Eating Disorders, Anorexia, Cardiac Arrest

One Casualty Of Eating Disorders

In 1983, Karen Carpenter died due to complications from anorexia. Although she appeared to be a bit thin, her weight was not the direct cause of her death. Karen Carpenter, who, at thirty-two years of age, had long been a singer who was popular all around the world, died of cardiac arrest.

The death of this bright, talented young star should be a wake-up call to anyone who doubts the seriousness of any types of eating disorders. While it should be obvious to both a person who suffers from one of these conditions and the people who are in his or her everyday life that what happens to a person's body when she is affected by this condition can not only cause the person to lose her quality of life but actually her life itself, the fact that the variety of forms of eating disorders are on the increase make it clear that not nearly enough is being done to help those who have the conditions nor to educate those who do not.

The variety of eating disorders presents a variety of health repercussions. They can all be accurately summed up in the abnormal amount of abuse that they cause to the person's entire system. Removing whatever one consumes as quickly as possible with laxatives or diuretics will rob the body of the nutrients that it needs to survive; the heart muscles will cease to function properly when they are weakened from frequent vomiting; even the eating disorders that are dismissed as minor, such as bingeing without purging, or eating only what one has a specific craving for, will compromise one's health.

The only reason Karen Carpenter's death from complications of anorexia was in the media was that she was such a talented and well-loved star. There are countless numbers of others who are like her in every other way. Perhaps it would serve well to consider this one casualty of eating disorders to be representive of all the others whom we do not hear about, and start taking eating disorders as a whole to be a very serious problem in the United States.