Hello and welcome to the zero to finals podcast.

My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be talking to you about eating disorders.

And you can find written notes on this topic at zero to finals.com slash eating disorders or in the psychiatry section of the

0 to finals more medicine book. And you can find questions to train your knowledge on this content

and help you remember the information for longer at members.0.0 tofinals.com. So let's get straight into it.

Eating disorders are psychiatric conditions involving an unhealthy and distorted obsession with

body image and food. The main types of eating disorder are anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder.

Eating disorders are most common in females and young people. Let's start by talking about

anorexia nervosa. With anorexia nervosa, the person feels their overweight despite evidence of a normal

or low body weight. It involves obsessively restricting calorie intake to lose weight.

Often, the person exercises excessively and may use diet pills or laxatives to limit the absorption

of food and calories.

Features of anorexia nervosa include weight loss and a low body weight, for example 15%

below their expected body weight, or a BMI less than 17.5, a menorrhea, which are

absent periods, and we'll talk in more detail about this shortly, lanugo hair, which is fine,

soft hair across most of the body, hypotension, a low blood pressure, hypothermia or a low body

temperature, and mood changes, including anxiety and depression.

A menorrhea, or the absence of periods, occurs due to disruption of the hypothalamic pituitary gonadal axis.

There is a lack of the gonadotrophins, LH and FSA, from the pituitary gland, which leads to reduced

activity of the ovaries or hypogonadism.

The normal menstrual cycle shuts down.

Cardiac complications of anorexia nervosa include arrhythmias,

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