@growler: Well, I agree with you. I truly believe it is a symptom and not the cause. People don’t just stop eating. The body wants food, and it takes a lot to ignore those cravings and hunger pains. I am one of those who did suffer from anorexia in my teens – luckily pretty briefly – and no matter what my body felt my brain wasn’t going to let me eat. In fact, two other siblings went through similar periods as me at other times. In my case (and probably my siblings too) I was going through a depression period, and I just couldn’t find anything to eat that didn’t taste like sandpaper. To enable this further, my family was going through issues too, so were not emotionally available to notice or help me. In fact, there was very little food in the house at the time, which helped enable the disease further. I was like this for a few years. I would get better after 1 year, then slip back into it again the next year, my final year of high school. I had a lot of warm friends, but I tried to cover up my thinness and joked a lot about it, and they just tried to be there for me. Luckily, something changed for me (and I don’t know what that is) but I just started eating more and taking care of myself. I guess I was lucky. Perhaps my depression went away on its own somehow, or my home situation got better and that gave me the incentive to eat again. What I DO know is that if someone can get help, they should…and the sooner the better.