Before the world became obsessed with the way people looked on the outside, food was just a source of nourishment. Food intake was based on hunger and availability. There was no emotional dimension worth mentioning.

If you were hungry and lucky enough to have food you would eat until you were no longer hungry.

Today's stringent fashion trends have helped to make food a potential weapon of self-destruction. People can use it to deprive themselves of all nourishment or overwhelm their systems with excess.

In our modern world this maladaptive eating behavior afflicts the lives of millions of sufferers and kills thousands a year. Experts continue to puzzle over the mysterious conversion of a voluntary decision to abuse natural eating habits into a self-destructive behavior that defies voluntary control.

Eating disorders, the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) tells us, are not the result of a failure of will or behavior. They are a bona fide medical illness where certain maladaptive patterns take on a life of their own.

The main types of eating disorders are Anorexia Nervosa and Anorexia Bulimia. A third type has been discovered called Binge Eating Disorder but it has no formal psychiatric diagnosis yet.

Eating disorders typically develop during adolescence or early adulthood though some rare cases begin in childhood or develop in later adulthood. Significantly more women than men are afflicted by the illness with a mere 5 to 15% of males suffering from Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia and a higher 35% from Binge Eating Disorders.

Eating disorders have significant physical side effects like heart and kidney failure. For this reason it is essential that cases are detected and treated as early as possible.