Bulimia Nervosa

Raiding the kitchen for anything you can get your hands on, chips, cookies, cake, donuts, literally everything and anything, you eat way past the normal standard of a snack or a meal, but you are smarter than someone who is overweight, because you know you can eat all of this food and not gain a pound. Once you are done stuffing your face and the kitchen is almost empty, you make your way to the bathroom, you calmly lean towards the toilet, stick your finger down your throat and relieve yourself of all the calories and fat you just ingested. This sounds like the perfect diet right? You can eat anything you want and as much as you want and not gain but lose weight. Nothing wrong with that right? Yes because this behavior is called bulimia and it is a disease than can be life threatening without treatment.  

First off, what is Bulimia Nervosa other than this wonderful “diet plan”? Bulimia is a disease that affects a person’s perception of their body image. In their attempts to try and control their weight, but still eat, unlike Anorexia, a person will binge and purge which means they will take in large amounts of food and then make themselves throw up so they do not absorb any of the fat or calories. Binges often occur in private. Once the binge episode ends, the purging begins. This may mean heading to the bathroom to vomit, hitting the treadmill for hours of exercise, or not eating for long periods of time (fasting). The scary thing about this disease is you cannot tell someone has it by looking at them, so they could be suffering from this for years and go untreated. A person suffering from bulimia usually has a normal body type or may even be slightly overweight and they usually stay a constant weight because they are still eating and some of the food is absorbed before they throw it up.

Now for the symptoms, rather than just give you a long boring list I will just point out the major ones you may need to look for in yourself or friends. Other than the obvious over eating and vomiting, some people abuse laxatives to lose the calories from bingeing, over use exercising, go to the bathroom after every meal, have damaged gums and teeth, have abnormal bowel movements, have sores in the throat and mouth, and scars on the knuckles or hands from forced vomiting.  The complications from this disease are serious. They range from heart problems such as heart failure, absence of a period in females, digestive problems, damage to the throat and esophagus, tooth decay, and ultimately death. Does this “diet plan” seem so perfect now? Yes, you may have a steady weight, but you will also have rotten or no teeth, a bloated stomach from the misuse of laxatives, and sores in your mouth. And to top it all off this “diet plan” is a road to the grave. If you were to see a picture of a person I just described you would think they do crystal meth, not suffering from a disease.

Who is at risk?  Well, Girls and women are more likely to have bulimia than boys and men are. Also, bulimia often begins in late adolescence or early adulthood, so college students are more at risk than young teens. People who lose weight are often reinforced by positive comments from others and by their changing appearance. This may cause some people to take dieting too far, leading to bulimia. Also, not surprisingly athletes, dancers, and models are at higher risk of eating disorders, such as bulimia. Coaches and parents may unwittingly contribute to eating disorders by encouraging young athletes to lose weight.

                What I really want you to take from this blog is that bulimia is a disease that is an addiction. This is not something someone can just stop doing; it is a way of life for them. Look for these symptoms in you friends and possibly yourself, because if this goes untreated the results are not only devastating, but deadly. Another issue I want to make clear is that just bingeing and purging every once in a while is still bulimia. Many girls in my high school would do this every so often and brag about it, which completely disgusted me. They believed they were doing nothing wrong and they had complete control, but to their dismay they did not. The bingeing and purging became more frequent and it was not until teachers and parents were involved that they got help. What seems harmless at first can be deadly in the end.