How’s your appetite?
It is known that eating disorders typically first strike during adolescence, boys and girls are afflicted and genetics play a significant role. With high relapse and low recovery rates, eating disorders remain the most deadly of psychiatric conditions.
Less well-known is that almost 80 per cent of anorexia-related deaths occur among women over 45, according to a paper by Merryl Bear for the National Eating Disorder Information Centre. Older bodies are less resilient to the physical damage wrought by ongoing eating-disorder behaviors.
While a significant portion of eating disorders among the elderly may be accounted for as the relapse/remitting pattern of a disorder formed in younger years, there are still a notable number of eating disorders that form for the first time in later years. Many of them are not discovered until a person is hospitalized for some reason.
If you suspect someone you know has a later-in-life eating disorders, look for these signs:
·Weight change: This can be either up or down but the main warning sign is that the weight change has taken place over a short period of time.
·Behavior: Is this person suddenly disappearing after meals? Or using the restroom after eating something? Other signs can be frequent weighing and preoccupation with calorie counting or with the nutrient composition of various foods.
·OTC medications: Have you found boxes of laxatives, diet pills, or diuretics suddenly appearing in the medicine chest or in a loved one’s purse?
·Preference for eating in solitude: Folks with eating disorders often request to eat alone, for example in the bedroom, rather than eating with family, spouse or friends.
·Hyper interest in food: Although they restrict their food intake, they might be very interested in activities related to food, such as baking, collecting recipes, reading food blogs or watching cooking shows.
·Missing food: Binge eaters can go through massive amounts of food before expelling it. If large amounts of food start disappearing from the cupboards and refrigerator, binging may be the culprit.
·Collateral damage: Sensitivity to cold, excessive hair loss, dental damage, or heart or gastrointestinal problems are some of the problems brought on by eating disorders. Take note that not all sufferers of eating disorders have all of these symptoms.
