Alarming Diabetic Eating Disorder
There is an alarming trend emerging primarily among individuals, young women especially, diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. This trend extends across borders and across continents in developed countries where emphasis on body image is very strong.
This new disorder is being dubbed “Diabulimia” and is just as dangerous and damaging to the body as is anorexia or bulimia.
Alarming Diabetic Eating Disorder
What happens in diabulimia is that these young people manipulate their daily insulin dosage to remain thin. Type 1 diabetics do not produce their own insulin and therefore must receive insulin injections. The insulin promotes glucose uptake into the cells for energy or storage. If insulin is not taken, the blood glucose levels remain dangerously high.
Where anorexics drastically under-eat and bulimics purge their stomach contents through vomiting (both activities to starve their bodies of nutrients), diabulimics would simply allow the glucose to remain in their blood to eventually be purged via their urine. All three of these methods result in extremely unhealthy weightloss.
The dangers facing diabulimics on top of those associated with being underweight are kidney damage, blindness, and heart failure. The more immediate concern is a diabulimic falling into a coma due to low blood sugar. A diabetic coma normally ends either in the local emergency department or the person dying.
It is important for all Type 1 diabetics to follow the treatment plan outlined by their family physician. The short term and long term effects of non-compliance lead to coma, amputations, dialysis, blindness, and death. Insulin manipulations are not something to be taken lightly.
