Cause and Effect of Anorexia Essay -- Health, Diseases

â€Å"I look like a normal, well-adjusted 15-year-old high school sophomore. I like talking to friends on the phone, riding my bike, watching TV, and spending time with my boyfriend. I make above average grades and like math and science classes the best. However, about a year ago, my weight dropped to 72 pounds. I lay in a hospital bed with unkempt hair, fragile limbs and a sunken face. I was seriously ill. The villainous disease was not cancer or AIDS. I had anorexia, a condition which afflicts many teens and young adults, especially young women.† Holly (Caringonline.org) Anorexia is a type of eating disorder who has an intense fear of gaining weight. They severely limit the amount of food they eat and can become dangerously thin (1). Anorexia affects both the mind and body and can even become deadly. Anorexia usually starts in the teen years and can go into adult hood. Untreated anorexia can lead to starvation and serious health problems, such as osteoporosis, kidney damage, and heart problems. Some people die from these problems (1). The cause of anorexia is not fully understood. It is thought to be from a mix of physical, emotional,, and social triggers (2). Extreme dieting changes how the brain and metabolism work, and it stresses the body. Genetics play a big part in anorexia. A combination of certain personality traits such as low self-confidence along with perfectionism and cultural and social pressures can play a big part in anorexia. For some teens, anorexia can be a way of coping with stressful events, such as moving, divorce, or t he death of a love one (2). People who have anorexia will often deny that anything is wrong. Almost half of people who have anorexia will eventually develop symptoms, binge-purge behav... ...at" on her legs and her stomach. She adamantly refused to see a doctor until she fainted while boarding the school bus. In the fall, she cut her forehead; her parents took her to the emergency room. Appalled by her emaciation, the physician said Anne suffered from anorexia nervosa and immediately admitted her to the hospital (library.thinkquest.org). Anorexia is a deadly disease if you don’t catch it early. Physically and psychologically anorexia will destroy your body and your mind. You get so consumed on limiting your calorie intake and ignoring your health by depriving your body from nutrients and malnutrition. Mentally by starving yourself you think you are in control but the disease ends up controlling you. Anorexia starts at a young age affecting teen but it can also affect adult hood. Anorexia does not only affect females but also affects males.

Eating Customs and Traditions in Great Britain Essay

The usual meals in Great Britain are breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner; or in simplier homes, breakfast, dinner, tea and supper. Breakfast is generally a bigger meal than you can have it on the Continent, though some English people like a â€Å"continental† breakfast of rolls and butter and coffee. But the usual breakfast is porridge or â€Å"Corn Flakes† with milk or cream and sugar, becon and eggs, marmalade with butter toast, and tea or coffee. For a change you can have a boiled egg, cold ham, or perhaps fish. Lunch is usually served between twelve and one o’clock. The businessman in London usually finds it impossible to come home for lunch, and so he goes to a cafà © or to a restaurant, but those who are at home generally take a cold meat, e.g., beef, mutton, veal, ham, with boiled or fried potatoes, salad and pickles, with a pudding or fruit to follow. Sometimes you may have a mutton chop, steak and chips, followed by biscuits and cheese and a cup of coffee. Afternoon tea follows between four and five o’clock. You can hardly call it a meal, but it is a sociable sort of thing, as friends often come in for a chat while they have their cup of tea, cake or biscuit. In some houses dinner is the biggest meal of the day. You can have soup, fish, roast chicken, chops, potatoes and vegetables, a sweet, fruit and nuts. The two substantial meals of a day, lunch and dinner, are both more and less the same. But in a great many of English homes the midday meal is the chief one of the day, and in the evening they have the much simplier supper-an omelette, or sausages, sometimes bacon and eggs and sometimes just bread and cheese, a cup of coffee or cocoa and fruit. The two features of life in England that possibly give visitors their worst impressions are the English weather and English cooking. The former is something that nobody can do anything about, but cooking is something that can be learned. English food has often been described as tasteless. Although this criticism has been more than justifies in the past, and in many instances still is, the situation is changing somewhat. One of the reasons that English cooking is improving is that so many people have been spending their holidays abroad and have learned to appreciate unfamiliar dishes. However, there are still many British people who are so unadventurous when they visit other countries that will condemn everywhere that doesn’t provide them tea and either fish and chips or sausages, baked beans and chips or overdone steak and chips. One of the traditional grouses about English food is the way that vegetables are cooked. Firstly the only way that