77765

Eating Disorders. Bulimia and Anorexia

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, there are two types of eating disorders, bulimia and anorexia. Each are different, and each can lead to death, if left untreated. If you, or somebody you know, suffers from either, I urge you to get help. Some famous people have suffered from eating disorders, and having an eating disorder does not mean you are crazy, but it does mean you need help. Princess Di, suffered from bulemia, and Mary Carpenter suffered from anorexia, and eventually died from this disorder. Again, if you suffer from an eating disorder, get yourself help.

Bulimia is characterized by recurrent episodes of binge eating, and then forced regurgitation, to avoid weight gain. Bulimia isn't just going to a buffet, gorging food, and then throwing up, because you ate too much food. Bulimia is binging on huge quantities of food at least twice per week, and then throwing up, to prevent weight gain.

Characteristics of bulimia include:

Fear of fatness

Pursuit of weight loss

Fear of loss of control of eating

Perceptual distortion of body size

Low self esteem

Anorexia is characterized by fear of gaining weight, and an intense preoccupation with weight gain or becoming fat. The person suffering from anorexia has a disturbance in perception of their own body weight, and pursuit of weight loss, and fear of loss of control of eating. 20% of people who suffer from anorexia will die from this disorder.

Characteristics of anorexia include:

Fear of weight gain

Pursuit of weight loss

Disturbance of perception of body weight

Restrictive diets ranging from 500-800 calories a day

People who suffer from eating disorders have depression and anger. Unfortunately, the anger is frequently dismissed, or ignored, and often left untreated, however it must be treated to treat this eating disorder. One of the most effective methods of treating, and talking about the anger is in a group setting, as group provides a setting in which it is difficult to manipulate the group.

The level of treatment for eating disorders is complex and beyond the scope of this article, but the levels of treatment range from self help and support groups, to low intensity outpatient treatment, to intensive treatment, to partial hospitalization programs to residential treatment, to hospitalization.

The goals of treating eating disorders are:

1. Interrupt the binge/purge cycle

2. Normalize eating patterns

3.Increase self esteem

4. Positive cognitive restructuring

5. Promote self responsibility

6. Promote flexibility

7.Stabilize chaotic thought patterns

8. Repair physical damage

9.Explore leisure activiities

10. Begin to develop healthy relationships

11. Begin to repair healthy relationships

12. Educate about recovery and relapse tools

Treating bulimia and anorexia is complex, and multifaceted process. It requires work, time and commitment. If you suffer from an eating disorder, get help. It can change your life. It can save your life.

Tammy Stoner is a licensed clinical social worker and life coach. She provides training and education to health care organizations, and individuals. Skilled at helping people uncover the blocks that keep them "stuck", she is able to quickly find internal and external strategies to get "unstuck", and live a life you love.For more information about coaching services, please contact her at http://www.teddybeartherapy.com

As most of you know by now, the FCC (Federal communications Commissions) is set to auction off a sizable portion of electromagnetic spectrum. The spectrum, once used by analog televisions, has been reallocated due to the FCC mandating that all tvs must be digital by 2009. This leaves commercial US telecommunication companies in a unique position to bid on the open frequencies, which happen to be prime for wireless communication. While the normal players like at&t and verizon will obviously be looking to bid on this spectrum, a new player announced their interest, Google.

Let me quickly give a non-technical interlude on why one would want to bid on a range of frequencies. The electromagnetic spectrum is very wide in comparison to what is being auctioned by the FCC. It includes all waves from infrared to visible light to Ultraviolet. Depending on the frequency of the wave, the wave exhibits different characteristics. The higher frequency waves travel considerably shorter than lower frequency waves among other differences. The FCC has taken the radio wave portion of the spectrum and allocated different bands to different purposes. check out this pdf from the FCC to take a closer look:

While some of the spectrum is left open to the public to use devices like ham radios, cordless phones, and wifi, most of it is privately used. Among these private uses are cell phone infrastructures. This lets the owners decided to either use the frequencies to build a cell network or lease the frequencies to other companies. As you can imagine, buying spectrum is quite expensive. When cell phones were first introduced not many companies had the available resources and know how to make buying this spectrum correct. The few that did were able to gain control of large quantities of frequencies and have not let go of them since.

This leads us to present times, where a few monopolies own the entire available cell phone spectrum in the usa. There is virtually no way for competitors to create their own (profitable) networks. Think about it, the available spectrum is gone, and while you can become a mvno (Mobile Virtual network operator where you lease infrastructure of other companies), what do you think would happen if you started to steal profits from the company you were leasing from? (Granted it is more complicated can this, and I am not an mvno expert, but the profit margins seem to plateau much lower than if you operated your own network, youll probably end up like Ampd mobile).

So companies like at&t, verizon, tmobile, and cingular (oh wait, at&t eliminated that problem) have no fear of young upstarts stealing their profits. Further, though these companies are definitely competing with themselves over market share, they are able to implicitly collude with each other to keep profit margins high. telecommunication companies have a golden ticket right now, why would they kill their profit margins by lowering prices like HDTV producers were forced to do? Because of lack of competition these monopolies have no need to either significantly lower prices or significantly increase features that would cost a lot to implement. It is good for these companies to prevent competition.

FCC auctions have happened before and not scared the big guns however. Why would they? Actually, its been just the opposite. who else is going to bid billions of dollars on radio spectrum and actually make it profitable? There were no other companies that could afford to bid on spectrum as it came open, and thus the monopolies could remain that way.

This self-surviving prophecy could come to an end in the upcoming election. With the increase of wireless data network technology and usage, other companies are becoming interested. And there is once such company that aims to act on its Motto Do no Evil and bring the power back to the people. In the next article we will take a look at Google's plans and motives.

watch for the latest updates and learn more about wireless communications at http://www.freedwireless.com