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Dying to Be Thin

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Dying to be Thin
While I can say that I knew what anorexia nervosa and bulimia are when it comes to describing the disease, I had never really seen anything quite like this video. It really opened up my eyes to the serious dangers of these diseases and the importance of finding ways to combat them.
Seeing the young girl Erin standing in front of a mirror and saying she looked fat, all while being a good 20 percent below her normal body weight, is something that is very hard for me to understand. Then it is pointed out that anorexia nervosa is the most deadly psychiatric illness and it becomes obvious to me just how serious the issue is. Since the 1950’s anorexia nervosa has continued to increase every five years by 36 percent according to The Mayo Clinic.
This blew me away, I grew up in a home where my sister was the oldest and she says she always worried about her weight but not to the extent of doing anything harmful. The rest of my siblings are all boys and we always worried about gaining weight not losing it, so while I knew what this disease was I never actually knew anything about it and how it can lead to death.
The media seems to be a major factor into contributing to women suffering from these diseases. Whether it’s on T.V. or models in magazines the media continues to use these very skinny women and it only seems to lead to women all over feeling the need to live up to what they see in the media.
Another interesting thing I learned was that most victims have an obsessive attitude and strive for perfection, they like to be in control and this leads to more problems. In some patients it was shown that they have unusually high levels of serotonin, which leads to a person having obsessing and anxiety like behavior. Dieting and starvation seem to be a possible way for people with eating disorders to possibly lower the serotonin levels, attempting to reduce

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