It is no wonder that as many as 8 million US women suffer from eating disorders in the United States alone. Just sitting in front of the television for about five minutes or picking up any magazine on the newsstands will help to shed some light as to why. Just about every actress or model you see is flaunting her bony shoulders and spine protruding back in a skimpy dress while walking the red carpet and receiving accolades such as fame and fortune because of her supposed good looks. The media and society in general has adopted the mentality that thinner is better when it comes to the sexiness and beauty of women. This ideology is a scary thing and it is beginning to affect more and more young women in the US and abroad.

But some women don't fall into this trap at all and lead healthy, normal lives and have never succumbed to an eating disorder or had any trouble with self-esteem or body image at all. It seems that many of them share some common traits and in this article we want to take a moment and list four of the top ones so that others could work to follow their example and avoid the horror that is eating disorders.

1. Respect who you are - Respecting who you are and what you look like is incredibly important when it comes to avoiding eating disorders. We are all created differently and if you can embrace those differences and accept them, it is much more likely that you'll have a healthy and normal life.

2. Eat a healthy balanced diet - If you are used to a healthy and balanced diet and have been eating one throughout your life, then simply mimicking your food choices in the past as you move through life will help you avoid an eating disorder as well. Often times, eating disorders stem from drastic and sudden changes that we make with our diets to try to achieve fast and significant weight loss.

3. Find your talent and focus on it - It has been noted that women with talents such as playing sports or musical instruments are often much less likely to develop eating disorders. This can be because they have something else to focus their time and energies on rather than focusing them inward on themselves and how they look and feel about their bodies. It is important for young people to investigate the different activities that are available for them to take part in so that they may discover a talent of their own to spend their time with.

4. Look for and choose healthy role models - We often become what we emulate and this is a statement that holds incredibly true for young impressionable minds. Young women that think about and idolize TV and movie stars often emulate their activities and looks. This can make them more susceptible to developing unhealthy attitudes toward food and their ways in order to try to look like these famous starlets.




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Unfortunately in our society today, eating disorders are becoming more and more a prevalent existence in the lives of our youth. It is estimated that there are more than 8 million women afflicted with eating disorders in the US alone and many of these are young girls. The push for beauty and the "thin is beautiful" mentality has led many women to try to mimic the looks of movie stars and magazine models often with disastrous results. These young impressionable women want so badly to be accepted as beautiful in our society that they often go to incredible lengths to get results. This can include trying various diets, forced vomiting, and even taking drugs such as diuretics to achieve what they think is the pinnacle of beauty, but in reality it's thin and sickly.

Because of this overall acceptance that thin women are sexy women, even families can play a role in helping to exacerbate the problem of eating disorders that exist in our society. Some parents, although well-meaning, may make comments to their children about their eating habits or how they may look in general. A young person is emotionally vulnerable as it is and often has self-esteem issues as they begin going through the changes of puberty that is the normal process of turning into adults. These awkward stages may be completely normal but because of their fragile emotional states, any issues having to deal with self worth or their place in society can greatly be compounded by what they think others think of them. It may simply be a comment about how their daughter's clothes are fitting or perhaps how much food they had at dinner that sets the stage for worse things to come.

Some women begin by trying to enter into exercise programs to lose excess weight and begin working out at a feverish pace to try to achieve results. Because many of these women have never had true experience with a healthy diet and exercise program they may not get the desired results they wanted and this can lead them to try to add other things to their regimen to speed up the weight loss. This can mean forced starvation or even ingesting diet pills to help the process along. Still other women may take part in what is known as binging and purging where they will eat thousands of calories and then force themselves to vomit so that they don't experience any weight gain from these episodes. All of these practices are incredibly harmful and can lead to serious health implications that can result in hospitalization, or even death in the worst cases.

It is important to realize that young women, or any individuals for that matter, that may have self-esteem issues need to be handled with care. They may not rationalize others' statements but instead may see them as much more meaningful than they were intended. If you suspect that your children or those of your friends may be exhibiting any of the symptoms above, it is important that you take action and seek help immediately before the condition worsens and leads this young person to seriously damage their health, perhaps even permanently.




Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Emile_Jarreau

Do you know that by learning new things you are actually changing the structure of your own brain? This amazing ability of the human brain to change itself according to new experiences and new knowledge is called Neuroplasticity.

Every time we learn something new we change the connections of neurons (brain cells) and even whole neuronal pathways. Every time we change our environment - we change the structure of the brain. Every time we change our behaviour -we create significant changes in our brain.

These changes can be good, but can be bad also; it all depends on the nature of the experiences, like changing your environment but most importantly our perception of the experience of the change, plus the environment.

Every event we experience can leave permanent memory traces in our brain thus change the brains structure.

For example, a teenager girl who was exposed to skinny celebrity images can become dissatisfied with her own body image and then develop an eating disorder. In this example she learned that skinny celebrities are considered to be beautiful. Then she automatically created a new negative experience for herself by comparing her own body with the celebrity's body. She wasn't as skinny as the person on TV, thus she became dissatisfied with herself. The final result of this mental -emotional process is significant changes to the neuronal structures in her brain. These irrational thoughts become new faulty neuronal pathways that are then responsible for her developing an eating disorder.

Fortunately, all these traumatic memories are not written down in stone, or "engraved", to remain unchanged forever. Luckily we can change these faulty structures by subsequent events and re-transcribe it, then change it to new more constructive thought processes.

All the experiences or events (like dissatisfaction with yourself, emotional trauma etc.) can take on new different meanings later on in life and again we can learn to change the structure of the brain to the better.
We can direct the changes in our brain to the better by using a process called "self-directed neuroplasticity". "Self-directed neuroplasticity" means re-transcription and changing underlying neuronal networks and associated memories and emotions by yourself for yourself.

People with eating disorders, anxiety, depression and the like can help themselves to improve their own lives by using the "self-directed neuroplasticity" approach at any stage of the disease. Of course, if you have had an eating disorder for 10 years or more it will be more difficult to change the brain then if you had it for 5 years, but this also depends a lot on your determination and desire to change.

People who have determination and a desire to change can create the positive emotions that are needed for change, and these emotions will help them to re-transcribe the faulty neuronal pathways faster and easier. But if you resist the change and lack determination then you will remain a sufferer with faulty neuronal pathways until you consciously get to the point that you must change. Or when you get to the point where it is more painful to stay with the disorder, than it is to change: this point is normally reached when a number of medical problems arrive from the abuse of their body over the years.

The idea that the brain can change its own structure and function through new activities, thoughts and new behaviours is amazing and brings much hope for mental and emotional disorder sufferers. These include eating disorders, anxiety, depression, compulsive disorders, addictions and other stress related problems.

"Teach Your Mind to Cure Your Brain" is a term that tells you simply, if you learn to teach your mind new positive things you can change the structure of your brain for the better as well. If you learn the right methods then you can improve and even cure your brain from many disorders. It is really only up to you whether you stick with the old destructive thoughts or change to new better ones: is it your choice?




Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Irina_Webster