Obsessed With Losing Weight: Diabulimia

by Valorie Delp | More from this Blogger

21 Jun 2007 10:33 PM

I've been spending this last week talking a little bit about cleansing diets and other similar ideas that really cause more harm to our bodies than good. It is important to be healthy and it is important to fuel our bodies with good things. However, the issue comes when our obsession becomes unhealthy and our struggle to lose weight sends us to do things that actually destroy our body. Today, I'm going to address the issue of diabulemia, a growing trend among diabetic teens (especially girls) to skip their insulin so that they will lose weight.

Diabulimia like anorexia and bulimia is a compulsion for the women who struggle with it. (Of course men can have it too, but statistics show that diabulimia is most common among young women and teenage girls.) For girls suffering with Type 1 diabetes, losing weight is a little too easy. You don't have to vomit, use laxatives or starve yourself. All you have to do is skip a few doses of your insulin and voila--the weight comes right off. Basically, without insulin, the cells cannot use the calories that you digested. In layman's terms it's as if you're eating a calorie-less meal.

The complications of diabulimia are serious. In the long run, skipping insulin to lose weight can cause blindness, renal failure, coma and death. However, this unhealthy obsession with weight loss has fairly serious short term complications as well. If you do it long enough you go into diabetic ketoacidosis. Then your joints will lose their mobility. In its most extreme form you get liver enlargement and no onset of puberty.

The irony is that in order to manage diabetes, patients must focus on every detail of their diet and exercise. (Even excessive exercise can have the same result as skipping insulin.) So how do you keep a patient focused incessantly on food without causing them to focus obsessively about their weight? I don't think there's an easy answer to that. I think as adults though we do have the opportunity to influence those with whom we have contact. We may be trying to lose weight, but focusing on our health is the key to winning this battle.

For more information on diabetes, read Krystin Crow's blogs--our resident expert on all things diabetes.

For more information on Bulimia and Anorexia, check out Beth McHugh's blogs--our resident expert on mental health!

Learn more about Valorie Delp

Hello everybody! My name is Valorie and I am one busy lady! When I'm not writing or editing for families, I am busy trying to get my brood of 5 in line.

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