Can you please define Anorexia Nervosa?

Answer 1

Anorexia nervosa is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes an eating disorder characterized by low body weight and body image distortion. Individuals with anorexia often control body weight by voluntary starvation, purging, vomiting, excessive exercise, or other weight control measures, such as diet pills or diuretic drugs. It primarily affects young adolescent girls in the Western world and has one of the highest mortality rates of any psychiatric condition, with approximately 10% of people diagnosed with the condition eventually dying due to related factors. Anorexia nervosa is thought to be a complex condition, involving psychological, neurobiological, physiological and sociological components.

Answer 2

Anorexia nervosa, typically called anorexia, is a type of eating disorder that mainly affects girls and young women. A person with this disorder has an intense fear of gaining weight and limits the food she eats, essentially self-starvation. In severe cases, anorexia can be life-threatening.

Symptoms of anorexia include:

Weight loss, sometimes achieved by self-induced vomiting, abuse of laxatives, use of diuretics or exercise
Refusal to maintain normal body weight, sometimes maintaining a weight 15 percent or more below normal body weight
Intense fear of gaining weight
Negatively altered body image
In females, menstrual changes or the absence of menstruation
Anxious or ritualistic behavior at mealtimes
Fatigue
Depression
Irregular heart rate
Lightheadedness
Mild anemia
Brittle nails and hair
Bulimia
Most teenage girls, and some teenage boys, go on diets to lose weight and stop dieting after a few weeks.

Answer 3

You can't really define it. You just are it sometimes. Most of the time people are diagnosed as anorexic if they are preoccupied with food, weight, and exercise.