many British housewives know to cook green vegetables is to boil them for far too long in too much salt water and then to throw the water away so that all the vitamins are lost. To make matters worst, they don’t strain the vegetables sufficiently so that they appear as a soggy wet mass on the plate. It would be unfair to say that all English food is bad. Many traditional British dishes are as good as anything you can get anywhere. Nearly everybody knows about roast beef and Yorkshire pudding but this is by no means the only dish that is cooked well. A visitor if invited to an English home might well enjoy steak and kidney pudding or pie, saddle of mutton with red-currant jelly, all sorts of smoked fish, especially kippers, boiled salt beef and carrots to mention but a few. A strange thing about England that the visitor may notice is that most of the good restaurants in England are run and staffed by foreigners-for example, there is a larger number of Chinese, Indian and Italian restaurants and to less extent French and Spanish ones. The food and beverage department has two principal aims. The first- and the more important one- is to provide a standard of food and beverage service consistent with the expectations of the quests. The second aim is to maintain the food and beverage operation within the limits set by the food and beverage department and thus to contribute to the overall profitability of the establishment. It is clearly that beverage sales are not only an important part of the sales mix of hospitality establishments but also more profitable than food sales. Coffee is one of the most popular beverages of the world. It is made from berries grown in tropical climates and shipped to the country green that is unroasted. The berries produced vary in composition and the treatment after picking. For this reason, Mocha, Java, Arabica and South American coffees are quite distinct from each other. There are three main methods of preparing coffee- boiling, percolating and drip method. The coffee should not stand long before serving. Tea is made from the leaves of tea bush which is indigenous to the Orient. Black tea is made from leaves which are fermented before drying. Green tea is not fermented; the leaves are steamed and dried. There are two main ways of serving tea: â€Å"English† tea is served in cups and with milk or cream; â€Å"Russian† tea is served in glasses with a slice of lemon. Cocoa and chocolate. As beverages made from them are generally made with milk, they are much more nutritious than the other beverages. Cocoa and chocolate are made from beans or seeds of trees which grow in tropical countries. Also drinks can be classified into soft drinks which contain no spirits (such as lemonades, Pepsi, Coke, etc.) and strong ones, they contain some part of alcohol (such as whisky, gin, wine, liquor, beer). Tea in English is a suitable occasion for social intercourse, when people often come in for a chat over their cup of tea. There are two kinds of tea, â€Å"afternoon tea† and â€Å"high tea†. â€Å"Afternoon tea† takes place between three-thirty and four-thirty and consists of tea, bread, butter and jam, followed by cakes and biscuits. â€Å"High tea† is a substantial meal and is eaten between five-thirty and six-thirty by families which don’t usually have a late dinner. In a well-to-do family it will consist of ham or tongue and tomatoes and salad, or a kipper, or tinned salmon, with a strong tea, bread and butter, followed by stewed fruit, or tinned pears, apricots or pineapple with cream or custard and cake. Tea-making in England is an art. The hostess first of all rinses the teapot with boiling water (this is called â€Å"warming the pot†) before adding four or five teaspoons of tea. The amount of tea varies, of course, according to the number of people present. The pot is then filled with boiling water and covered by a tea-cosy to allow the tea to infuse for five minutes. English people seldom put lemon juice or rum into their tea, usually they have it with milk. The English custom of afternoon tea, as it is said, goes back to the late 18th century, when Anne, wife of the 7th Duke of Bedford, decided that she suffered from â€Å"a sinking feeling† at around 5 p.m. and needed tea and cakes to bring back her strength. Before long, complaints were heard that â€Å"the labourers lose time to come and go to the tea-table and farmers’ servants even demand tea for their breakfast†. Tea had arrived. Fashionable Tea Rooms were opened for high society, and soon tea be came the national drink of all classes. Today the British drink more tea than any other nation – an average of 4 kilos a head per annum, or 1650 cups of tea a year. They drink it in bed in the morning, round the fire on winter afternoons and out in the garden on sunny summer days. In times of trouble the kettle is quickly put on, the tea is made and comforting cups of the warm brown liquid are passes round. Tea has even played its part in wars. When George III of England tried to make the American colonists pay import duty on tea, a group of Americans disguised as Red Indians dumped 342 chests of tea into the sea in Boston Harbour – the Boston Tea Party which led to the War of Independence. In another war the Duke of Wellington sensibly had a cup of tea before starting the Battle of Waterloo, â€Å"to clear my head†. In peace time official approval of the national drink came from the Victorian Prime Minister, Gladstone, who remarked: â€Å"If you are cold, tea will warm you; if you are heated, it will cool you; if you are depressed, it will cheer you; if you are excited, it will calm you.† What exactly is tea? Basically, it is a drink from the dried leaves of a plant that only grows in hot countries. The British first heard of tea in 1598, and first tasted it in about 1650. For nearly two centuries all the tea was imported from China, until, in 1823, a tea plant was found growing naturally in Assan in India. Sixteen years later the first eight chests of Indian tea were sold in London, and today, London’s tea markets deal in tea from India, Sri Lanka (Ceylon), and from Africa more than from China. Plum pudding is sure of its place of honour on Christmas dinner table. Some English people could even dispense with mincepies, but a Christmas dinner in Britain without the traditional pudding would be strange indeed. The Christmas pudding is a direct descendant of the old time â€Å"hackin†, or plum porridge, beloved by English people in the middle ages. In those days it was made of beef or mutton broth thickened with brown bread, with prunes, raisins, currants, ginger and maize being added to the boiling mixture. This was served as a thick soup and eaten at the beginning of the meal. In the 18th century, plum porridge began to change its character with the addition of flour. The porridge thus turned into plum pudding and it became the custom to eat it at the end of the meal. Nowadays, in addition to the basic mixture of flour, bread-crumbs, suet and eggs, the ingredients of Christmas pudding include raising, currants, candied peel, chopped almonds and walnuts, grated carrot and a good measure of brandy, whisky or old ale on place of the described mutton broth. In many households the mixing of the pudding is quite a ceremony with all the members of the family taking turns to stir and make a wish. After being boiled for several hours, the pudding is stored until the time comes for heating it on Christmas Day when it is brought to the table on a large dish, big, round, dark-brown, with a flag or a place of holly stuck in at the top of it, and flames licking round its sides. The Christmas pudding is covered with white sauce and burning in brandy. Receiving each a slice, the guests are warned to eat carefully because sixpenny bits, shillings, a tiny silver bell and a silver horse-shoe have been put in it. Those who find the â€Å"treasure† are supposed to have money in the coming year, whoever gets the bell is to be married, and the horse-shoe is the traditional sign of good luck.

The Myth of Er From the Republic of Plato

The Myth of Er from Platos Republic tells the story of a soldier, Er, who is thought to be dead and descends to the underworld. But when he revives he is sent back to tell humanity what awaits them in the afterlife.    Er describes an afterlife where the just are rewarded and the wicked are punished. Souls are then reborn into a new body and a new life, and the new life they choose will reflect how they have lived in their previous life and the state of their soul at death.   The Myth of Er (Jowett Translation) Well, I said, I will tell you a tale; not one of the tales which Odysseus tells to the hero Alcinous, yet this too is a tale of a hero, Er the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by birth. He was slain in battle, and ten days afterwards, when the bodies of the dead were taken up already in a state of corruption, his body was found unaffected by decay, and carried away home to be buried. And on the twelfth day, as he was lying on the funeral pile, he returned to life and told them what he had seen in the other world. He said that when his soul left the body he went on a journey with a great company, and that they came to a mysterious place at which there were two openings in the earth; they were near together, and over against them were two other openings in the heaven above. In the intermediate space there were judges seated, who commanded the just, after they had given judgment on them and had bound their sentences in front of them, to ascend by the heavenly way on the right hand; and in like manner the unjust were bidden by them to descend by the lower way on the left hand; these also bore the symbols of their deeds, but fastened on their backs. He drew near, and they told him that he was to be the messenger who would carry the report of the other world to men, and they bade him hear and see all that was to be heard and seen in that place. Then he beheld and saw on one side the souls departing at either opening of heaven and earth when sentence had been given on them; and at the two other openings other souls, some ascending out of the earth dusty and worn with travel, some descending out of heaven clean and bright. And arriving ever and anon they seemed to have come from a long journey, and they went forth with gladness into the meadow, where they encamped as at a festival; and those who knew one another embraced and conversed, the souls which came from earth curiously enquiring about the things above, and the souls which came from heaven about the things beneath. And they told one another of what had happened by the way, those from below weeping and sorrowing at the remembrance of the things which they had