The Many Faces of Bulimia

As with just about any illness or disorder, bulimia has no simple black-and white definition. It’s a complicated disorder with various faces. To help you get familiar with the disorder and possibly start down the road to diagnosis, the following sections present both real-life situations and psychiatric definitions that deal with the disorder. Bulimia is a treacherous disorder that takes its toll on the body and the spirit of sufferers. With chronic purging behavior, the risks you take include the following:

·         Damage to your heart or heart functioning

·         Liver failure

·         Kidney failure

·         Damage to your esophagus

·  Damage to the functioning of your gastrointestinal system (for example, bloating, constipation, diarrhea)

·         Damage to your tooth enamel

Beyond the physical consequences of bulimia are its damaging emotional effects. Your attempts to calm and soothe yourself with food have turned into the monster of out-of-control bingeing. The more you try to bring your bingeing (and, thus, your weight) under control with purging, the more the binges seem to occur. These behaviors serve to exaggerate the already-heavy burden of shame you carry around about yourself and lower your self-esteem even further.

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Cholesterol - what does it do?

Cholesterol revs up your nerve cells

The fact that you have cholesterol in your brain tissue isn’t a new discovery, but the knowledge of what the cholesterol actually does up there is new. In November 2001, a group of French and German researchers at the Max-Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin reported something extraordinary, so extraordinary that the lead researcher told fellow scientists at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, “We were definitely shocked.”

Before getting to the shocking part, take a timeout for a short but important lesson in neurology. About 90 percent of the cells in your brain are non-nerve cells called glial cells. Glial cells aren’t the cells through which brain cells communicate, so they have always seemed sort of blah.

Now comes the shocking part. The guys at Max-Delbruck discovered that glial cells contain cholesterol, which enables them to secrete a molecule that encourages the formation of synapses, teensy junctions in the brain where messages are exchanged among nerve cells. The molecule secreted by the glial cell is called apolipoprotein E (apoE). When the Berlin researchers added plain cholesterol to nerve cells in a laboratory dish, the nerve cells began to form synapses like crazy.

So should you start stuffing yourself with cholesterol-rich foods to jump-start your brain? In a word, no. Your glial cells make all the cholesterol your brain requires. The point of this section is just to let you know what cholesterol is doing up there in your head.

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Anorexia’s Psychological Traits

Your psychological world as a person with anorexia is a fiercely controlled mini-universe that has come to feel absolutely essential to your psychological survival. As a vulnerable person you arrive at anorexia’s door feeling completely inadequate. You don’t know who you are or how you are supposed to take on the challenges that lie ahead in life. Anorexia offers a retreat from that forbidding world. But at the same time you believe your control and discipline will command the world’s admiration.

As anorexia progresses, you, the person with the disorder, become more and more obsessed with food and dieting. This obsession is part of creating that controlled mini-universe, a place you can always lose yourself in when real life challenges seem overwhelming. In the mini-universe, the terms of success are pretty much under your control, if you can just keep managing your hunger.

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Anorexia and its symptoms

Anorexia is a severe emotional disorder that impacts your mind and damages your body through starvation. The hallmarks of anorexia are a fear of fatness and a refusal to eat. If you have anorexia, you’ve developed a fear of becoming fat that organizes your entire existence. You believe you’re always on the verge of becoming fat, regardless of your actual weight or what anybody tells you about how thin you are. You take steps to manage your fear of fatness by refusing to eat. Food refusal also allows you to feel in control, which is of central importance to your sense of well-being. You may also binge and purge and may exercise compulsively to help control your weight.

Anorexia takes its toll on both your brain and your body. The physical symptoms of anorexia are due to starvation. These symptoms include:

·         Heart muscle damage

·         Heartbeat irregularities

·         Low blood pressure

·         Kidney damage or failure

·         Convulsions, seizures

·         Liver damage or failure

·         Loss of menstrual periods

·         Loss of bone density

·         Fertility problems

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