What Are Eating Disorders?

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Eating disorders can emerge in the context of gastrointestinal, autoimmune, and other health conditions.

Necessary dietary changes can sometimes expand into increasingly restrictive and fear-driven eating.

Treatment should address eating disorder symptoms while continuing to take medical concerns seriously.

Eating disorders are often associated with dieting, body dissatisfaction, or a desire to lose weight, but not every eating disorder begins that way.

For some people, difficulties with food begin in the context of a genuine physical health problem. Gastrointestinal disorders, autoimmune conditions, food allergies or intolerances, chronic pain, and other illnesses can significantly change a person's experience of eating. Food may become associated with pain, nausea, bloating, bowel changes, or other uncomfortable and unpredictable symptoms. Medical treatment may also require significant dietary changes.

Paying attention to symptoms and following appropriate dietary recommendations are not eating disorder behaviors. But for some people, this necessary vigilance begins to expand, with more foods eliminated, greater anxiety about eating, and increasing attention to physical sensations. Eventually, it can become difficult to determine where appropriate health management ends and an eating disorder begins.

Repeatedly feeling unwell after eating can have a powerful effect on how someone approaches food. A person who experiences abdominal pain or nausea after meals may understandably begin trying to identify what caused it. One food is eliminated, then another. Eating at restaurants may begin........

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