No time to eat, working women with 'stressorexia'

London, Feb 2: The stress of balancing career and home can drive the successful modern woman into the grip of 'stressorexia', a new type of eating disorder.

This emerging condition is affecting motivated women in their late 20s to 40s who are unwilling or unable to reduce their workload, experts said. 'Stressorexia' is different from the more common anorexia. In this condition, women with high expectations experience dramatic weight loss due to lack of proper diet because of anxiety and stressfullness. People who suffer from anorexia are younger having emotional problems who deliberately skip meals to keep control over their bodies. Many have negative feelings about themselves, such as low selfworth, extreme fear of rejection and a distorted self-image, experts claimed.

Anxiety causes the brain to releases corticotropin-releasing hormone to regulate the nervous system's response to stress which results in loss of appetite, experts at Bristol University said.

It also releases adrenaline which causes our metabolism to burn more calories, they said.

Basically, this ailment is a combination of depression, anxiety and anorexic-type symptoms and is very much a modern-day phenomenon, compounded by the blurred roles of men and women.

The disorder often start with a skipped meal due to work deadlines, but can take a worse turn if neglected, experts believed.

UNI