This video clears up any confusions that may have been present regarding compulsive exercise and bulimia nervosa. This video explains the journey of someone who has actually dealt with both disorders, and what they went through. A disorder like this is really dangerous and the addiction can be so great that it can lead to death.
Understanding Bulimia (College Health Guru) - YouTube:
This video focuses on just bulimia and how it actually works and how you can tell if someone is going through the disorder. The bulimia can actually lead to compulsive disorder as another way to lose the calories taken in. What I found interesting was how it's normal weighted people that actually go through bulimia. This tells you how much pressure society and media can put on someone to look a certain way, especially through all television shows, music videos, and modelling.
This video clears up any confusions that may have been present regarding compulsive exercise and bulimia nervosa. This video explains the journey of someone who has actually dealt with both disorders, and what they went through. A disorder like this is really dangerous and the addiction can be so great that it can lead to death.
This article explains more about what compulsive exercise is and where it generates from. I also find this article very interesting because it discusses the controversy of exercise addiction, and how there really is now remedy for it, because exercise itself is used to quit certain addictions. The mental process that leads to this disorder really is hard to unwind.
Exercise addiction may not necessarily sound like a bad thing to everyone. After all, numerous studies have demonstrated the physical and emotional health benefits of regular exercise -- it is essential to our well-being
exercise addiction is maladaptive, so instead of improving the person’s life, it is causes more problems.
Exercise addiction can threaten health, causing injuries, physical damage due to inadequate rest, and in some instances (particularly when co-occurring with an eating disorder), malnutrition and other problems.
Secondly, it is persistent, so an exercise addict exercises too much and for too long without giving the body a chance to recover
exercise addicts exercise for hours every day, regardless of fatigue or illness
Exercise addiction is probably the most contradictory of all the addictions
Exercise is even promoted as part of a complete program of recovery from other addictions
exercise addiction is a controversial idea. Many experts balk at the idea that excessive exercise can constitute an addiction, believing that there has to be a psychoactive substance that produces symptoms -- such as withdrawal -- for an activity to be a true addiction
exercise releases endorphins (opioids produced within the body), and excessive exercise causes tolerance to the hormones and neurotransmitters released, these physiological processes are often not considered comparable to other substance addictions.
Exercise addiction is not currently included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), the gold standard for psychological diagnoses, although several authors have suggested diagnostic criteria
This article does a better job than the previous article in explaining the correlation between bulimia and compulsive exercise. It's fascinating to know how much your self-esteem and self portrait of yourself you have. You actual mental thoughts and condition determine what you do physically/
But while a little exercise is a good thing, taking exercise to the extreme can cause serious health issues, even death.
When few adults exercise regularly, and many struggle to find just 20 minutes to dedicate to a workout, it may be hard to believe that some people place exercise at the center of their lives
Compulsive exercise is more than a desire to get in the ultimate shape or manage one's weight.
Sufferers of exercise bulimia use excessive exercise to purge or compensate for eating binges or simply regular eating, often working out multiple times per day or for three or four hours at a time
Deep down, this disorder has more to do with control than it does the desire to fit into a smaller size of jeans
The scary thing about an addiction to exercise is that it creeps up gradually, usually among everyday people who start exercising, feel good afterward, revel in the calories they're burning, have a desire to get healthier or lose weight, and therefore start believing that more is better
Oftentimes, people who develop an exercise compulsion don't feel like there's anything wrong with what they do
Compulsive exercisers build their lives around working out and are genuinely distressed if they can't exercise as much as they feel they need to (or should be)
Exercise bulimia is similar, but involves eating binges. People who suffer from exercise bulimia often binge on food and then exercise obsessively to make up for it. Exercise becomes a way to control calories, justify eating, and punish oneself for eating too much or eating the "wrong" things.
In general, exercising for up to 60-90 minutes, most days of the week is reasonable and healthy for most people as long as recovery and downtime is built in.
Exercise is usually a good thing, but rest and recovery are very important, too
Excessive exercise can weaken the body and cause a host of problems, including:
Fatigue
Suppressed immune system
Lack of menstruation (amenorrhea) in women due to a lack of body fat
Reproductive problems
Heart problems (such as muscle wasting and rhythm problems)
Dehydration
Arthritis
Osteoporosis
Stress fractures and sprains
Kidney failure
Getting a Diagnosis
Compulsive exercise and exercise bulimia can affect both men and women of all ages, races, body types and weights.
A doctor may ask if the person is exercising and get the right answer (yes), never knowing the extent to which the patient is actually jeopardizing his or her health by taking exercise to the extreme
A physician may first suspect a problem if a woman stops menstruating due to a drop in body fat, which affects estrogen levels, but the condition may be virtually undetectable in men whose body fat levels can be much lower without creating any health problems.
Treatment Options
Studies have found that sufferers often come from families where food was used as a way of controlling behavior and battles surrounding food were common
Traditional treatments for exercise bulimia include support groups, cognitive behavior therapy, psychotherapy, and/or medication, such as anti-depressants.
I was expecting to find a correlation between excessive exercise and eating disorders, but it does make sense. If you have bulimia or anorexia, as as example, you both mentally and physically strain yourself from exercising too much, to lose weight because your not happy with the way you look.
