Is anorexia an infectious disease

Answer 1

Anoriexia is not a virus or bacteria, so it will not spread like the flu would, for example. Sitting near someone who is an anorexic does not mean that you will catch it, as you might do so with a cold. However, it can influence you. This means that being with someone who is anorexic might begin to alter how you think about your body and food and weight, causing you to maybe consider anorexia when you woukdn't normally have even really thought much about it. In this sense, it can "spread" by the inflencung of others.

[But this answer is making an assumption: that by "anorexia" you mean "anorexia nervosa". The latter is an eating disorder and people often refer to it as just anorexia. However, anorexia simply means lack of appetite, which can occur from a virus or many other illnesses. Chicken pox, for example, causes anorexia. Because people confuse that with the eating disorder, the get the impression that you can "catch" anorexia nervosa. You can't. If people stop using the wrong name for the eating disorder, this would be less confusing.]

Answer 2

Anorexia is not really "transmitted". The ideas of anorexia / eating disorders may be passed along through word-of-mouth or the media, and then affect other individuals that way. But it is not "contagious" or anything like that.

Answer 3

i am not sure if that is a joke.

but it isn't unless there is a big influence to change the minds of people

It's getting there, and more devastating to the patient and family, and more quickly fatal that other eating disorders.

Answer 4

Anorexia (an-o-REK-see-uh) nervosa - often simply called anorexia - is an eating disorder characterized by an abnormally low body weight, intense fear of gaining weight and a distorted perception of body weight.

It is a psychological disorder in the categories of obsessive compulsive disorders and anxiety disorders. It is not caused by an infectious agent, but in some rare cases can be "sympathetically acquired" by peers of an original subject (as can some other psychological disorders).

Simple anorexia is any lack of desire to eat when one normally would, this can be a symptom of many problems from motion sickness, to the flu (an infectious disease), to many cancer treatments.

Answer 5

Stop asking stupid questions, and offending the eating disordered community, halfwit!

Answer 6

No, but if your friends are doing it you might feel pressurised into doing it aswell.

Answer 7

No, it hasn't been proven to be contagious.

Answer 8

Anorexia is not a disease. It is a symptom. Cause may be infectious or non-infectious.

Answer 9

No. It is not like a virus.