The Diabetic Eating Disorder

This is the first time I’ve heard of diabetics neglecting their insulin as a purging behavior. Diabulimia proves just how twisted and dangerous eating disorders can be. Check out the entire article on Salon.com (when you see the commercial, click on Enter Salon in the upper right hand corner).

“Imagine you have a medical condition that causes you to lose weight. And miraculously, the more you eat, the more you lose. Pastry for breakfast, pasta with clam sauce for lunch, a five-course dinner with crusty bread and any dessert you like, plus snacks in between — the sweeter the better. Follow this diet and you can drop five pounds by tomorrow morning, shrink a dress size for the weekend, show up at your high school reunion enviably trim.

There are a few downsides: Your hair will fall out, you’ll be tired all the time, your mind will be muddled, and your extremities might tingle strangely. Over time, you’ll likely go blind, lose a limb, end up on dialysis, or suffer a sudden heart attack. But in the meantime, you’d be able to eat anything you want and wear a size 2.

Thousands of the approximately 1 million people with Type 1 (or juvenile-onset) diabetes are willing to take the risk. Mostly teenagers and young women, they suffer from a unique eating disorder called diabulimia.”