5 Ways to Understand the Causes of Eating Disorders

5 Ways to Understand the Causes of Eating Disorders

1. One Size Does Not Fit All

There's no one specific cause of eating disorders. Rather, experts believe a combination of factors lead to eating disorders, and that this combination varies from person to person. For some, a poor self-image may play a part. For others, it might be family dysfunction. Researchers continue to study the theory that eating disorders have a biological basis. However, what is common about eating disorders is that they strike mostly women, often during the adolescent years.

2. Check Your Genes

According to Eating Disorders Review, genetic factors play a part in developing personality characteristics such as anxiety, obsessive-compulsive thoughts and perfectionism. Furthermore, people with these characteristics seem more prone to eating disorders. A family history involving a mother or sister with an eating disorder also increases a young woman's chance of developing anorexia or bulimia. Anorexic people often have higher levels of cortisol, the "stress hormone," and decreased levels of calming brain chemicals like serotonin and norepinephrine. Recent research reveals that behaviors like starving or purging actually alters brain chemistry in the brain's dopamine receptors, which regulates pleasure. Eating too little or too much may be a way of self-medicating against depression and anxiety by producing feelings of euphoria.

3. Doing Your Best to Develop an Eating Disorder

People with anorexia feel a strong need to be perfect. Despite overachieving behavior, they never measure up to their expectations. Additionally, those with eating disorders define everything as good or bad with no in between. Thin is good; fat is bad. Attached to this is a strong need to control everything around them. When people with eating disorders experience difficulty controlling events outside themselves, they can comfort themselves by controlling what goes into their mouths. Professionals who treat people with eating disorders find a lot of anger in their patients - anger that can't be expressed in healthy ways and is expressed via food.

4. Causes of Eating Disorders in Family Dynamics

Professionals often find that people with eating disorders come from overprotective and rigid families. Difficulty resolving conflicts, plus physical or emotional absence by a parent, may also play roles in the development of an eating disorder. Yet, these families may also demonstrate high expectations for achievement. Unwittingly, mothers can model attitudes about body image that daughters notice. Dysfunction can play a hand in eating disorders, too. Sometimes, young women with a history of sexual abuse develop a binge eating disorder.

5. Blame the Media

Young women at risk for eating disorders don't find any support from society. Billboards, television and movies portray underweight women as the ideal. Impossibly thin models wear the latest fashions that everyone wants. Women receive the message that thinness equals success and popularity. Exposure to these ideals of the perfect body may wreak havoc with an already poor self-image.