With more and more mid-aged women developing the obsessive fear of weight gain along with teenagers, the symptoms of Anorexia nervosa is also spreading across the age groups – once considered the disease of the youths.
This eating disorder with decreased appetite like anorexia and bulimia is increasingly found in women in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and older in recent years.
The medical fraternity alarmed by the increase is resorting to ‘special programs’ designed especially for these more mature patients.
Dr. Donald McAlpine, director of an eating disorders clinic at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Said,
The epidemiology is pretty clear that anorexia and bulimia both peak in the late teens, early 20s…. (yet) a lot of (patients) continue to be symptomatic right on through to middle life.
But what is causing more and more women in their 30s seeking treatment for what has always been a young woman’s typical problem?
The study discovered several factors involved in making the mid-aged women fall prey to eating disorders –
growing public awareness,
social pressure to grow thin and
an aging group of baby boomers
The researchers do not justify the changing trend as just the desire of being a cheerleader or a homecoming queen — it is something bigger than what can apparently be predicted without any efforts.
It is more about dealing with an aging process, social and professional competition and of course childbirth – which majorly changes the way look, which a teenage does not have to face.