endured and seen in their journey beneath the earth (now the journey lasted a thousand years), while those from above were describing heavenly delights and visions of inconceivable beauty. The story, Glaucon, would take too long to tell; but the sum was this:—He said that for every wrong which they had done to any one they suffered tenfold; or once in a hundred years—such being reckoned to be the length of mans life, and the penalty being thus paid ten times in a thousand years. If, for example, there were any who had been the cause of many deaths, or had betrayed or enslaved cities or armies, or been guilty of any other evil behavior, for each and all of their offences they received punishment ten times over, and the rewards of beneficence and justice and holiness were in the same proportion. I need hardly repeat what he said concerning young children dying almost as soon as they were born. Of piety and impiety to gods and parents, and of murderers, there were retributions other and greater far which he described. He mentioned that he was present when one of the spirits asked another, Where is Ardiaeus the Great? (Now this Ardiaeus lived a thousand years before the time of Er: he had been the tyrant of some city of Pamphylia, and had murdered his aged father and his elder brother, and was said to have committed many other abominable crimes.) The answer of the other spirit was: He comes not hither and will never come. And this, said he, was one of the dreadful sights which we ourselves witnessed. We were at the mouth of the cavern, and, having completed all our experiences, were about to reascend, when of a sudden Ardiaeus appeared and several others, most of whom were tyrants; and there were also besides the tyrants private individuals who had been great criminals: they were just, as they fancied, about to return into the upper world, but the mouth, instead of admitting them, gave a roar, whenever any of these incurable sinners or some one who had not been sufficiently punished tried to ascend; and then wild men of fiery aspect, who were standing by and heard the sound, seized and carried them off; and Ardiaeus and others they bound head and foot and hand, and threw them down and flayed them with scourges, and dragged them along the road at the side, carding them on thorns like wool, and declaring to the passers-by what were their crimes, and that they were being taken away to be cast into hell. And of all the many terrors which they had endured, he said that there was none like the terror which each of them felt at that moment, lest they should hear the voice; and when there was silence, one by one they ascended with exceeding joy. These, said Er, were the penalties and retributions, and there were blessings as great. Now when the spirits which were in the meadow had tarried seven days, on the eighth they were obliged to proceed on their journey, and, on the fourth day after, he said that they came to a place where they could see from above a line of light, straight as a column, extending right through the whole heaven and through the earth, in colour resembling the rainbow, only brighter and purer; another days journey brought them to the place, and there, in the midst of the light, they saw the ends of the chains of heaven let down from above: for this light is the belt of heaven, and holds together the circle of the universe, like the under-girders of a trireme. From these ends is extended the spindle of Necessity, on which all the revolutions turn. The shaft and hook of this spindle are made of steel, and the whorl is made partly of steel and also partly of other materials. Now the whorl is in form like the whorl used on earth; and the description of it implied that there is one large hollow whorl which is quite scooped out, and into this is fitted another lesser one, and another, and another, and four others, making eight in all, like vessels which fit into one another; the whorls show their edges on the upper side, and on their lower side all together form one continuous whorl. This is pierced by the spindle, which is driven home through the centre of the eighth. The first and outermost whorl has the rim broadest, and the seven inner whorls are narrower, in the following proportions—the sixth is next to the first in size, the fourth next to the sixth; then comes the eighth; the seventh is fifth, the fifth is sixth, the third is seventh, last and eighth comes the second. The largest (or fixed stars) is spangled, and the seventh (or sun) is brightest; the eighth (or moon) coloured by the reflected light of the seventh; the second and fifth (Saturn and Mercury) are in colour like one another, and yellower than the preceding; the third (Venus) has the whitest light; the fourth (Mars) is reddish; the sixth (Jupiter) is in whiteness second. Now the whole spindle has the same motion; but, as the whole revolves in one direction, the seven inner circles move slowly in the other, and of these the swiftest is the eighth; next in swiftness are the seventh, sixth, and fifth, which move together; third in swiftness appeared to move according to the law of this reversed motion the fourth; the third appeared fourth and the second fifth. The spindle turns on the knees of Necessity; and on the upper surface of each circle is a siren, who goes round with them, hymning a single tone or note. The eight together