Causes and signs of bulimia. Approach to the treatment. Prescription

Symptoms and signs of bulimia. Tactics of treatment

How to treat bulimia nervosa and how to prevent it are questions that often concern doctors. Usually, this disease is neither prognostically unfavorable for health nor fatal, but it significantly reduces the quality of life.

Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized, on the one hand, by repeated bouts of overeating, on the other hand, by attempts to control one's own weight and a series of measures to prevent weight gain. A person cannot help but absorb a large amount of food (its total caloric content significantly exceeds the energy needs of the body), but he tries with all his might to prevent the absorption of food, so that extra kilocalories do not settle in the form of fat reserves on the stomach, hips and buttocks.

The causes and consequences of bulimia are the two most important issues in the treatment of patients.

Bulimia nervosa is somewhat similar to anorexia nervosa - with both pathologies, patients try with all their might to influence their own weight, even if it threatens negative health consequences. But with anorexia, a person avoids meals, and with bulimia, the opposite is true.

Causes and symptoms

Before understanding how to fight bulimia, you should understand its causes. Their elimination in many cases will help rid the patient of the disease.

Bulimia most often occurs against the background of:

pathologies of the central nervous system;
diseases of the endocrine system;
mental illnesses.

The signs of bulimia are quite characteristic, so it is not difficult to make a diagnosis. It:

excessive uncontrolled consumption of food in one sitting - a person cannot stop, even if a feeling of satiety has come;
constant search and use of methods designed to prevent weight gain;
excessive critical analysis of one's own body, dependence of self-esteem on figure and weight.

Patients suffering from bulimia have the following feelings:

a constant feeling of hunger, which cannot subside even during meals;
decline of moral and physical forces;
pains in the upper part of the abdomen.

Despite the progressive signs of bulimia, the patients' weight remains normal.

Forms of bulimia and actions of patients

Excessive absorption of food can manifest itself in several ways:

absorption of food in large quantities due to attacks of "wolfish" hunger;
constant absorption of food (a person constantly chews something);
predominantly eating food at night (due to the fact that hunger attacks occur at night).

Usually, sufferers do not think about how to get rid of bulimia, instead they make attempts to compensate for overeating and not allow it to affect body weight. The most popular ways:

forcible removal of the contents of the gastrointestinal tract (artificially induced vomiting, forced bowel cleansing with laxatives);
adherence to strict diets;
exercise in an exhausting mode.

How to deal with bulimia?

If there is a desire to overeat - first of all, you should not blame the person: the cause of the disease can be serious pathologies. Also, you should not try to cure bulimia on your own - this should be done by certified doctors. Their task:

relieve the patient of the urge to overeat;
restore his physical health.

First of all, patients are treated for diseases - the causes of bulimia, get rid of negative emotions that provoke overeating (so-called "stress eating"), and also teach the correct perception of one's own body. Good results were shown by cognitive-behavioral therapy - as a result, the patient becomes responsible for controlling his own nutrition.

Knowing what kind of disease it is and for what reasons it occurs, in severe depressive or neurotic disorders that provoke it, antidepressants, neurotropic and sedative drugs are prescribed.

If the body has suffered from the "experimental" actions of the patient (provocation of vomiting, taking laxatives), you should resort to prescriptions that contribute to the correction of tissue processes. It: