What Are The Signs Of Anorexia Bulimia? How can a parent recognize the signs of anorexia or bulimia? Why is it important to recognize these signs? And why is it so difficult to recognize the signs of anorexia? These are good questions and are questions that every parent should know the answer to. The signs of anorexia bulimia are hard to recognize because the person suffering from the disease do such a great job of hiding the facts from their parents, so the parents need to learn what signs to look for. While anorexia nervosa and bulimia can affect young men, it is predominately a disease that affects young girls. This is due in part to the unhealthy fixation that the western world has being thin and beautiful. The modeling industry has told everyone that it is important to be skinny, and movies and magazines are always showing photos of thin movie stars and celebrities. As a result, it is only natural that young girls going through puberty want to be popular and associate being thin with being popular. The first sign that a person may be suffering from anorexia nervosa is their weight. Does your child look a lot thinner than their friends who are the same age and height? If so, you may need to pay closer attention the some of the other signs. Other things to look for include not wanting to eat with other people or eating in public. An anorexic will often hide food and dispose of it later to keep their parent from knowing they haven t eaten. Someone suffering from bulimia will gorge themselves and later regurgitate their food. So if your daughter eats excessively large meals and never seems to gain weight, she may be suffering from bulimia. People that suffer from this tend to have discolored teeth from the stomach acids discoloring the enamel when they vomit. They also tend to have sour smelling breath. Once the disease progresses further, the anorexic will develop serious health issues. By the time these symptoms appear, it becomes much harder to treat the disease, in fact, you have having to spend so much energy and time treating symptoms, it is hard to get past the physiological issues that cause the disease in the first place. The most horrific thing about anorexia bulimia is the fact that so many sufferers actually die from the effects of this disease. It is estimated that over 15% of anorexics die prematurely as a direct result of the organ failure associated with anorexia nervosa. Remember to look for the early signs of anorexia bulimia in order to head the disease off before it is too late. The easiest is sign to recognize is being underweight. However, with preteen girls, this can be very difficult to recognize. The easiest way is compare your daughter to her friends, if she is grossly underweight compared to other girls her age; get a medical opinion as soon as possible to determine if there is a problem. Sydney Heiden has a website dedicated to information about Anorexia Nervosa. To learn more about the effects of anorexia, go to anorexic-info.com