form one harmony; and round about, at equal intervals, there is another band, three in number, each sitting upon her throne: these are the Fates, daughters of Necessity, who are clothed in white robes and have chaplets upon their heads, Lachesis and Clotho and Atropos, who accompany with their voices the harmony of the sirens—Lachesis singing of the past, Clotho of the present, Atropos of the future; Clotho from time to time assisting with a touch of her right hand the revolution of the outer circle of the whorl or spindle, and Atropos with her left hand touching and guiding the inner ones, and Lachesis laying hold of either in turn, first with one hand and then with the other. When Er and the spirits arrived, their duty was to go at once to Lachesis; but first of all there came a prophet who arranged them in order; then he took from the knees of Lachesis lots and samples of lives, and having mounted a high pulpit, spoke as follows: Hear the word of Lachesis, the daughter of Necessity. Mortal souls, behold a new cycle of life and mortality. Your genius will not be allotted to you, but you will choose your genius; and let him who draws the first lot have the first choice, and the life which he chooses shall be his destiny. Virtue is free, and as a man honours or dishonours her he will have more or less of her; the responsibility is with the chooser—God is justified. When the Interpreter had thus spoken he scattered lots indifferently among them all, and each of them took up the lot which fell near him, all but Er himself (he was not allowed), and each as he took his lot perceived the number which he had obtained. Then the Interpreter placed on the ground before them the samples of lives; and there were many more lives than the souls present, and they were of all sorts. There were lives of every animal and of man in every condition. And there were tyrannies among them, some lasting out the tyrants life, others which broke off in the middle and came to an end in poverty and exile and beggary; and there were lives of famous men, some who were famous for their form and beauty as well as for their strength and success in games, or, again, for their birth and the qualities of their ancestors; and some who were the reverse of famous for the opposite qualities. And of women likewise; there was not, however, any definite character in them, because the soul, when choosing a new life, must of necessity become different. But there was every other quality, and the all mingled with one another, and also with elements of wealth and poverty, and disease and health; and there were mean states also. And here, my dear Glaucon, is the supreme peril of our human state; and therefore the utmost care should be taken. Let each one of us leave every other kind of knowledge and seek and follow one thing only, if peradventure he may be able to learn and may find some one who will make him able to learn and discern between good and evil, and so to choose always and everywhere the better life as he has opportunity. He should consider the bearing of all these things which have been mentioned severally and collectively upon virtue; he should know what the effect of beauty is when combined with poverty or wealth in a particular soul, and what are the good and evil consequences of noble and humble birth, of private and public station, of strength and weakness, of cleverness and dullness, and of all the natural and acquired gifts of the soul, and the operation of them when conjoined; he will then look at the nature of the soul, and from the consideration of all these qualities he will be able to determine which is the better and which is the worse; and so he will choose, giving the name of evil to the life which will make his soul more unjust, and good to the life which will make his soul more just; all else he will disregard. For we have seen and know that this is the best choice both in life and after death. A man must take with him into the world below an adamantine faith in truth and right, that there too he may be undazzled by the desire of wealth or the other allurements of evil, lest, coming upon tyrannies and similar villainies, he do irremediable wrongs to others and suffer yet worse himself; but let him know how to choose the mean and avoid the extremes on either side, as far as possible, not only in this life but in all that which is to come. For this is the way of happiness. And according to the report of the messenger from the other world this was what the prophet said at the time: Even for the last comer, if he chooses wisely and will live diligently, there is appointed a happy and not undesirable existence. Let not him who chooses first be careless, and let not the last despair. And when he had spoken, he who had the first choice came forward and in a moment chose the greatest tyranny; his mind having been darkened by folly and sensuality, he had not thought out the whole matter before he chose, and did not at first sight perceive that he was fated, among other evils, to devour his own children. But when he had time to reflect, and saw what was in the lot, he began to beat his breast and lament over his choice, forgetting the proclamation of the prophet; for, instead of throwing the blame of his misfortune on himself, he accused chance and the gods, and everything rather than himself. Now he was one of those who