My number one health concern is Eating Disorders (ED). Why because I have suffered with it since I was 9 years of age. I know pretty young right? It was pretty young for back then, but now in 2010 more and more girls are developing ED at a younger age. The average age for girls that developed eating disorders are as young as 10- 12 now I believe.The most common and dangerous one are Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa. I suffer from the latter one; it has been a struggle for me for such a long time, and it has been apart of my life for such along time there are days when I felt like I would not be able to continue with my day if I did not purge. The second reason is because I would like for help to more accessible to younger women and women without insurance. I want more people to be educated on ED, I want them to know the signs, the symptoms. If my family could have recognized the signs with me at an early age I think it would have saved me a lot of emotional pain and physical pain.If and ED is not caught soon it can take control of ones life, it will be the center on that persons life and possibly end that ones life. ED is just like a Drug or Alcohol addiction, one cannot just stop it takes time and understand. I do not know if there is a cure for it or what kind of medications are out there to control the symptoms; I would like for some more studies to be conducted.
I decided to interview my mother and mother in-law. I asked my mother what were her main health concerns for women and that was breast cancer. She stated that "breast cancer could change the way a women fells about herself forever". I asked her why she said that if breast cancer is not detected in its early stages, the women risk losing her breast. That individual will no long feel comfortable looking at herself naked again, she will never fell totally comfortable becoming intimate with the opposite sex. Self-esteem will drop and emotional problems on top of medical problems will occur. It is a life altering and can take a while to get use to. She is glad that steps are being take to improve medical technology, so that it can be detected early and fells that every woman should have a mammogram.
My mother in law said that she fells HIV/ AIDS is one of her concerns. Not enough people have the correct information on what causes it, how it is detected, what one can do to prevented; because there is so much misinformation out there. Why there has not been a cure for it, and can someone who has contracted it still be intimate. It is hard to believe that there are still people out there who are not properly educated on STDs, but there are a few. We shared the same concerns because this topic hits close to home for me. I worry everyday about my the person in my family who has it. When she comes down with a the common cold it can be life threatening and it scares me; so I would like for someday a cure to be found and if I could and was smart enough to do so help discover one myself.
Kitara,
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with everything in your blog. Eating disorders, in my opinion, are often commonly forgotten because breast cancer tends to over-shadow female medical issues. Bulimia nervosa's only affects 1-16% (Alexander, L. L., LaRosa, Bader, Garfield, & Alexander W. J., 2010). In my opinion, anorexia receives more publicity (if you could call it that) than bulimia.
With regards to breast cancer, my aunt was diagnosed with a very rare and fast growing form of breast cancer, Inflammatory Breast Cancer. Only 1-5% of all breast cancers are inflammatory breast cancer (National Cancer Institute, 2006). It was a hard road for her with chemotherapy and radiation (as for all current patients and survivors with breast cancer). She unfortunately was not able to continue her fight any longer and passed away this past May. She did not have issues with losing her breast as much as her hair. She was older and married so she did not feel pressure to look a certain way because her husband loved her regardless, but it is much harder to hide the hair loss. She wore it well, and will be missed!
Alexander, L. L., LaRosa, J. H., Bader, H., Garfield, S., & Alexander, W. J. (2010). New Dimensions in Women's Health. (5th ed.). Sadbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
National Cancer Institute. (2006). Inflammatory Breast Cancer: Questions and Answers. Retreived from http://www.cancer.gov