Anorexia news and information.

Medical app with links to current news stories, medical journals and the latest developments on this serious and potentially life threatening eating disorder.

Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by refusal to maintain a healthy body weight and an obsessive fear of gaining weight, often coupled with a distorted self image which may be maintained by various cognitive biases that alter how the affected individual evaluates and thinks about her or his body, food and eating. Persons with anorexia nervosa continue to feel hunger, but deny themselves all but very small quantities of food. The average caloric intake of a person with anorexia nervosa is 600-800 calories per day, but there are extreme cases of complete self-starvation. It is a serious mental illness with a high incidence of comorbidity and the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder.

It can affect men and women of all ages, races, socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. Anorexia nervosa occurs in females 10 times more than in males.

The term anorexia nervosa was established in 1873 by Sir William Gull, one of Queen Victoria's personal physicians. The term is of Greek origin: an- (?ν-, prefix denoting negation) and orexis (?ρεξι?, "appetite"), thus meaning a lack of desire to eat.