came from heaven, and in a former life had dwelt in a well-ordered State, but his virtue was a matter of habit only, and he had no philosophy. And it was true of others who were similarly overtaken, that the greater number of them came from heaven and therefore they had never been schooled by trial, whereas the pilgrims who came from earth having themselves suffered and seen others suffer, were not in a hurry to choose. And owing to this inexperience of theirs, and also because the lot was a chance, many of the souls exchanged a good destiny for an evil or an evil for a good. For if a man had always on his arrival in this world dedicated himself from the first to sound philosophy, and had been moderately fortunate in the number of the lot, he might, as the messenger reported, be happy here, and also his journey to another life and return to this, instead of being rough and underground, would be smooth and heavenly. Most curious, he said, was the spectacle—sad and laughable and strange; for the choice of the souls was in most cases based on their experience of a previous life. There he saw the soul which had once been Orpheus choosing the life of a swan out of enmity to the race of women, hating to be born of a woman because they had been his murderers; he beheld also the soul of Thamyras choosing the life of a nightingale; birds, on the other hand, like the swan and other musicians, wanting to be men. The soul which obtained the twentieth lot chose the life of a lion, and this was the soul of Ajax the son of Telamon, who would not be a man, remembering the injustice which was done him in the judgment about the arms. The next was Agamemnon, who took the life of an eagle, because, like Ajax, he hated human nature by reason of his sufferings. About the middle came the lot of Atalanta; she, seeing the great fame of an athlete, was unable to resist the temptation: and after her there followed the soul of Epeus the son of Panopeus passing into the nature of a woman cunning in the arts; and far away among the last who chose, the soul of the jester Thersites was putting on the form of a monkey. There came also the soul of Odysseus having yet to make a choice, and his lot happened to be the last of them all. Now the recollection of former toils had disenchanted him of ambition, and he went about for a considerable time in search of the life of a private man who had no cares; he had some difficulty in finding this, which was lying about and had been neglected by everybody else; and when he saw it, he said that he would have done the same had his lot been first instead of last, and that he was delighted to have it. And not only did men pass into animals, but I must also mention that there were animals tame and wild who changed into one another and into corresponding human natures—the good into the gentle and the evil into the savage, in all sorts of combinations. All the souls had now chosen their lives, and they went in the order of their choice to Lachesis, who sent with them the genius whom they had severally chosen, to be the guardian of their lives and the fulfiller of the choice: this genius led the souls first to Clotho, and drew them within the revolution of the spindle impelled by her hand, thus ratifying the destiny of each; and then, when they were fastened to this, carried them to Atropos, who spun the threads and made them irreversible, whence without turning round they passed beneath the throne of Necessity; and when they had all passed, they marched on in a scorching heat to the plain of Forgetfulness, which was a barren waste destitute of trees and verdure; and then towards evening they encamped by the river of Unmindfulness, whose water no vessel can hold; of this they were all obliged to drink a certain quantity, and those who were not saved by wisdom drank more than was necessary; and each one as he drank forgot all things. Now after they had gone to rest, about the middle of the night there was a thunderstorm and earthquake, and then in an instant they were driven upwards in all manner of ways to their birth, like stars shooting. He himself was hindered from drinking the water. But in what manner or by what means he returned to the body he could not say; only, in the morning, awaking suddenly, he found himself lying on the pyre. And thus, Glaucon, the tale has been saved and has not perished, and will save us if we are obedient to the word spoken; and we shall pass safely over the river of Forgetfulness and our soul will not be defiled. Wherefore my counsel is, that we hold fast ever to the heavenly way and follow after justice and virtue always, considering that the soul is immortal and able to endure every sort of good and every sort of evil. Thus shall we live dear to one another and to the gods, both while remaining here and when, like conquerors in the games who go round to gather gifts, we receive our reward. And it shall be well with us both in this life and in the pilgrimage of a thousand years which we have been describing. Some References for Platos Republic Suggestions based on: Oxford Bibliographies Online Ferrari, G. R. F. .Reeve, C. D. C. .White, Nicholas P. .Williams, Bernard. The Analogy of City and Soul in Platos Republic. The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy. Edited by Bernard Williams, 108-117. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006.