I am really worried about my sister. I think she has a problem and it may be anorexia(SP?)
Some background. My sister is 40, she has three kids and was divorced a good number of years ago. She only has one daughter at home now.
Anyway, here is the problem. I saw my sister last Thanksgiving and she was thin but she has always been thin. For my birthday, which I share with my sister, she sent a card and a picture of her, my nephew who just got out of basic training and my niece. My sister is scary thin in that picture. I showed the picture to a couple of friends they all commented on how thin she is. In fact that was the first thing they all noticed.
I am really worried about my sister and I did some google searches on the subject but all the material I found dealt with young girls and 20 something women.
My sister is older and I really don’t know what to do. Does anyone have any advice or knowledge about this? Does anorexia hit older people? If so, how should I talk to my sister about this.
(Note, my Mom and Dad are also worried about my sister. According to my Sister, as told to my Mom, she doesn’t have any other medical problem that would cause her to lose weight. My sister has been honest with my Mom in the past so I believe that she doesn’t have another problem)
Any facts would help. Actually anything would help.
[quote]
[ul][li]Dramatic weight loss. [/li][li]Preoccupation with weight, food, calories, fat grams, and dieting. [/li][li]Refusal to eat certain foods, progressing to restrictions against whole categories of food (i.e., no carbohydrates, etc.). [/li][li]Frequent comments about feeling “fat” or overweight despite weight loss. [/li][li]Anxiety about gaining weight or being “fat.” [/li][li]Denial of hunger. [/li][li]Development of food rituals (i.e., eating foods in certain orders, excessive chewing, rearranging food on a plate). [/li][li]Consistent excuses to avoid mealtimes or situations involving food. [/li][li]Excessive, rigid exercise regimen–despite weather, fatigue, illness, or injury, the need to “burn off” calories taken in. [/li][li]Withdrawal from usual friends and activities. [/li][li]In general, behaviors and attitudes indicating that weight loss, dieting, and control of food are becoming primary concerns.[/ul][/li][/quote]
Eating disorders can affect people of ANY age, gender, socioeconomic status, etc. It’s true that anorexia is more common in young women than in other demographic groups, but it’s not limited to them.
I would highly recommend www.something-fishy.org . They have lots of info plus messageboards and chat both for people with EDs and their loved ones.
One of the odder symptoms of anorexia is smaller than normal handwriting. If you can get a writing sample from your sister and it looks a lot smaller than you’d expect, there’s a problem. If it’s normal size, there still could be a problem.
Just want to point out that while anorexia is one possible cause of weight loss, there are plenty of others. You say your sister told your parents that she has no other medical problem, but how sure is she of that? Is she just saying, “I feel fine,” or has she been thoroughly checked out by a doctor? Encouraging her to have a complete physical could be a good first step. She might have a physical problem that has been missed, and even if she doesn’t, her doctor may be able to more clearly identify eating disorder symptoms.
Weight loss alone does not mean that someone has an eating disorder. Unless your sister has some of the other symptoms listed by peepthis and identified at the linked sites, I’d want to rule out other possible physical causes before zoning in on anorexia as the cause.
Whenever I’ve read about anorexia, they usually mention the fact that the girls are average weight but think they are overweight. What if a girl has those same symptoms but really is overweight?
An eating disorder is an obsession with food and body image to the point that it interferes with a person’s physical and/or mental well-being. If she has more than a couple of those symptoms, she’s in a bad way, even if her weight is healthy.
There’s a thing called ED-NOS (eating disorder not otherwise specified) which includes symptoms like drastic self-induced weight loss without having one’s weight dip to the point of being underweight in conjunction with other eating disorder symptoms…here’s a link: http://www.something-fishy.org/whatarethey/ednos.php . A lot of people with EDs have combinations of the various symptoms–it’s not safe to assume that someone who’s anorexic will never make him/herself purge, for instance.
There are people who are overweight, recognize it, and diet using dangerous methods (purging, starving, etc.); depending on who you’re talking to they’re either exhibiting disordered eating patterns or they have an undiagnosed eating disorder.
When I’m dealing with questions like this, I err on the side of caution in responding because although I maintained a fairly average weight during the time I had an eating disorder, I was engaging in some really risky behavior that led to further health problems.