Medical implications of a zero dress size

ZERO HEALTH: Doctors warn eating disorders can also at times be psychiatric disorders.

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Keywords: Anorexia, Eating Disorder

New Delhi: Size Zero — that's a 22-inch waist a lot of young girls aspire for. But the size-zero obsession can have severe medical and psychological implications. It can force women into extreme diets followed by periods of bingeing on junk food.

On the other hand, it can lead to controlling body weight through purging, vomiting, excessive exercise or even diet pills or diuretic drugs.

“A person may suffer from irregular periods or reduced sexual potency,” Dr Monica Mahajan explains the medical implications of an extreme diet.

Girls most susceptible to fall for the size zero fad are ones who have a low self-image. They are likely to be weight conscious already and sometimes even borderline anorexic or bulimic. They believe that being thin will make them happier. Not necessarily correct.

There are many reasons why girls are trying to get to a size zero.

We know problems like eating disorders are not purely eating disorders; they are psychiatric conditions. So there might be something dynamic happening in their family like a parental conflict, or something similar, which is leading them towards such disorders,” Psychiatrist Arpita Anand explains.

And teenagers are most impressionable as their role models are endorsing a size zero.

Kareena Kapoor's size zero might get her plump assignments but it certainly is sending out a wrong message to all the young girls out there, who in their aspiration to look like her might starve themselves, ending up with serious medical implications.