Eating disorders effect thousands of young women in the United States and other parts of the world. The compulsions involved can be life destroying.

With anorexia, bulemia, and other eating disorders, therapy has been found to be effective. Studies have shown that medications routinely prescribed, Prozac being the most commonly prescribed medication for eating disorders, as well as other SSRIs, have about the same success ratio as placebos in treating eating disorders.

Cognitive therapy has been of help to many, as well as counseling on proper dieting and eating habits. One experience is given of a teenage tennis pro who developed anorexia, and it is said that a disproportionatly large number of female athletes suffer from eating disorders.

Our world is based upon social stigmas that we must all look thin. This idea of thin begins to hit our children as early as 10 or 11 years of age. Young girls are the ones hit hardest by this social disease and when simple dieting turns into an obsession wit weight, that is when dieting can turn fatal.

Control. Control is at the heart of the reason why many girls choose to try an eating disorder to lose weight. The eating disorders that are most common are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Anorexia is the starving of the human body in order to lose weight and bulimia is most commonly a disorder involving eating large amounts of food and then throwing that food back up.