Medical science has allowed medical and healthcare professionals to identify most, if not all disorders that plague humanity today. In many cases, the disorders inflict a great many number of people that it actually becomes commonly known, and therefore launches equally common known cures and treatments, which become quite popular with people easily. Some examples are the common byproducts of life today such as anxiety and depression. 

The world we live in today can create so much stress for a person that it actually promotes the development of a disorder. This stress may also partially be blamed for the proliferation of the eating disorders among people. Many may not realize just how prevalent eating disorders can be amongst people, since it is not really a disorder that many address, at least not as popularly as depression and anxiety issues are addressed. 

A recent study has shown that at least .5% of women and even .05% of men will manifest certain characteristics of anorexia nervosa at one point during their lives, with some of the people bearing the characteristics actually developing a full blown case of the disorder. A greater number of women, at least 3%, may manifest characteristics of bulimia at one point during their lives. Binge eating, however, remains the most prevalent eating disorder of all, being present in at least 2% of all living adults at any given time. 

What is alarming, however, is the fact that the number of people suffering from the various eating disorders appear to be rising slowly but steadily over the years. Since first being documented and established as a disorder, the cases of people suffering from one form of eating disorder or another have more than tripled in number. This is quite alarming since there have been immense developments in the methods of treatment of the various physical and mental disorders known to man, and yet the number of people suffering from eating disorders appear to be on the rise, instead of decreasing.

In most cases, eating disorders appear to manifest more commonly in women than in men, as shown by studies in the field, where only about 10% of all patients diagnosed with eating disorders are men. Some contend, however, that this figure may never be accurately validated, since it is an established fact that people suffering from eating disorders have a knack of being totally secretive about it and will deny ever having it, much less seek help for their disorder, which has led doctors and medical professionals to speculate that there may actually be a bigger percentage of people with eating disorders that are unaccounted for, and thus, untreated. 

Statistically, there have been much more people which have come out and sought medical help in treating sexually transmitted diseased or venereal diseases than people who have an eating disorder. 

Most of people known to have eating disorders usually start manifesting it around the time of adolescence or even early adulthood. This condition is made worse by the fact that the transition between adolescence and adulthood is particularly fraught with much stress for the people going through that period. While there are no clear cut indicators as to what particular events trigger the development of an eating disorder in a person, it is generally attributed to instances wherein the person is subjected to much stress and anxiety, as in instances of violence, intense conflict, great physical stress, burgeoning peer pressure and even a lack of emotional support from the people the person expects support from.