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About Eating Disorders

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About Eating Disorders

What are eating disorders?

Eating disorders can be life threatening illnesses. At the surface people with eating disorders experience serious disturbances in their eating behaviour. However individuals with an eating disorder do not solely experience problems around food, weight or shape. These expressions are unhelpful and unhealthy ways which the sufferer has found to cope with difficult emotions, anxieties and fears in his/her life. Individuals with eating disorders generally experience low self-esteem, shame, denial and secrecy and often present co-morbidity with depression, obsessive compulsive tendencies and occasionally psychotic symptoms and delusions.

There are four major classifications for eating disorders. Anorexia Nervosa (AN), Bulimia Nervosa (BN), Binge Eating Disorder (BED) and Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified (EDNOS). It is not uncommon for individuals to overlap on one or two creating subtypes.The descriptions given below are entirely for diagnostic reference and in no way do they infer causality for that disorder.

ANOREXIA NERVOSA

Is characterised by an extreme fear of gaining weight and a strong desire to be thin. This desire is often met through extreme dieting and in some cases vigorous exercise. Some individuals who have Anorexia Nervosa also use slimming pills, diuretics (water tablets), and laxatives or induce vomiting when they have eaten in order to control weight. Sometimes some individuals may purchase drugs online which they believe will aid weight loss. This can include raspberry ketones and thyroxine, as well as misuse of prescription drugs such as insulin.

BULIMIA NERVOSA

Is characterised by an extreme fear of becoming fat and a desire to be thinner. He/she is normally within or above the normal weight range. There will be episodes of dieting but the sufferer of Bulimia Nervosa eats large amounts of food in binges. Feelings of discomfort and guilt following the binge drive the individual to use laxatives, diuretics, exercise and/or cause him/her to vomit to control weight.

There are consequences, some of them very serious, of having an eating disorder. This information is intended to make you aware - not to cause you any unnecessary distress.

EATING DISORDERS NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED (EDNOS)

The DSM-5 classification and diagnostic manual recently replaced EDNOS with Other Specified Feeding and Eating Disorders (OSFED)

EDNOS (OSFED) are a cluster of eating disorders which an individual may not have all of the diagnostic signs and may not meet the criteria for the later three. These individuals may be diagnosed with a subtype of eating disorder or a partial eating disorder. For example you may be someone who has bulimic episodes but these are not frequent (included in the diagnostic criteria for bulimia nervosa). People with EDNOS (OSFED) commonly present with extremely disturbed eating habits, a distorted body image and an intense fear of gaining weight.

BINGE EATING DISORDER

Binge eating disorder is characterized by the compulsion to overeat.

Individuals with binge eating disorder can consume very large quantities of food in a very short period of time. These individuals sometimes “binge” when they do not feel hungry. The binge itself is often carefully thought about and planned;

  • The individual may buy particular foods to binge on.
  • The individual will plan a private place to binge.

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Private Policy

The Scottish Eating Disorder Interest Group (SEDIG ("We")) are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This policy sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

By visiting www.sedig.org you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this policy.

For the purpose of the Data Protection Act 1998 (the Act), the data controller is SEDIG, , MCN for Eating Disorders North Scotland.

Information we may collect from you

We may collect and process the following data about you:

- Information you give us. You may give us information about you by filling in forms on our website (www.sedig.org) or by corresponding by phone, email or otherwise. This includes information you provide when you register for online services, become a SEDIG Member, sign up for our email newsletter, register for an event, enquire about volunteering opportunities, enquire about fundraising opportunities; make a donation and when you report a problem with our site. The information you give us may include your name, address, email address, telephone number, date of birth and financial information e.g. credit card details.

- With regard to each of your website visits to our site we may automatically collect the following information: technical information, including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet, your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform; information about your visit, including the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from our site (including date and time); products you viewed or searched for; page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page and any phone number used to call us

Information we may receive from other sources

We work closely with third parties (including, for example, sub-contractors in technical, payment and delivery services) and may receive information about you from them.

Cookies

Cookies are used on this website. A cookie is a text file sent by a web server to a web browser and stored in the browser. The file is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page form the server. This enables the web server to identify and track the web browser.

We may send a cookie which may be stored by your browser on your computer’s hard drive. The information we obtain from the cookie could be used to improve the website’s usability and for marketing purposes. We may also use that information to recognise your computer when you visit our website, and to personalise our website for you.

Browsers usually will allow you to refuse cookies but this could have a negative impact on the usability of many websites. to store information such as session identifiers and your User ID to allow us to identify whether You have previously visited the site and if You are a registered user of the site or not.

How we use this information

We use information held about you in the following ways:

Information you give to us

We will use this information:

Information we collect about you

We will use this information:

Information we receive from other sources

We may combine this information with information you give to us and information we collect about you. We may use this information and the combined information for the purposes set out above (depending on the types of information we receive).

Disclosure of your information

We may share your personal information with any member of our group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, as defined in section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006. We may share your information with selected third parties including:

We may also disclose your personal information to third parties if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of SEDIG, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

Where we store your personal data

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area ("EEA"). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our suppliers. Such staff maybe engaged in, among other things, the processing of your payment details and the provision of support services. By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing. SEDIG will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

SEDIG does not hold customers’ financial information and purchases or bookings made will be monitored under paypals own private policy. SEDIG will receive conformation of a purchase from paypal. We will only receive details of payment being made and total amounts. We do not store or receive other financial information

Security of your personal data

We will take reasonable precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal information. Of course, data transmission over the internet is inherently insecure, and we cannot guarantee the security of data sent over the internet.

We will store all the personal information you provide on our secure servers. All electronic transactions you make to or receive from us will be encrypted

You can request us not to use any of your personal details; you will usually ask in advance whether you agree to our use of your personal data. If not you can instruct us not to use your personal data by emailing us at

These terms and conditions, together with our privacy policy constitute the entire agreement between you and us in relation to your use of our website, and supersede all previous agreements in respect of your use of this website

Policy amendments

We may occasionally update this privacy policy by posting a new version on our website. It is in your interest to check this page regularly to ensure you are comfortable with any changes made.

Third party websites

Our website contains links to other websites. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites