Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Train Yourself to Stop Emotional Eating For Good

Our moods have a lot to do with our eating habits. Emotional problems, such as unemployment, divorce, or health problems can either decrease our appetite or encourage emotional eating. Even a simple change in our daily routine can sabotage our weight loss efforts. When we feel stressed or emotionally unstable we often look towards junk food for comfort. It has been well known that food serves as an excellent distraction from daily troubles. So what steps can you take to reduce your dependence upon emotional eating?

One way to stop emotional eating is to recognize true hunger. Often times when we are stressed, our hunger is only emotional. We are not really hungry but we still turn to food for comfort. This is why it is important to be aware whether your hunger is physical or emotional. For example, if you ate a couple hours ago and your stomach is not rumbling, then you are probably not hungry. Try to keep track of your meal times and judge for yourself whether you are in fact hungry.

Another way to reduce your emotional eating habits is to be aware of what triggers your hunger. Simply write down what you ate, how much you ate, when you ate, how hungry you were, and what emotional state were you in. By keeping track of these things you might be able to figure out some sort of an eating pattern. And lastly, try to look elsewhere for comfort. There are many different things which can just as easily occupy your mind. Try going for a walk, to a movie, or simply talk with a friend. So if you ever feel like emotional hunger has taken over your life, try to plan some enjoyable events for yourself in order to relieve some of the tension.

Lauren S. Johnson writes health articles about fitness and nutrition.


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Anorexia - A Serious Problem Affecting Many People Nationwide

Anorexia is one of the most serious problem people face in the country. People struck with such disorders are affected both physically and mentally. Anorexia can come from variety of issues, from worries to stress. If left untreated, anorexia can be life-threatening.

Anorexia is basically one's will to starve, believing that it will sustain their needs. As stated before, this harmful disorder arises from any concerns regarding with emotions. If the person leaves it untreated, the worst case scenario that could occur is death.

So how do you tell if someone has anorexia? There are several signs that could easily be picken up to see if that person suffers from anorexia. One sign is that if he/she is underweight and tends to exercise vigorously. Of course, this sign does not necessarily tell you that anorexia is there, but it is still plausible nonetheless, because there are other signs to follow. Another sign of such distortion is that if the person feels fat, even though he/she is not fat. Albeit the person might be abnormally thin, if he/she still thinks he's/she's overweight, chances are that thatt person is suffering from anorexia. The third sign, which is the most important to deal with and that it is in women, is that if she stops menstruating.

Anorexia is a serious problem that has to be dealt with. If the person you know has any of the three signs mentioned above, then chances are that person might be suffering from anorexia.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Naeem_Patel

Friday, October 17, 2008

Eating Disorders and the Media

It is proven now that media can influence the beginning of eating disorders in some people. This is evident especially in children and teens who can easily be lulled into the wrong image of what the human body is supposed to look like.

A very serious concern is that tiny little children as young as 8 year old are now contracting anorexia and the media are to blame. The images of thinness and unreal sexual images in the media do influence children's minds which in turn lead them into an eating disorder.

Early exposure to sexualized images encourage young women to see themselves as objects and value themselves for how they look rather then a whole person. Their values shift to the side where being beautiful and sexually attractive substitutes for being an individual with a strong sense of self. These inevitably lead young women to pursue thinness and artificial beauty that they see on the covers of magazines on TV and in the newspapers.

Very often girls have no understanding that what they're pursuing is only an unattainable image provided by the media to entertain their readers, attract buyers and sell the products they advertise or to send some other frivolous messages to the public.

So the beginnings of an eating disorder in young women can very often be connected to body dissatisfaction which is brought on by comparing their own body to the body images in the media.

For example, a recent survey revealed that 25% of Australian teenage girls would consider plastic surgery if they could and 2% already have had plastic surgery to change the way they look.

The other research was done on 4000 teenager girls' aged from 11 to 18 and found that more than 85% of them were unhappy with their body and would like to do or are already doing something about it.

The recent Botox survey revealed that women as young as 17 years old do Botox injection in order to prevent wrinkles. Breast implants have been done for women as young as 17-20 years old.

All the examples above shows that very many women nowadays think that fake women are much better than the real thing, based on the images that are portrayed in the media as being the norm.

To conclude, the media contributes a lot to developing body dissatisfaction and consequently eating disorders, by promoting fake unattainable images of women's bodies. To fight eating disorders it is important to educate the masses on the truth of how the media works to sell its advertising clients products.

Young women should be taught about balance and the truth of what is perceived to be beautiful and what real women are suppose to look like.

Even women like Marilyn Monroe who only a short time ago was considered to be the most beautiful woman in the world, would now be classified as a Big Girl by the media.

Is it any wonder so many young women are falling victims to eating disorders?

To learn how other people have manage to defeat their eating disorder as a consequence of dissatisfaction with their own body and about eating disorders and media go to http://www.mom-please-help.com



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Irina_Webster

Eating Disorders Studies - What Has Been Found So Far?

Researching eating disorders is a relatively new field of medicine. Scientists still don't have a lot of data on a long-term recovery process from eating disorders. But many things about who is susceptible to the disease, how it starts and how it develops is known and that is what we will look at here.

According to the latest numbers there are very many people who meet the criteria for disordered eating - about 10%-15% of women. These include all eating disorders: anorexia, bulimia, binge eating and others. The most dangerous of all anorexia nervosa takes about 1%-1.5%. Bulimia nervosa takes about 5%-6% and the rest goes to binge eating, extreme dieting, obsession with body image etc.

More than half the women who have been anorexic will develop bulimia in the process of the disease. And nearly 80% of bulimics show anorexic behaviors also. To say in other words they swing between non-eating to compulsive overeating and purging all the time during the disease.

And the only dividing line between anorexia and bulimia is their weight. People with extremely low weight are considered to be anorexic. And people with normal weight or slightly overweight considered to be bulimics.

Recent studies have also found that women are prone to the disease much more then men are. Genetic predisposition to develop an eating disorder is also confirmed by many researches.

It was said that people inherit a special gene which is responsible for developing addictive (obsessive) behaviors.

It was also shown that people with certain personality traits are also more prone to eating disorders. These personality traits include perfectionism, avoidance of harm and impulsivity (or difficulty in impulse control).

The drive to thinness is broadly influence by the media. When women with certain personality traits and genetic make up are constantly exposed to images of waif-like models, slim actresses and stunning beauty icons they inevitably want to be like them.

When all the factors above converge in one person, she/he can develop an eating disorder.

To conclude, eating disorders are multiple -factor disorders. It takes a special genetic make up, special social influences and personality to develop the disease.

These complexities make the disease very difficult to treat and manage. Nevertheless, there are many cases of recovery from eating disorders and generally the disease is considered to be treatable.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Irina_Webster

The Appetite Hormone

A recent image study of the human brain actually shows that a hormone that is known for its ability to trigger appetite can stimulate parts of the brain to make food appear more appealing.

Ghrelin, the name of the appetite hormone, has a pleasure effect on the human sense and creates a happiness associated with food similar to those who suffer from drug addictions. Ghrelin encourages people to continue eating after the nutritional reasoning is finished and the stomach is already full.

"For hundreds of years, people used to think that you eat only because you're hungry," says study author Dr. Alain Dagher, an associate professor with the Montreal Neurological Institute of McGill University in Canada. "But we found that the actual system involves a drive for food that is not at all related to hunger."

"The reason for this," he adds, "is that almost every animal, including us, until very recently was living in a world where there wasn't enough food, so that the big risk is starving to death. This creates a real pressure to eat. And obtaining food is risky. It requires effort and putting yourself at the mercy of predators. So you need something to get you out of your cave, and the only way that's going to happen is if the food is attractive enough to get you to overcome those costs and risks. And we've found a hormone that does this by acting on the pleasure and reward centers of the brain and making food you see seem more appealing and more desirable."

Dagher and his colleagues reported their insights in the May issue of Cell Metabolism. They analyzed MRIs of activity in the brains of 20 healthy men while they observed pictures of food and drink. This was done 3 hours after they had eaten breakfast so that they weren't necessarily full nor hungry; all men viewed an initial series of 45 images during which they answered questions about their mood and appetite.

Immediately after the first viewing, 12 of the men received two injections of ghrelin, while the other eight men did not. The men then viewed a second set of 45 images after their blood was taken to observe the levels of the hormone in their bodies. It was concluded that more of the men who received grehlin injectionsreported hunger after looking at the second set of images than those who did not.

The increased hunger response correlated with an increase in brain activity in a broad range of brain regions associated with reward when viewing images of food and non-food "pleasure-related" items. The men who did not receive the ghrelin expressed no change in hunger over the course of the two viewing sessions and were less likely to remember the food imagery they saw following the viewings.

The researchers suggested that the findings could ultimately lead to treatments for obesity based on a disruption of the ghrelin hormonal effect.

"The problem today is that we have this evolutionary imperative to eat, but we now live in an environment where you don't have to spend any energy to get food," he noted. "Which means that it makes sense to think of appetite as a kind of addiction. So, if we want to address the fact that obesity is now the number one killer in the world, we're going to have to tackle the problem in the same way that we tackle cigarette smoking."

But Dr. Barbara B. Kahn, chief of the division of endocrinology, diabetes, and metabolism at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, also spread caution that relating ghrelin-fueled overeating with drug addiction may be a disservice to the public.

