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Query: UMLS:C0013911 (emaciation)
 1,059 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Health professionals concerned with improving the nutritional status of populations are facing numerous problems ranging from emaciation to overnutrition. This review article addresses the complexity, the relative significance and the interaction of factors leading to the nutritional profile of specific groups and individuals. When availability of food is threatened, the programs designed to reduce the incidence of malnutrition must balance the food supply with energy resources and population needs as well as encourage economic improvement of food distribution systems. For those persons having access to an abundant food supply, social forces and technological factors may affect food patterns, resulting in unbalanced diets associated with chronic diseases. Misinterpretation of reliable scientific findings is a major cause of abnormal nutrition behaviour. Overreaction to health messages may precipitate such conditions as anorexia nervosa or nutrient toxicity. Adverse food reactions, real or imagined, lead to restrictions in food selection. Excessive austerity in food use negates the pleasure of eating, a useful mechanism in food choice ensuring food diversity.
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PMID:Social and biocultural determinants of food selection. 353 85

The cases of 13 men with anorexia nervosa are reported. While the disorder as seen in the clinic is much less common in males than females this may not be a true reflection of the differential sex or overall prevalence rates. The disorder is found to have the same basic characteristics in the male as in the female: namely, a phobic avoidance of normal weight associated with elective carbohydrate starvation and emaciation. As in the female the mechanism appears to develop out of normal adolescent dieting behaviour and to arise as a means of avoiding overwhelming psychosocial maturational demands of adolescence. Premorbid and family features include a state of overnutrition and a high degree of family psychopathology reflected in high rates of parental psychiatric morbidity and marital difficulty.
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PMID:Primary anorexia nervosa or weight phobia in the male: report on 13 cases. 500 58