For most people the words "eating disorder" call to mind a certain type of person: a young, white woman who starves herself until she looks alarmingly thin. That's how eating disorder (ED) patients are often portrayed in pop culture, anyway — think Janet in "Girl, Interrupted," Emma on "Degrassi," or Ellen in Netflix's "To the Bone."
But that oft-recycled image of an ED sufferer isn't totally based in reality. It's a myth that only one type of person gets EDs. In fact, that's one of many myths that, together, obscure both the complexity of these diseases and the wide range of people they actually affect.
INSIDER spoke with psychologist and eating disorder expert Dr. Margo Maine, who dispelled some of the most persistent myths surrounding the diseases. Here are eight to that need to be put to rest for good.
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MYTH: Eating disorders only affect women.
EDs are often viewed as diseases that affect only women. Up until 2013, men couldn't technically qualify for an anorexia diagnosis, since amenorrhea — loss of a menstrual period — used to be a key requirement for the disease, according to the Journal of Adolescent Health.
The truth is that, although eating disorders are more common in women, men do get them. And the long-standing belief that they're a "feminine" problem may keep men with eating disorders from seeking treatment, according to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA). It may even prevent doctors from noticing EDs in male patients.
"Medical personnel often see a man who's got severe ED issues and they don't identify them at all because it's a man who is engaged in a lot of working out and exercise to try to change his body," Maine said. "We are so tolerant of men beating up their bodies that many physicians don't respond at all to the men who come in with excessive weight loss or exercise routines."
She added that sometimes ED symptoms can be different in men. They may not want to lose weight, for example, but they may be obsessed with appearing more muscular or sculpted.
"Men do have the same range of EDs as women do. They can have anorexia, they can have bulimia, and they can have binge eating disorder and variations of the above," Maine added. "We are seeing a lot of men and we need to pay attention to that."
MYTH: Eating disorders only affect teenagers.
In pop culture, characters with EDs are almost always teenage girls. In real life, EDs occur across a much wider age spectrum.
"This set of diseases affects people of all ages, from very, very young through geriatrics," Maine said, adding that they're found in kids as young as 8.
The most important takeaway is that EDs don't discriminate based on sex or age — or anything else, for that matter.
"They affect both sexes and all sexualities, too ... and every ethnicity, every culture, every socioeconomic group pretty much across the globe now," Maine said. "There's no one who's immune from an eating disorder and that's the first thing we have to talk about it."
MYTH: Eating disorders aren't a big deal.
Some hallmark ED symptoms — like obsession with weight — may seem superficial. But EDs can have serious effects on every organ system in the body.
On its website, NEDA offers an extensive breakdown of the potential health consequences of eating disorders. Eating too few calories can increase the risk for heart failure. Purging (either by self-induced vomiting or by laxative use) can throw off the body's electrolyte balance, also increasing heart failure risk. EDs can cause gastrointestinal issues like constipation, blocked intestines, and a ruptured stomach or esophagus. They can lead to bone loss, hypothermia, kidney failure. This is only a sampling of the complete list.
Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, according to NEDA — partly because some of these physical complications can be fatal, but also because some ED patients take their own lives.
"Many patients with EDs die by suicide," Maine said. "It's not just cardiac events and organ failure."
And even if an ED patient doesn't experience the most severe physical consequences, he's still dealing with emotional distress and an impaired quality of life, the NEDA website adds.
See the rest of the story at INSIDER
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