Seven Major Health Complications Associated with Eating Disorders

Eating disorders are highly harmful to health and when it comes to eating disorders, it’s not only about physical health but mental health as well. Eating disorders end up affecting many organs in the body leading to various diseases. People often catch themselves up suffering from eating disorders because of the imperfect style of living. You’d see many people going through the problem of eating but neglecting the symptoms because of lack of knowledge.

If you are losing weight due to less consumption of food and your body is unable to digest food for a specific period of time and is affecting you psychologically, it means you are going through an eating disorder, same goes for the weight gaining process, if you keep on binge eating in no interval of time, eating disorders does come in this process as well. An eating disorder cannot be considered as a phase or a period but they are real, complex and life-changing that has serious effects and consequences on health.

Some of the major health complications associated with eating disorders are as follows:

Poor heart health: Eating less food means gaining fewer calories and that is why the body starts breaking down its tissue to use as fuel. The first and the foremost thing to breakdown in the body is muscle and the most important muscle is the heart, pulse and blood pressure begins to drop as the heart has less fuel to pump blood and lesser cells to pump with. This is one of the reasons behind the failure of heart as the heart rate and blood pressure decreases to a very low level.

Nausea and Vomiting: Eating disorders work both ways, be it an excessive amount of eating or be it a lesser amount of eating. People suffering from either of this can feel like throwing up because of indigestion of food. Purging by vomiting depletes the body from important chemicals such as electrolytes, which play an essential role in helping the heartbeat and muscle contract. Imbalance of electrolytes can lead to irregular heartbeats and possibly heart failure and death. Vomiting can also wear down the oesophagus to break which can be life-threatening.

Constipation: One of the most common consequences of eating disorder is inadequate intake of sufficient nutrients which leaves the intestine with not enough to try and eliminate through the body. The muscles of the intestine tend to weaken and leave them without the strength to propel digested food out of the body.

Intestinal Infections: Intestines are the major digestion organs in the body and due to foul food intake, the intestines are damaged which leads to mechanical bowel problems. Blockage of intestine happens and prevents food and water from passing through the intestines.

Mental health problems: As we all know, the brain consumes up to one-fifth of the body’s calories and when we talk about eating disorders, consuming of less food, dieting, fasting, self-starvation turns out that the brain isn’t getting enough energy that it needs which leads to difficulty while focusing. Lower energy levels means the brain and blood vessels can’t push enough blood to the brain, it can cause fainting or dizziness, especially upon standing. Apart from this extreme hunger or fullness at bedtime can create difficulties falling or staying asleep. People who are slightly heavier in weight are at higher risks of sleep apnea, a disorder in which a person regularly stops breathing while asleep.

Hormonal imbalance: The body needs enough fat and calories which it gets from certain foods, if anybody cuts down the amount of calorie intake, the levels of hormones can fall like sex hormones and thyroid hormones. Lower sex hormones in ladies can lead menstruation to fail to begin, to become irregular or to stop completely and also it can cause osteoporosis.

Hair and skin issues: Eating disorders mainly deal with lower intake of calories and fat consumption which is one of the reasons behind the skin being dry. It does not only affect the skin but also hair to become brittle and fall out.

Over to you

If you find yourself going through eating disorders, it’s better to seek help as soon as possible because it’s better to take precaution before you find yourself going through any of the consequences which won’t go away for a good time. Eat healthy and maintain a healthy lifestyle to avoid any health risk, be it mental or physical!