Eating Disorders services offered in San Antonio, TX
Many young people struggle with eating disorders that cause severe mental and physical health problems. If you or your child has an unhealthy relationship with food, talk to our providers at Aura Psychiatry, PLLC, San Antonio, Texas. We provide medication and therapy to help patients overcome eating conditions like anorexia, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder. To find out how they can help, call Aura Psychiatry, PLLC and arrange an in-person or telehealth consultation. You can also book an appointment online today.
Eating Disorders
What Are Eating Disorders?
Eating disorders most commonly develop during adolescence or young adulthood, adversely affecting your child’s attitude to food. These disorders affect more girls and women, but can also impact boys and young men.
Eating disorders can be life-threatening. Anorexia nervosa (the most common eating disorder) results in more deaths than any other psychiatric illness in the United States.
What Kind Of Eating Disorder Is Anorexia Nervosa?
Anorexia nervosa affects a patient’s ability to assess their body shape realistically. They view themselves as overweight despite becoming severely malnourished and underweight.
The fear of gaining weight takes over their lives to such an extreme degree that no evidence to the contrary shakes their belief that they’re overweight.
Physical symptoms of anorexia include:
- Anemia (lack of iron in your blood)
- Amenorrhea (not menstruating)
- Weakness
- Muscle wasting
- Low blood pressure (hypotension)
- Thinning bones
- Dry, discolored skin
- Constipation
- Constantly feeling cold
- Chronic fatigue
- Infertility
- Lanugo (fine hair growth)
Without expert treatment, patients with anorexia can suffer brain, heart, and organ damage. Some people with anorexia nervosa starve themselves to the point their organs fail, and they die. Other people struggling with anorexia become suicidal.
Are There Other Eating Disorders?
Two other common eating disorders are bulimia nervosa and binge-eating disorder.
People with bulimia nervosa have sessions where they eat excessive amounts of food in a short period. Their inability to control the binges means that they feel such shame and fear of weight gain afterward that they make themselves vomit.
Bulimics also take laxatives and diuretics, over-exercise, or fast to prevent weight gain. However, the urge to binge inevitably returns, and the cycle begins again.
Binge-eating disorder also involves overeating, but people don’t make themselves vomit afterward. Binge-eaters keep going until they’re overfull, leading to weight gain, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), and feelings of guilt and shame that can trigger depression.
To find a way out of the despair and potentially life-threatening complications eating disorders cause, call Aura Psychiatry, PLLC today or book an appointment online.