies of su­per­mod­els and ath­letes. This gives teens a false idea of what the world per­ceives as ‘beau­ti­ful’ or ‘sexy’ and they as­pire to look like their idols on the In­ter­net.

This is just one of the is­sues that can cause eat­ing dis­or­ders to arise in teenage boys and girls. These teens strive to be the skin­ni­est or the best look­ing and go to ex­treme mea­sures to achieve their goals. Be­fore go­ing in­to the ef­fects these can have in the long term, let us get a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the dif­fer­ent types of eat­ing dis­or­ders that ex­ist.

Anorex­ia Ner­vosa

This is the most com­mon type of eat­ing dis­or­der. Per­sons with this dis­or­der view them­selves as over­weight, even if they’re al­ready se­vere­ly un­der­weight. They tend to be very strict on mon­i­tor­ing their food, re­strict­ing calo­ries and con­stant­ly check­ing their weight.

Bu­lim­ia Ner­vosa

Ac­cord­ing to health­line.com, “Peo­ple with bu­lim­ia fre­quent­ly eat un­usu­al­ly large amounts of food in a rel­a­tive­ly short pe­ri­od. Each binge-eat­ing episode usu­al­ly con­tin­ues un­til the per­son be­comes painful­ly full. More­over, dur­ing a binge, the per­son usu­al­ly feels that they can­not stop eat­ing or con­trol how much they are eat­ing. In­di­vid­u­als with bu­lim­ia then at­tempt to purge to com­pen­sate for the calo­ries con­sumed and re­lieve gut dis­com­fort.”

Binge Eat­ing Dis­or­der

Ali­na Pe­tre, MS, RD (CA) of health­line.com states, “In­di­vid­u­als with this dis­or­der have sim­i­lar symp­toms to those with bu­lim­ia or binge-eat­ing sub­type of anorex­ia. For in­stance, they typ­i­cal­ly eat un­usu­al­ly large amounts of food in rel­a­tive­ly short pe­ri­ods of time and usu­al­ly feel a lack of con­trol dur­ing binges. How­ev­er, con­trary to the two pre­vi­ous dis­or­ders, peo­ple with binge eat­ing dis­or­der do not re­strict calo­ries or use purg­ing be­hav­iours such as vom­it­ing or ex­ces­sive ex­er­cise to com­pen­sate for their binges.”

Un­treat­ed eat­ing dis­or­ders can lead to se­ri­ous health com­pli­ca­tions in the long-term. There­fore, ex­ten­sive treat­ments in­volv­ing a med­ical doc­tor, psy­chol­o­gist, phys­i­cal ther­a­pist and di­etit­ian is nec­es­sary for full re­cov­ery. The main goal of treat­ment is to get the teen back to a healthy weight. With the sup­port of a lov­ing fam­i­ly and a med­ical team mon­i­tor­ing the teen for any health com­pli­ca­tions that may arise, the teen should make a full re­cov­ery.

Eat­ing dis­or­ders are be­com­ing more com­mon and it is easy to miss the signs in the ear­ly stages. Ac­cord­ing to eat­ingdis­or­der­hope.com here are a few symp­toms that you can look out for if you sus­pect your teen has an eat­ing dis­or­der:

Eat­ing in se­cret

Pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with food

Calo­rie count­ing

A fear of be­com­ing fat

Binge eat­ing

Purg­ing

Food pho­bias or avoid­ance