If you are not feeling well and are caught in a piquant situation of not being able to decide to eat or not to eat, you may have an eating disorder.

Eating disorder disturbs your feel well and instead gives you sickness feeling. Doctors would normally identify eating disorders into two broad groups. It could be either a psychological fear of becoming obese or getting into an unwieldy shape that may cause an eating disorder or over reactionary behavior of the body due to rigid or crash dieting.

Eating disorders should not be confused with other symptomatic ailments that are because of loss of appetite or one’s dislike for food. Eating disorders may have nothing to do with starvation or one’s failure to take his or her meals in time. But anxiety, stress and consciousness about one’s looks and body weight are indirectly responsible for eating disorders. Weight or outlooks conscious are more prone to eating disorders than those who are carefree.

Other category of eating disorders is among people who have uncontrolled eating in spurts. They tend to overeat. Those suffering from this category of eating disorders often go for binge food. Instead of going for moderations, both in their eating and exercises, they go to extremes in either.

Eating disorders at times are influenced by media projections. There have been studies that have established link between media and eating disorders. Who is not aware of the dieting industry that has been growing annually and is worth several billions? Its publicity campaigns invariably take a heavy toll of those who have low self esteem and indulge in constant self-criticism thus creating ideal conditions for eating disorders.

Environmental factors apart, there are biological reasons also for eating disorders. Researchers have established that people with certain hormones always have a feeling of being full. In case hormone levels are low they always have a feeling of emptiness. The level of secretion of this hormone called cholecystokinin influences so overeating and less eating.

Eating disorders are also related to family systems where parents exercise strict or rigid controls over eating habits of their siblings. Trauma could be other possible reason for eating disorders. Those in distress or shaken by some developments around them may lose appetite or suffer from eating disorder.