Dying To Be Thin

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Dying To Be Thin
Done By Goh Yi Sian (7) Melissa Lim Singh
(16) Ong Si Hui (20) Tay Chia Xi Rachel (23)
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Contents

• Problem statement
• Introduction
• Symptoms
• Causes
• Personal Effects
• Treatments
• Poem Extract
• Bibliography

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Problem Statement
You are a group of doctors from NUH. It is
noticed that more and more people, especially
teenagers, are becoming anorexic in Singapore.
You are to find out the reason and device program
to help these teenagers.
Karen Carpenter. Victim of the anorexia disease.
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Introduction
What is anorexia?
Anorexia is a condition that afflicts young
women primarily and results in excessive weight
loss for which no cause other than the lack of
nourishment can be found.
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What are the symptoms?

• feeling weak and listless
• dehydration
• depression
• brittle nails
• severe headaches
• insomnia
• denial of hunger
• lanugo (growth of downlike bodyhair)

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Some of the causes of anorexia

• chance remark about ones weight (slightest
  criticism)
• trauma (loss of loved one,illness,divorce)
• sexual abuse
• family problems
• feeling ashamed that one isnt good enough
• the way television, fashion magazines and
  advertisers portray women
• wanting of everything to be perfect

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Personal effects anorexia has

• slows or prevents growth and halts pubertal
  development
• feeling of restlessness (happens when you are
  hungry and cannot sit still)
• slow pulse rate because heart lacks calories it
  needs to keep going the way it should
• bad circulation means your skin may become
  cold,dry and possible discolored.
• starvation cause a reduction in bone mass that
  later in life put woman at greater risks for
  osteoporosis.
• easily frustrated

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• anxiety-- difficulty having to all or nothing
  thinking
• distorted body image (feeling fat though already
  thin)
• difficulties with intimacy
• difficulty identifying and expressing feelings
• withdrawn into isolation--self starvation
  demands enormous emotional energy and
  concentration and leaves little room for anything
  or anyone else
• Finding it difficult to work hard at producing
  information
• work suffers because anorexics emotional lives
  and creative capacities are limited by their
  illness
• Level of female hormones in the blood falls
  drastically resulting in delayed sexual
  development

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Slimming Drugs

• There are only four pharmaceutical slimming drugs
  that the Health Ministry allows to be sold in
  Singapore. All of them must be prescribed by a
  doctor.
• Phentermine
• D-Norpseudoephedrin
• Orlistat
• Mazindol

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Treatments

• no wholly effective drug treatment
• counseling and persuasion
• physical therapies such as rehydration, tube
  feeding and drugs is used to reduce stomach
  bloating and complications such as cardiac arrest
  in severely ill patients
• individual psychotherapy or psychiatric
  treatment
• pharmacotheraphy
• nutritional counseling
• medical treatment in a hospital as an outpatient

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Heres an extract from a poem a teenage girl who
suffered from anorexia once wrote I wish I was
thinner. Really much slimmer, than a great big
lump, I wish I could diet, I really must try
it. All this weight Ill try to dump. My legs are
fat, my stomach is too, I dont really no what to
do.
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Acknowledgements
We, members of Fated would like to thank the
following people Classes 2C1,2C2,2G2 and 2S3 for
participating in the survey. Mrs Chew and Mdm Yap
for their guidance and assistance in this project.