What is an 'eating disorder'?

What is an 'eating disorder'?

Barton Blinder, MD (Clinical Professor, Dept. of Psychiatry) gives expert video advice on: What is an 'eating disorder'?; What is 'bulimia'?; What is 'purging'? and more...

An eating disorder is a disturbance that an individual has in their attitude, their selection, and their appetite regulation toward food. It includes changes in their image of their body, changes in mood, anxiety, and it has negative consequences ultimately for their nutrition and their state of health. What really characterizes an eating disorder is that it's persistent day after day, month after month, and we have to make a difference between the eating disorder and minor and temporary changes in eating that occur because of anxiety or because of arguments or because of minor hunger strikes, because the teenager is angry at a parent. Eating disorders come day after day, preoccupy the mind of an individual and distort and alter their attitude toward food.