Source: http://www.everydayhealth.com/kids-health/eating-disorders-risks.aspx

Teens and tweens develop eating disorders for reasons from personality to genes. Learn the common triggers and if your child is at risk.

Teens and tweens are understandably concerned about how they look. At a time when their skin may be breaking out and curves in girls and muscles in boys are developing (or not developing the way they want), they may start to worry about body image. When this worry turns into an obsession, the stage may be set for an eating disorder.

Getting to the Roots of Eating Disorders

For years, the typical eating disorders profile was thought to be a white teenage girl, a high achiever from an affluent family — a perfectionist with low self-esteem and a poor body image.

But recent studies have uncovered a lot more information, both about which kids are more likely to develop an eating disorder and about a wide range of triggers that may help foster it — everything from a chemical imbalance to overly strict food rules at home. A study by researchers in Italy even found that children of women who had complications during pregnancy, like maternal anemia or diabetes, were more likely to develop anorexia. Early feeding difficulty has been investigated as a risk factor for bulimia.

The takeaway is that there is not just one risk factor or high-risk group. There are a number of circumstances you need to know about that make kids more vulnerable to an eating disorder.

Eating Disorders: Circumstances to Consider

• The start of puberty is a crucial time. Eating disorders often start in the tween years, between the ages of 11 and 13. The chances of developing an eating disorder jump when girls, in particular, hit puberty.
• Eating disorders tend to run in the family. Having a relative with anorexia nervosa makes a girl 10 times more likely to have an eating disorder. Girls under 14 may be up to three times more likely to purge if their mom had an eating disorder.
• Genes seem to play a huge role. Researchers involved in separate studies of twin girls found that genetics are a factor in half or more of all girls who developed an eating disorder after puberty.
• Girls are more at risk, but boys aren’t immune. While most people with anorexia and bulimiaare female, binge-eating disorder affects almost as many boys as girls. One study pointed out that having an overly critical father increased the chances of boys binge-eating.
• Kids from different ethnic backgrounds are also vulnerable. Until recently, few studies on eating disorders included minorities. Now researchers are finding evidence that unhappiness over weight, low self-esteem, and poor body image can plague almost everyone, regardless of race and ethnicity. Some people might even be at greater risk because of the cultural stress of trying to fit in and environmental stress, like poverty and racism.
• Kids stressed by social and peer pressures are at risk. In addition to the media promoting thin models, kids involved in physical activities that encourage thinness, like cheerleading, gymnastics, ballet, ice skating, running, and wrestling, might feel additional pressure. This might explain new reports of boys experiencing eating disorders, like purging, using laxatives, and dieting in the hope of becoming better athletes.
• Kids whose diets were restricted or heavily controlled by parents may want to rebel.Forbidding kids to eat the sugary and high-fat snacks they see on TV commercials and at their friends’ houses can have a boomerang effect. They want them so much that they’ll overeat whenever they can get their hands on them, starting an unhealthy relationship with food at an early age.
• Kids who are overweight at a young age or are preoccupied with dieting are at risk, too.Children as young as age 6 are already aware of dieting, and those who are already overweight are at greater risk of developing eating disorders. A pattern of dieting may lead to binge eating.
• Kids who feel anxious and stressed may also become depressed. Emotional or psychological difficulties can go hand-in-hand with eating disorders. In fact, depression and eating disorders are so tightly linked that either one can cause the other. Anger, impulsive behavior, and family or peer conflicts are other emotional issues that can feed an eating disorder. So can stressful life events, like moving to a new school, or not making the soccer team if that was the child’s overriding dream.

Eating Disorders: How to Reduce Your Child’s Risk

As a parent, you can create the right home environment to help minimize a preoccupation with food and body size that can lead to an eating disorder:

• Let children know thin models and actresses are not realistic ideals.
• Nurture your children’s self-esteem by letting them know you love them for who they are, not how they look.
• Prepare and eat nutritious meals as a family; plan family exercise and outdoor activities.
• Avoid making negative comments about your own body or obsessing about dieting.
• Teach your children about good nutrition so that they will be able to make smart choices.
• Don’t let food become a battle between you and your kids; let them have some control over what they eat.

This is why Nu Skin has developed and launched the magnificent LifePak Teen. LifePak Teen is a comprehensive dietary supplement that protects and nourishes growing bodies between the ages of 9-18. It contains all of the most important vitamins such as A, C, D, E, B6, etc. which teens need for their own system and daily activities. LifePak Teen helps address the nutritional demands of healthy, active young men and women, ages 9-18, providing a high amount in antioxidant vitamins, including all-natural beta-carotene, vitamin E, and buffered vitamin C; rich in bone-building calcium (500 mg) and magnesium (200 mg); deliver a broad-spectrum of health maintaining trace minerals; including iron as well as containing balanced B vitamin formula.

As you want to give your child the best, LifePak Teen will be the number one choice.

Take care

Source: http://www.everydayhealth.com/kids-health/eating-disorders-risks.aspx