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Anorexia nervosa is a disease that belongs to the group of eating disorders. It affects mainly the female gender, because 9 out of 10 cases occur in women. It usually begins at puberty or during adolescence, but is spreading to older age groups.

The disorder is characterized by a pathological preoccupation body weight, leading to the adoption of measures for the patient’s weight loss through self-induced vomiting, taking laxatives or diuretics and other formulas. There is an intense fear of gaining weight. People with anorexia nervosa can have extreme weight loss, to well below the recommended body mass index (index downplays the body weight in relation to height). The rejection of the body and a distorted image of it are some of the aspects that characterize the disorder.The disease causes extreme thinness people continue to think they are overweight and ¨ struggling to stay thin ¨. The pathology behind the disease is a disorder of body image. Because this altered body image, patients overestimate the size of the entire body or certain parts: abdomen, hips, buttocks and thighs.

The distorted perception of body image leads to self-imposed restrictive diets and prolonged fasting, excessive exercise or laxatives, weight loss reaching life-threatening. The incidence of the disease has increased very rapidly in the last two decades to the point of being considered an epidemic.

So much so that today, anorexia nervosa is the third most common chronic disease in adolescence, affecting between 1 to 4% of girls and young women and what is more important, is increasing.

There are professions where extreme thinness is primate (dancers, gymnasts, models, …) estimated that eating disorders have 1 in 3 women in this environment. In Spain, half of young girls think their weight is above or well above adequate. Of all the psychological factors that may be responsible for eating disorders is the most striking body dissatisfaction.

The patient attempts to solve it by controlling the weight and achieved through changes in eating behavior. Consequently, changes in eating behavior are secondary and caused by dissatisfaction with his own image. In fact, body image disturbance is one of the diagnostic features of anorexia nervosa.

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