What Is Bulimia, Anorexia, Eating Disorders

What Is Bulimia?

While anorexia is widely recognized by the characteristic of severe restrictions on one's intake of food, the fact that bulimia does not usually have this characteristic often leads it to be dismissed as a less serious problem. This is a mistake, because the health implications of bulimia, while different, can be just as destructive.

Although some bulimics restrict their intake of food, most do not. Instead, this condition is characterized by the person's attempts to remove the larger quantities of food that she does consume. Instead of taking in tiny amounts of food, the bulimic usually takes in much more than she should in eating binges, and then gets rid of it as soon as she can with laxatives or self-induced vomiting.

It is more difficult to spot a bulimic, because most who have this condition are either at a proper weight or even overweight. It is the factor of removing food from one's system that makes bulimia a dangerous health issue. Repeated bouts of self-induced vomiting can cause extreme and potentially deadly strain on the heart; both this type of vomiting and excessive use of laxatives will also deplete the body of the nutriets it needs to function properly. Both of these problems can be life-threatening.

As is the case with some other forms of eating disorders, bulimia has psychological roots. Psychologically, bulimia is even more destructive than anorexia nervousa. It happens quite frequently that a person who has had anorexia in the past will develop bulimia afterward. In such instances, observers may make the mistake of believing that since the person is now capable of putting food into her system there is nothing to worry about; a far better approach is to see bulimia as another stage in the person's eating disorders, and realize that she needs professional help.

When she has developed bulimia, not only has she not gained control over her eating habits, she has taken on additional risks to her longterm health which include the possibility of deadly consequences. In other words, an anorexic who has developed bulimia may have successfully left one destructive condition behind, but what it has been replaced with can be even worse if it is not treated.