Although dieting is a common and popular thing to do these days, there are a few things that people need to be more aware of. Particularly if you are a parent of teenage children and especially if those children seem to be losing weight or are very thin. There are illnesses that you can get from dieting and they are commonly called eating disorders. There are two main types and they are called anorexia and bulimia. There are about 2 million people in the United States that are suffering right now from one or the other of these eating disorders. These illnesses are more likely to happen in girls and women; however there are many male patients that are battling eating disorders as well.

Anorexia is showing up more and more in teenagers. This is true more so for girls of middle to upper class families. Men and boys suffer from anorexia but it just is not seen as often. Anorexia is when a person will not want to eat when they need to in order to survive. There are anorexia patients that avoid eating most of the foods that are out there but will also be more likely to follow activities like grueling physical exercises in order to make their weight come down. Usually their weight is already below normal. Gaining weight is the worst fear of a person with anorexia. The excessive weight loss that anorexics usually have will cause hormonal disturbances in women and girls and will seem to have other health problems occur.

The reason behind anorexia has not been found out yet. There are health experts that believe that biological, nutritional and psychological causes combined will lead to this disorder. There are social and environmental causes like puberty, a death in the family or any other stress related reasons that could lead to this. There is not one single treatment that exists for anorexia at this moment. There are medications that treat the depression that is associated with anorexia. The psychological and family support have to be there for the patient to be able to control their eating disorder without fear.

Bulimia is a common eating disorder where the patient has a tempting urge to eat. They will have repeated episodes of binging in a very short amount of time. The patients of bulimia are going to be very afraid of obesity and this will lead them to do self-induced vomiting in order to get the food out of their body. Patients will also try laxatives, diuretics, strict fasting, and dieting of any kind. They will also want to do hard physical exercises for their body to prevent the weight gain. These are all going to be hard on the heart and kidney functions as well.

Anorexia and bulimia are far more often seen in girls rather than boys. However there are men that suffer from the disorders. There are around 7% of the young women seeking heath advice or treatment that suffer from bulimia. Like anorexia, the cause of this disorder is not known. There can be no one effective treatment for the disorder. Medication may be used to help treat depression and there is counseling that can help as well. Having the support of family is going to help the bulimic patient immensely. Both anorexia and bulimia are dangerous and life threatening to anyone who has it. If you are or know someone that is suffering from either one, this is not a good diet and you need to find help immediately.

As an adult woman who now finally admits that she was a bulimic teenager, I can so sympathize with those teens going through this experience. I was a shy, very thin, geeky child that had no self-esteem, very few friends, and no self confidence in myself at all. I look back at that stage in my life and have to think that a part of me started purging because it was one of the few controls that I thought I had in my life at that time. I knew I did NOT want to get fat, so I did not eat enough to sustain a bird; however, I also compounded that with purging at least twice a day. I didn't think of it as dieting, but mostly as a control that I was in charge of, since I didn't think of myself as being in charge of any other aspect of my life.

I finally outgrew this after a few years, there really was no reason why I slowly decided to stop my habits, it just happened. I started having more friends, I did well in school, joined a few school clubs, got a boyfriend and it just happened that I didn't automatically go to the bathroom after each meal to get rid of what I had just ingested.

For me, the bulimia was definitely a by product of not being happy with myself, with my life as I saw it then, with how I saw my body as being.

As an adult, I now have digestive problems that are directly linked to the years when I used to purge on a daily basis. I also have an overactive gag reflex that will probably never go away. Mention any gross words that I can instantly visualize and my body automatically starts to flinch and I start gagging. Can you believe it, a grown woman, and if I hear the words "slimy snot" or "gaping dripping bloody wound" I start gagging. Yeah, pretty stupid, huh? But it's an effect of my body remembering how it used to purge and even 30 years later, it would be so easy to let myself do it again.

But now I have control over MY body and MY mind! I know that the years I spent purging didn't do me any good in the long run, to my overall health, but like smoking, quitting at any time is always better than not quitting at all.

As a parent of three sons, I watched them like hawks, especially through those teenage years. I watched my oldest in particular, since he went through a pudgy stage and then in one summer, all of a sudden, slimmed down to an athletic 6'2" 16 year old. I had him tested, I listened at the bathroom door, I constantly talked to him about what eating disorders are and what they can do to your body, short term AND long term. I made sure my sons all understood that if they were having difficulty with anything, binging and purging were NOT the way to deal with any of their problems. I got them to actually talk to me (yeah, can you believe it? LOL) and I made sure that they always knew that there was NOTHING they couldn't tell me that would make me love them less. Part of me will always believe that if you maintain that constant flow of communication, if you give them that rock solid belief that you will ALWAYS back them up, and help them find whatever it is that they need to make them happy (music, sports, reading, friends, etc.), the self esteem will be there and the self confidence will grow as they mature.