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What is Anorexia Nervosa -- Eating Disorder Video #6

This video is about the DSM definition of anorexia nervosa. I felt that it was important to go over what the criteria are because many people misuse the term anorexia. Anorexia is characterized by four criteria. The first being a person's refusal to maintain an ideal body weight, which is know if vague but I feel that it is vague on purpose because everyone's body shape and size is different. A person with anorexia can keep their weight low by restricting or purging and it is my experience that this will change over the course of their eating disorder. The second criterion is that this person will have an intense fear of gaining any weight. This is not like someone who knows they gain weight during the holidays and so they go to the gym more out of fear that they will gain the weight. This is much more severe, and the fears about weight gain monopolize their thoughts all day and night. The third criterion is that the person's view of themselves is distorted. I do not mean that if you have a day where you look in the mirror and don't like what you see that you have a distorted self perception, this is much more severe and no one can change their mind about how they think they look. The fourth criterion is the loss of your period. This is not required because many may have never had their period so they could not have lost it. Also, if a person is on birth control that can potentially force their body into having a period even if their body would not do so naturally. It is my hope that leveraging social media whether it is YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn can help me reach more people and spread the word about eating disorders and how destructive they can be to the people who suffer from them as well as those closest to them.

TRANSCRIPT:
Hi it’s Kati again. Thank you so much for checking back.
Now today I have a lot of great information for you but it's a lot.
So you may want to grab that journal I told you to buy or a pen and a piece of paper, jot down some notes, 'cause it's a lot of information, but I'll try to make it as clear and concise as possible.
So today I'd like to discuss the definition of anorexia nervosa.
Now the main reason that I think this needs a little clarification is because I feel like it's thrown around so nonchalantly in a lot magazines and even among friends and peers.
They’ll look at a girl and say “oh she’s so thin she's anorexic", or "oh you didn’t finish your dessert your anorexic" or who knows what they'll come up with next but they're always saying that if so and so has lost weight she's anorexic.
Now, if a patient comes into my office and I believe that she's showing some symptoms of anorexia I'm not just gonna, you know, throw “oh she's anorexic”.
I'm going to refer to my DSM.
Now what the DSM says is that if someone is anorexic they are exhibiting four criteria.
Now, the first criteria is obviously the one that we notice the most, that's a person's refusal to maintain an ideal body weight, so obviously we’ll notice if someone loses weight, that's very easy to notice but the other criteria we don't even know if those have been met yet.
So, the first criteria can be met in two ways.
Now, I know this is a little confusing but under the first criteria in order to remain thin, an anorexic person will either restrict, meaning "I don’t eat this, this, this" or "I don't eat at all for x amount of hours or days" or anything like that.
The second way to not maintain an ideal body weight is to binge and purge.
Now, I don't know if you've ever heard those terms before, but binging is when you eat more than average amount of food in a very short period of time.
And purging is when you either force yourself to throw up, you could use laxatives you can use enemas.
There are a lot of ways, diuretics, there are a lot of ways to make your body purge the food.
So the first criteria just to clarify is the refusal to maintain an ideal body weight.
Now, moving on to the second criteria this isn’t something that we would notice just by passing someone on the street or even taking a picture of a celebrity we'd never know if this was going on.
The second criteria is that the person has an extreme fear of gaining weight now when I say extreme I mean extreme.
It's not just like any “normal” person who thinks "Oh, Christmas is coming, I should probably work out a little more, cause I’m gonna have a little bit to eat and I don’t want, I don’t want my pants not to fit."
It's not like that, this is all day, everyday without regard to grandma's ham or you know, your aunts pecan pie, this is serious.
This is no matter what this person is concerned all day about gaining just even the slightest bit like two ounces of weight is too many, so that's what I mean by extreme.
Now the third criteria is that their perception of themselves is distorted.
Now, okay I know a lot of us look in the mirror and are like uh...uh this is not good today is a bad hair day, that pimple, everyone notices it, that's not just distorted, that's just normal self-consciousness.
Distorted means that this person could be severely underweight and they look in the mirror and that person is morbidly obese and you or me or anybody around them cannot convince them otherwise, that's what I mean by extreme.
So now we have three criteria, and the last one is pretty simple, yet it's also something we shouldn't know if we walk, run into anybody on the street.
This is when you lose your period.
So the way that the DSM talks about it, is that if you are of age to have your period and if you actually already had it and now you don’t have it anymore you've met the criteria.
The place that it gets kind of tricky is if you are underage and you've never had your period usually that criteria doesn't have to be met.
So, I hope that clarifies a little bit about what anorexia nervosa is, how we actually diagnose it in office, or if you go see a psychiatrist, what we all pull from to find out if somebody really is suffering from anorexia.
So again don't forget you can always comment below if this wasn't clear if, you need a little bit more information from me or you don't think that part of what I said is real or true feel free to comment.
I take those under consideration, especially when I’m creating more videos and also, don’t forget to subscribe to my videos so that when I post you get notified right away.
So thanks again for checking in, and let's continue on this journey to a healthy body, healthy mind.