Outline


 * The issue regarding eating disorders has increased drastically since the mid-1900s.
 * Modern media -- sexual, unrealistically skinny, falsely beautiful people (particularly women) -- strongly influences the minds of teenage girls, the demograpic with an overwheming majority of all eating disorders.
 * Eating disorders are due to three main components whose leverage depends on the individual: genetics, phycological, and social. The genes of parents influences a part of the brain that creates a need for a perfect body through eating disorders, the phycology of an individual is based on mental health, and the social aspect is that of the rapidly expanding media and its poor influences.
 * Other factors may include family behavior and pressure, hormonal abnormalities, low self-esteem, and a history of sexual, phycological, or physical abuse.
 * Eating disorders are typically known as "young white girls' problem," when in reality, they affect both men and women of all races.
 * The two most common and well known eating disorders are Bulimia Nervosa and Anorexia Nervosa.
 * Bulimia is when an individual practices binge eating, meaning they eat unhealthily large portions of comfort food food (cake, brownies, candy, pastries -- whatever the individual find most calming) only to get rid of the calories by inducing vomiting or bowel movement by abusing laxatives.
 * Sometimes individuals with this disorder binge rapidly and continuously (sometimes reaching 11 times per week), while others choose to starve themsleves for a while before binging again.
 * A scary aspect of Bulimia Nervosa is that 64% of its victims are actually of a normal, healthy weight. This means their problem is nearly undetectable for peers.
 * Some startling statics include that 85 to 90% of all bulimics are women, men on a wrestling team are 7 to 10 times more likely to have Bulimia than men not participating in wrestling, and without treatment, up to 20% of cases can be fatal.
 * Another frightening disorder if that of Anorexia Nervosa. People with this simply never eat. (Eliot, I believe, has more on this, but he has not added his research to this...)
 * The main difference between men and women with eating disorders is this: women want to be skinny, and men want to be muscular.
 * Men are said to have three "attractive" contrasting images thrown at them: the wirely Mick Jagger, thin like David Beckham, and super muscular like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
 * Homosexual men are more prone to eating disorders than straight men, but scientists have only noticed a trend -- no real data has been collected.
 * When men want to change their body image, they're more likely to exercise in unhealthily large amounts rather than binge or starve.