A young person who feels dissatisfied with his body and believes he may have symptoms of anorexia can type “anorexia” into a search engine and come across websites promoting the disease as a lifestyle. Websites full of images showing emaciated and unhealthily thin women, known as “Thinspo”, encourage extreme thinness. The written content and media images that show unrealistically thin bodies can be very damaging. These pages offer advice on how to introduce the “mia lifestyle” and offer tips and tricks on how to adopt the mia lifestyle as a lifestyle for people with anorexia and other eating disorders. These sites harm people who already suffer from an eating disorder because they can further fuel an already distorted attitude towards food, body image and weight. This refers to content that is usually online and promotes harmful behavior and mindsets that are part of an eating disorder.
The websites and social media sites that find such content often imply or say that this behavior is a lifestyle choice, not a symptom of disease. If you feel guilty about engaging in or doing the kind of behavior that these sites encourage, there are positive areas you can visit online where you are listened to and understood for your feelings. They can also post photos and quotes of themselves on social media to websites that serve to perpetuate harmful behavior while encouraging others to recover. Pro-ana websites and blogs are playgrounds that capture vulnerable people and protect them from eating disorders. These websites resist the temptation to recover and serve to justify dangerous and disorderly behavior. Although the damage they cause is obvious, Pro ana is an addictive distraction.
Pro – anorexia websites offer a way to encourage people to starve themselves or lose an unhealthy weight. Pro-ana content is particularly harmful to those who may be prone to an eating disorder or are already ill. Vulnerable users adopt these behaviors when they admire their online peers and are repeatedly exposed to life – and threaten images of themselves and their peers with unhealthy eating habits. These pages are not for people in recovery, but give advice to people with existing eating disorders on how to maintain the disorder or even increase their weight loss. In fact, some pages may explicitly indicate that you have decided to consider anorexia or bulimia as a way of life. These sites instruct people to pursue behaviors that harm them of their own free will, not because they are sick.
While pro-ana websites do not explicitly invite people to engage in eating disorders, a person in contemplation – only at one stage – can be made to engage in anorexic or bulimia practices based on the information provided. The tone of the page may also be anorectic and / or Bullying is practiced despite negative experiences, which can include physical or mental illness, mental health problems or even suicide attempts. There is no evidence that eating disorders or those who support the practice of anorexia or bulimia harm themselves or others.
People who are members or visitors of these pages may feel threatened by the observation of the dangers of Pro-ana if they need guidance. If an individual suffering from an eating disorder often feels isolated and can benefit from peers and the community, pro ana guidance can be the opposite of medically sound advice. Pro ana can lead to worsening health problems such as weight gain, weight loss, depression and suicidal thoughts. Both anorexia and bulimia are anthropomorphized and depicted in images of thin men and women. The term often refers to promoting eating disorders as lifestyle choices rather than treating them as a disease, and to treating anorexia and bulimia in general.
This is usually followed by the desire to reach the maximum potential of weightlessness and the desire for a healthy body shape and size. These sites are dangerous because they exacerbate anorexia, because the people involved in the discussion often praise weight loss and discourage healthy bodies of all shapes and sizes and encourage weight gain.
The Internet is often a place where people with anorexia can make contact with fellow sufferers. Pro ana pages are often created by people who themselves suffer from an eating disorder or have no medical expertise. If you or someone close is struggling with eating disorders, you can contact the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), which you can call on its hotline at 1-800-931-2237 for support.
The corner of the Internet we are sharing is a group of young people, all hungry and all passionate about starving themselves. The members of the Pro-ana group motivate each other to stop eating, drinking and purifying. Eating disorders are debilitating mental disorders, so please seek help with professionals and take care of your health and always remember that all body shapes are perfect the way they are as long as you are healthy.