Monday, December 4, 2006

Medicine: Bulimia round-up

Anorexics, bulimics learn methods online: study

Young sufferers of anorexia and bulimia who try to hide their eating problems from their parents and doctors are turning to a growing number of Internet chat rooms dedicated to perpetuating their illness.

A pilot study released on Monday of U.S. eating disorder patients aged between 10 and 22 showed that up to a third learn new weight loss or purging methods from Web sites that promote eating disorders by enabling users to share tips, such as what drugs induce vomiting and what Internet sites sell them.

But the study -- published in the American Academy of Pediatrics' journal Pediatrics -- found that eating disorder sufferers were also learning new high-risk ways to lose weight from each other on Web sites aimed at helping them recover.
Many women may not recognize bulimia symptoms
Many women may fail to recognize bulimia symptoms in themselves, particularly if they don't go to the extremes of self-induced vomiting, new research suggests.

In a study of 158 women with bulimia-type eating disorders, Australian researchers found that nearly half did not acknowledge a problem with their eating. This was particularly true of those who did not vomit to control their weight.

1 comment:

: Joseph j7uy5 said...

Some people get to their third trimester and still don't know they are pregnant, so it should not be a surprise that some would have an eating disorder and not know it.

What is inexcusable is this: I've seen women undergo expensive, not to mention invasive, workups for infertility, when they have anorexia nervosa. Did the doctor not notice that the patient has a perfectly self-evident condition that already explains the infertility? Apparently not.