What are some of the physical symptoms of an anorexic?

What are some of the physical symptoms of an anorexic?

Divya Kakaiya (Program Founder and Clinical Supervisor) gives expert video advice on: What are some of the physical symptoms of an anorexic?; What are some of the behaviors that an anorexic exhibits?; What are the moods or emotions of an anorexic? and more...

Some of the most obvious symptoms we would see would be the thin body, and one of the physiological pieces that kind of occurs with the thin body is that person loses their period. And so they may not have a period. Hyperactivity - when they become anorexic, because the cortisone levels tend to rise in the body. When the body's under starvation, the cortisone levels really rise, and the increased cortisone levels gives them the energy to actually do more than what their body is capable of doing. So that's why we'll see anorexics that are just, you know, always on the go and can't sit still and they're just constantly moving. The other piece that we often see with anorexics is like a fine layer of Lanugo hair, we call it. Like you get a fuzz - peach fuzz, kind of - like a lot of hair over their body. And the reason why they grow the hair over their body is because it's the body's way of giving them that extra layer of insulation because then you have the hair, that the hair traps a layer of air in there to give you that layer of insulation because they've lost so much body fat and they're constantly cold all the time. So the body's compensating for that starvation mode that the body is in by growing that peach-fuzz hair over their face and their arms and necks.