"This study provides us with new information about additional ways in which this particular hormone may work," she said, "And overeating and drug addiction may converge on some of the same neurons. But other pathways are also involved. And from a biochemical point of view, the two are not the same thing. Drug addictions are much stronger. So to suggest that they are the same makes people feel that they can't do anything about overeating. That it's out of their control. So, I don't really buy that the parallel," added Kahn, "There may be aspects of overeating that may be related to aspects of addiction. But overeating is not just another addiction."

In the future, it may be valuable to have your grehlin levels checked or altered, but for now we'll just have to live with good old self-discipline and awareness.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Derek_Huizinga

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Anorexia Side Effects

Anorexia is not just about weight loss and refusing to eat. Anorexia has major side effects on the mental, physical and emotional state of a person.

Contracting anorexia means getting a new life style, new coping strategies, new relationships, new thought pattern and a whole new way of living and none of it is good.

You can say that a new sufferer becomes like a completely new person, different from what she/he used to be.

One of the very distinctive side effects of anorexia is a distorted perception about themselves. It is related to their own body image, their self being and also how they perceive other people as well.

The main measurement of all becomes how skinny they are. Anorexics perceive that their worth is directly related to their weight. They feel and think the same way about other people also.

For example a 19 year old anorexic girl I was talking to said once:" I know that the more weight I lose the better and stronger person I become. I understand that all overweight people are lazy, fat and no good".

But the meaning of being overweight for her is far away from reality. She perceives even normal weight people as overweight, including herself. She was already only 49 kg (height 164cm) but she still saw herself like a fat and overweight person.

She sees this picture because of the other major side effect of anorexia called "broken eye syndrome". And because anorexics see a wrong picture of themselves and others they want to loose more and more weight and can't stop starving themselves and over exercising.

Their relationships with other people change a lot since they contracted their anorexia because they need to spend all their time counting calories, exercising and thinking over a new strategy to lose more weight. Plus anorexics become very judgmental and picky and loose interest in others and everything they did before. All these prevent them from having a normal relationship with others.

And the other side effect of anorexia is their changing respond to everyday stress. This encompasses everything that happens to them, anorexics respond by increasing their exercising time, cutting down on calories and withdrawing further away from other people.

To conclude, anorexia has many side effects on a person. And to stop these negative side effects it is important to change the sufferer's perception back to what it was before the anorexia.
If their perception is returned back to normal a person will be able to lead a good and healthy life again.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Irina_Webster

Acid Reflux - What is Silent Reflux?

It is a known fact that people sometimes do not realize that acid reflux is really a problem for them. This condition is known as silent acid reflux. It is not different from the common existing one. The diagnosis is quite difficult at time.

Usually, people believe that heartburn is not associated to this condition. However, in case of silent acid reflux, heartburn is not considered to be a symptom. You may find it very strange but an antacid or any other medication prescribed to reduce or prevent abdominal pain is also widely prescribed for silent acid reflux. This is actually caused by the same acid in the stomach that's responsible for causing heartburn.

Sphincter muscles are actually categorized in to two different sets that usually allow food and drink to get inside the stomach and function to prevent back up of stomach acid in to the esophagus.

However, there are times when the lower set of muscles do not perform the task and stomach acid tend to pass back up inside the lower part of the esophagus only. It is also true that the lower part of esophagus is not much sensitive to the acid inside the stomach as compared to the upper part of esophagus.

This is the reason that heartburn symptoms or those associated to acid reflux are absent. A whole set of varied symptoms is what actually leads people to seek medical attention and the medical practitioner prescribes a remedy for the disease.

Here are some common symptoms:

a) Hoarseness of voice

b) Trouble in speech especially in the morning

c) Difficulty in swallowing

d) Excess mucus in the throat

e) Drainage from the sinuses

f) Frequent feeling to clean up the throat

g) Frequent coughing

All the above mentioned symptoms are observed in patients with this condition because the stomach acid reaches and irritate the voice box and due to excess amount of acid inside the stomach.

According to a recent study that was duly published by the American College of Gastroenterology in the year 2005, it has been suggested that silent acid reflux may be the actual cause of sleep related problems in many people.

It also resulted in frequent wakefulness and symptoms close to a condition known as sleep apnea. Chronic snoring may also be a result of this condition.

Some of the remedies recommended for treating the disease include the following

a) Raising the head of the bed

b) Avoiding alcohol in the evening

c) Avoiding tobacco products completely

d) Eating the last meal of the day at least three hours prior to the bed time

Silent acid reflux has also been found in children. Under this condition, the child usually refluxes the contents inside the stomach and then swallows them back. This indicates that the stomach acid can easily damage or irritate esophagus lining. Consult your doctor on an immediate basis if you doubt the presence of this condition in your child.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bertil_Hjert
 
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