While both these disorders can cause severe damage to brain, liver, kidneys, heart, pancreas, skin, bones and teeth, early diagnosis and treatment can assure recovery. The scenario is that people who suffer from these eating disorders often deny and seek medical help when it is perhaps too late and the disease condition has advanced to a great extent. Some sufferers are also completely ignorant of the disease condition and its dangerous consequences. If left untreated these types of eating disorders cause heart, kidney and liver failure, ulcers and even death.

But what is anorexia? It is a kind of eating disorder where the patient willingly starves and exercise fanatically. Done mainly to reduce weight, get an optimum figure and so on, these are near fanatic people who spend most of their time weighing themselves and reducing their food intake even further. Interestingly, these people are well aware of the importance of nutritious diet and the body’s calorie requirements. The early symptoms of anorexia include broken nails, thinning hair, refusal to accept hunger, obsessive fear of putting on weight, avoiding any social event where eating is a possibility, increased depression, irritability or anxiety.

Bulimia on the other hand is over obsession with food. Also called ‘binge and purge’, here the person gorges enormous amounts of food and then purges it out. Sometimes the eating is not followed by purging. Many young people go on these ‘binges’ and attempt to compensate it by rigorous exercise and the consumption of laxatives. Early symptoms include degeneration of teeth due to excess acid in the stomach, broken blood vessels around the eyes, swollen glands and stomach pain.

Many women who suffer from anorexia or bulimia have problems with their regular menstruation. Other signs and symptoms of these eating disorders include hiding of food, obsessive behavior regarding exercises, etc.

In case you are also showing early signs of such eating disorders or know someone who is going through these symptoms, you must seek professional help, before the situation goes out of hand.