Mental anorexia
Mental anorexia is a eating disorder that is characterized by a restriction of food intake, or sometimes a complete refusal to eat, for several months, even several years, leading to significant weight loss.
People with mental anorexia can also use vomiting, laxatives and diuretics.
The condition mainly concerns adolescent girls aged 14 to 17 and affects between 0.9 and 1.5% of women, and 0.2 to 0.3% of men in this age group in France.
Often present, undernutrition can cause serious problems, including heart, bone or fertility.
Mental anorexia is the most deadly psychiatric pathology, with a mortality rate at 10 years of 5%.
Bulimia and Bulimic Hyperphagia
Bulimia is characterized by the compulsive ingestion of large quantities of food in a fairly short time, at any time of the day and the night.
This uncontrolled crisis is generally followed by compensatory behavior to prevent weight gain (use of laxatives, diuretics, caused vomiting, fasting, excessive physical exercise).
Bulimia generally appears in adolescence and affects approximately 1.5% of 11-20 year olds, including three times more girls than boys.
When bulimia attacks are not accompanied by compensatory behavior, we speak of bulimic hyperphagia. In general, it is accompanied by overweight or obesity and is, because of this, probably underestimated.
The condition is rather diagnosed in adulthood and concerns 3 to 5% of the entire population. This makes it the most widespread food behavior.
Orthorexia
Still unknown, orthorexia is defined as an obsession to eat healthy. People who suffer from it adopt excessively strict diets, sometimes eliminating whole categories of food.
For the time being, there is no scientific consensus on orthorexia. The two most often supported positions consist in classifying it either among eating disorders (TCA) or among obsessive behavioral disorders (OCD).
In everyday life, orthorexic people can spend more than an hour in front of the food rays to read the composition of each product, or chew each bite 50 times in order to give the impression to his brain that he has reached satiety.