Choking phobiaPhagophobia is a psychogenic dysphagia, a fear of swallowing. It is expressed in various swallowing complaints without any apparent physical reason detectable by physical inspection and laboratory analyses.https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Phagophobia
Symptoms. Individuals with pseudodysphagia have difficulty swallowing, and may experience panic before or during the act of swallowing. This can therefore lead to the avoidance of swallowing solid foods and liquids, taking any forms of tablets or pills without the presence of physiological or anatomical abnormalities.
Treatment. If simply avoiding some foods is all that's needed to keep your pseudodysphagia at bay, then there's probably no need for therapy. But if your phobia is significantly interfering with your day-to-day life, relationships, and profession, or causing distress, make plans to see a mental health professional.
Phagophobia and swallowing phobia are other commonly used synonyms of choking phobia. It is of the utmost importance to differentiate it from organic dysphagia before labeling it to be of psychogenic origin. Very commonly it has been misdiagnosed with eating disorders and conversion disorder.
Phagophobia can cause a number of different symptoms, the most noticeable of which is an extreme reluctance or avoidance of swallowing foods, liquids, or pills. Other symptoms of phagophobia include: Anticipatory anxiety before meals.
It can be caused by weak muscles in the tongue, cheek or throat. Medical conditions, such as a stroke, can result in dysphagia. It can become serious if you are not able to eat enough food to remain healthy.
With experiential-specific phobias, someone fears something because of a traumatic experience. Someone with cibophobia might have been forced to eat a certain food or they became ill after eating the food that they now fear. They may have also been conditioned to dislike a particular food.
Personality traits commonly associated with eating disorder (ED) are high perfectionism, impulsivity, harm avoidance, reward dependence, sensation seeking, neuroticism, and obsessive-compulsiveness in combination with low self-directedness, assertiveness, and cooperativeness [8-11].
Among individuals with eating disorders, the two most prevalent personality disorders appear to be obsessive compulsive personality disorder (anorexia nervosa, restricting type) and borderline personality disorder (anorexia nervosa, binge-eating purging type; bulimia nervosa).
Stress or anxiety may cause some people to feel tightness in the throat or feel as if something is stuck in the throat. This sensation is called globus sensation and is unrelated to eating.
Dysphagia can sometimes lead to further problems. One of the most common problems is coughing or choking when food goes down the "wrong way" and blocks your airway. If this occurs frequently, you may avoid eating and drinking because you fear choking, which can lead to malnutrition and dehydration.
With anxiety, that can happen to all of your muscles, and some people find that they start to have trouble swallowing or difficulty moving food down. That may be the result of your mind giving you too much conscious control on what were otherwise automatic movements.
Dysphagia is the medical term for swallowing difficulties.
Some people with dysphagia have problems swallowing certain foods or liquids, while others can't swallow at all. Other signs of dysphagia include: coughing or choking when eating or drinking. bringing food back up, sometimes through the nose.
Genetics and biology. Certain people may have genes that increase their risk of developing eating disorders. Biological factors, such as changes in brain chemicals, may play a role in eating disorders. Psychological and emotional health.
These findings suggest that the rate of personality disorders in BDD is relatively high, with avoidant personality disorder being most common. The high neuroticism scores and low extraversion scores are consistent with this finding.
Anorexia Nervosa
Experts consider anorexia nervosa to be the most deadly of all mental illnesses because it has the highest mortality rate. For this reason, we can consider it to be the most severe of the 12 types of eating disorders.
For EDs in general, the most prevalent psychiatric comorbidities were anxiety (up to 62%), mood (up to 54%) and substance use and post-traumatic stress disorders (similar comorbidity rates up to 27%).
Individuals with anorexia nervosa are known to have high levels of harm avoidance, a personality trait that is characterized by worry, pessimistic thinking, doubt, and shyness.
Obesophobia is an intense, overwhelming fear of gaining weight or getting fat. The condition is a specific phobia (fear), which is a type of anxiety disorder. It's also called pocrescophobia. Many people think about their weight a lot and may seem to diet constantly.
Food neophobia is generally regarded as the reluctance to eat, or the avoidance of, new foods. In contrast, 'picky/fussy' eaters are usually defined as children who consume an inadequate variety of foods through rejection of a substantial amount of foods that are familiar (as well as unfamiliar) to them.
Neophobia is the characteristic fear of novel foods, and ensures that animals ingest only small quantities of new foodstuffs. If no illness results from consumption of the new food, and assuming that the food is reasonably palatable, animals will increase their intake on subsequent exposures.
Swallowing issues caused by anxiety may be treated with anti-anxiety medications. Achalasia can sometimes be treated with an injection of botulinum toxin (Botox) to relax the sphincter muscles. Other medications, such as nitrates and calcium channel blockers, may also help to relax the LES.