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Eating Dissorders in Women After Age 30


An increase in the number of cases appears to have started around 20 years ago. Postwar years brought an increasing number of adolescent female patients who used appetite and eating as emotional instruments much as they had in early childhood (Brumberg 11). The physical aspects of anorexia is starvation and emaciation which can be accomplished by severe dieting or by purging. In January 1983, pop singer Karen Carpenter died of heart failure associated with low serum potassium - a consequence of prolonged starvation. Her death fueled interest in the disease (15). .
             Many anorexics are white middle or upper-middle class young women in their teens or early twenties, but some anorexics come from entirely different backgrounds. An increasing number of males and non-white adolescents and young adults are diagnosed as anorexic, and the disorder can remain entrenched long after a person reaches the age of 30 (Sacker and Zimmer 19). Most women have "anorexic thoughts" and attitudes. Anorexic thoughts and behaviors encourage self-destructiveness and make it harder for anorexics to give up their self-starvation to choose life over a living or actual death. The whole diet, exercise, weight fad in this country is primarily motivated by "aesthetic ideals" and people's strong desire to "look good" rather than by desires for better health or longer life. Even into their 30's, women are "dying to be beautiful" (Kano 49 & 50).
             The term Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified, was established to define eating disorders not specifically defined as anorexia or bulimia. This category includes binge eating without purging and other behaviors of anorexia and bulimia accomplished by normal weight or vomiting after eating small amounts of food. People who experience problems with obesity and being extremely overweight are also classified as "EDNOS" (Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified). .
             Eating disorders generally begin in high school but have been diagnosed in girls as young as seven or eight years old.


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