Eating too less or binge eating are just subtle hints of eating disorders which, if not diagnosed on time, may have harmful effects on your teen says Dr. Atish Laddad.
Raising kids perhaps is one of the most challenging responsibility for any parent.
Every age group of children bring along with them a different set of problems.
While it is difficult to understand what your toddler is trying to tell you when s/he is throwing a tantrum , the teenage phase involves indifference and stubbornness.
Does your fourteen year old have a funny relationship with food?
Is s/he ignoring breakfast? Returning the lunchbox untouched from school?
Have you noticed that the three-course home cooked meal has been reduced to strictly having soups or salads?
Even if you were to cook his/her favourite food, there is a general lack of interest and you are confused.
In fact, this is just one of the extreme reactions a teenager shows towards food.
The other extreme is when your teenager gorges on packaged food which includes junk and high calorie food.
If you think this is just a phase, you are wrong.
These are subtle hints that your child is not eating healthy. It's an eating disorder, which is very common among teens.
While it can be easily dismissed of not being a big deal, persistent behavior and symptoms can take a calamitous toll in your child’s life.
Here are some things you must know.
What causes it?
For a child suffering from eating disorder, it’s a combination of factors like obsession with a thin body frame, psychological issues like low self-confidence, the family environment etc that paves the way.
One may also point the teen’s interest in specialized activities like modeling, ballet dance, athletics or gymnastics that require a particular body framework to be the reason for eating disorder.
These are some common eating disorders:
Anorexia Nervosa
Teenagers suffering from Anorexia Nervosa have a concern of putting on body weight.
They wrongly interpret that a person’s physical image is what people will judge them on and hence push themselves to starvation.
Mostly girls are a victim of this and experts suggest that teens suffering from this derangement are always around 15% less on their optimal body weight.
Binge Eating Disorder
As the name suggests, in this condition the child is indulging in uncontrollable eating.
Bulimia Nervosa
This condition is when someone is habituated to binge eating and then takes extreme steps like vomiting, gets into hours of doing aerobics or laxative usage to ensure that the body doesn’t put on weight.
This syndrome starts in the late teens and goes on to adulthood.
Some of the warning signs for this include stress taken for being overweight, over eating, following a very harsh diet and then indulging in high calorie binge eating, mood swings, irregular periods etc.
While binge eating is erratic, anorexia is behaving perfect by never allowing your body to put on that weight.
The symptoms
Every disorder displays out some signs which have to be sensed earlier and tended to.
The symptoms exuded during eating disorder include the child missing meals, unusual consuming of high calorie heavy food on a regular basis, irregular weight loss and weight gain, an altered body pattern, sleeplessness, constipation, cavities in the mouth, addicted to exercises, hair loss, erosion of nail quality and tooth enamel among others.
How you can help
Identifying anything early can result in easy and quick treatment and if ignored, the implications will be likewise.
Once the symptoms are identified, please consult a doctor at the earliest.
The treatment for eating disorder is a blend of counseling and medication.
The treatment for anorexia nervosa includes psychological treatment, intake of nutrition rich food and monitoring the body activity.
For Bulimia Nervosa, treatments including cognitive behavioral therapy will help to determine and erase the misconceptions.
Administration of antidepressant medication will help change the way a teen conducts him/herself.
Teenagers who suffer from eating disorders are most often in denial of the same.
This is because ignorantly they have set a target on something that they look at achieving at the cost of anything, even health.
During this phase, they go through different mood swings, close themselves in shells and are very sensitive to any critique.
While the teen is handling more emotions than one, parents and educators have to be patient and walk them through this phase instead of judging and criticising them.
Dr Atish Laddad is founder and director, Docterz, a Mumbai-based company that provides data and tech solutions for paediatricians across India.
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