Anorexia nervosa, the disease by which mostly women, very few men, starve their bodies of food, has long been though to be a disorder that is psychiatric in nature. From what Ive observed, I believe this to be true.  However, there is a new theory that anorexia may not really be phsychologically motivated or intiated, but it may actually be more like a disease such as diabetes.

The controversial theory is that people with anorexia may actually be hard to convince that there is anything wrong with them psychologically because there really isnt. The contention for this theory is more that it is a metabolic disorder, by which the body does not actually send the signals to the brain that it is hungry.

The motivation of the patient not to eat enough food, or to not eat at all, is not because of some sort of perfectionism or deeply seated psychological issue, but rather from a genuine lack of need for food. I disagree with this, because if this were the case, why dont we have any anorexic children?

Anorexia always comes into play in adulthood, when we are able to develop psychoses about things, feel insecurities, and to feel the pressure to be perfect, whether it be from ourselves or from others around us.

If you watch a documentary on anorexia, most of the women afflicted with it started off looking very healthy when they were younger. It is only when they developed psychoses for one reason or another, that they stopped eating or greatly reduced the amount of food or even water that they took in.

I highly doubt that anorexia and bulimia were a big deal back when no one cared about weight and the media wasnt constantly flashing pictures of beautiful, seemingly in control models and actresses in womens faces 24/7.  In the olden days when your whole body was covered in clothes from head to toe and the only women you may have felt competitive with lived a hundred miles away, it was probably a lot easier to disregard these things about your own body image.

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