You know how PTSD shares symptoms with a whoooooooole lot of other disorders?
So do eating disorders.
Disordered eating can be stand alone, but it's more often found as a side effect of something else.
- Environmental... Such as growing up in poverty can teach disordered eating (eat as much as you can whenever you can, as you never know when you'll eat next is only one example).
- Physical... Having an anxiety disorder which shuts off the digestive system when the sympathetic nervous system kicks into gear (neurological), or a GI issue can make food repellant via negative reinforcement : eating equals pain (medical)... Are two of hundreds of physical causes.
- Medication... Chemo would be the most obvious example, but a whole lot of medications mess with the hunger response & digestive system. Corticosteroids tend to cause binge eating, for example. Meanwhile certain antidepressants cause huge weight gain with no increase in calories or decrease in exercise, which can lead to crazy dieting trying to shed pounds that can't be lost that way. On the surface, however, it looks like anorexia.
- Et Cetera (there are dozens of categories, with hundreds of individual causes).
What all this equals is that disordered eating needs more investigation.
It may be a stand alone or comorbid eating disorder (or early days). Or it may have a very specific cause. It's absolutely silly to work on a starving homeless person' s eating habits as if they're anorexic and starving themselves on purpose, if they would love to eat, but cannot afford food. Same token someone whose meds are shutting off hunger or satiation? Has an entirely different treatment protocol than someone who isn't taking meds causing the problem.