One of the techniques frequently used by people with eating disorders is
to try to control their weight by burning up calories with exercise
Doing exercises for people affected by eating disorders usually means
exhausting hours of aerobics such as: gym, dancing, cycling, running,
etc., that can last several hours a day, every day.
Moreover, it has been found by some Australian researchers that excessive
exercise can cause further hunger sense suppression.
In this way you risk
maintaining or worsening an eating disorder
We have noticed that when a
patient begins to regain weight this vicious circle is interrupted
Excessive exercise risks are linked to the induction of a fasting effect
that leads to further protein-calorie deficit and then to a worsening of
the malnutrition situation.
Doing exercises in a weak physical condition can be very dangerous
The Importance of Sleep for Performance - YouTube:
This video is of cycling coach who understands that sleep is the key to the optimum performance. Focusing too much on training will wear your muscles out. You need to give your body time to relax from all the training. Sleeping is also one thing, but keeping a good diet will also help you be more awake and alert as well as energetic.
College students' performance suffers from lack of sleep - USATODAY.com:
Most of us will be going onto post-secondary education and will get caught up in the work that we have to do. It has become kind of the norm to lack on sleep and pull-nighters if necessary to complete your work. Post-secondary education requires that we schedule our time properly and get enough sleep.
Colleges are starting to wake up to how sleep deprivation cuts into the academic and athletic performance of their students.
All-nighters have become a habit in higher education, but a handful of small new studies
Sleep experts say the amount of sleep each person needs is largely dependent on the individual: Some people can get by with only five or six hours. The National Sleep Foundation says adults need seven to nine hours a night.
Sleep (deficit) built up over just five nights can significantly stress the heart
Many students believe that it's a "rite of passage" to stay up all night during college and that "it's kind of fun," Thacher says.
A study this summer in the journal SLEEP examined the heart conditions of 39 adults, ages 22 to 45, whose heart rates were tested twice — the morning after a 10-hour sleep and then again after five consecutive four-hour sleeps — using a portable monitor.
if you use all-nighters, your GPA is slightly lower on average,
"You can't do your best work when you're sleep-deprived
"It's not common knowledge, because if people understood how much of a difference (getting more sleep) could make athletically," they'd incorporate it more into their lives and not focus solely on nutrition and exercise.
It's one thing to fall asleep during class because of boredom or loss of interest and not have the teacher notice, but during physical activities at school or at home you won't perform to the best of your ability. This article discusses a study that was conducted to show how sleep affects performance ability. The fact is that less sleep you acquire on average your brain's ability to judge certain situation during the play will not function accordingly and allow you to excel.
Athletic performance was assessed after each regularly scheduled swim practice. After obtaining extra sleep, athletes swam a 15-meter meter sprint 0.51 seconds faster, reacted 0.15 seconds quicker off the blocks, improved turn time by 0.10 seconds and increased kick strokes by 5.0 kicks.
The study also monitored daytime sleepiness and weekly changes in mood
Daytime sleepiness decreased significantly with extra sleep, while mood improvements related to getting extra sleep included higher ratings of vigor and lower ratings of fatigue.
Typically, many athletes accumulate a large sleep debt by not obtaining their individual sleep requirement each night, which can have detrimental effects on cognitive function, mood, and reaction time
These negative effects can be minimized or eliminated by prioritizing sleep in general and, more specifically, obtaining extra sleep to reduce one’s sleep debt.”
Mah and colleagues reported similar results in a previous study of six players on the Stanford men’s basketball team
also has worked with the football, tennis, golf, cross country, and track and field teams at Stanford.
It is interesting to note that many of the athletes in the various sports I have worked with, including the swimmers in this study
Make sleep a part of your regular training regimen.
Extend nightly sleep for several weeks to reduce your sleep debt before competition.
Maintain a low sleep debt by obtaining a sufficient amount of nightly sleep (seven to eight hours for adults, nine or more hours for teens and young adults).
Keep a regular sleep-wake schedule, going to bed and waking up at the same times every day.
Take brief naps to obtain additional sleep during the day, especially if drowsy.
We all know that sleep is a key component to a healthy living style and we all need to sleep for a minimum of 7 to 8 hours. However, so many of us deprive ourselves of sleep because of a big test or huge assignment do for the next day. Manage your time and you won't run into such a problem.
We don't need to know that rats who generally
live 2 - 3 years die within 3 weeks when deprived of sleep
to understand how important sleep is to our bodies and health.
But it does emphasize the importance of sleep!
brain wave activity during sleep and how the
eyeballs roll around rapidly during certain stages of sleep
Sleep is the time we rest so that
the body can rejuvenate and recharge.
The truth is that stress will always be a part of our lives no matter what. It's how we react and deal with this stress that will help us overcome the problems we face and get out tasks completed. This video relates to teens through teens and we see how three different people have three different ways of dealing with stress. Not doing the things you enjoy the most will only increase your stress, and you need to find a happy medium between school and enjoyment. Trying finding a stress reliever through some sort of physical activity that way you stay active and stress-free.
This video clears up any confusions that may have been present regarding compulsive exercise and bulimia nervosa. This video explains the journey of someone who has actually dealt with both disorders, and what they went through. A disorder like this is really dangerous and the addiction can be so great that it can lead to death.