Cult-Like Lure of 'Ana' Attracts Anorexics

AP via Yahoo! ^ | Monday, May 30, 2005 | MARTHA IRVINE

[angcat]

Sounds like a good book. I believe it is a mental illness but I think it starts with low self-esteem. My co-worker hates makeup "this is me and this is how I look" but yet she cannot get fat or god forbid reach 95 lbs. She also works out three hours a day. Can you imagine? :(

Have a good day!

[blackdog]

No, I don't think it's genetic, although my wife's sister had a similar problem. I think it's parenting. Abusive father kind of thing combined with a dim mother who felt appearance was better to maintain than substance. Many, many family "secrets" which cloaked abhorent father's behavior.

Congrats on your grasp of what health is. It's not really linked to a scale. As a matter of fact, 20% overweight people tend to be a whole lot happier and healthier. You just can't go too far above that. If you can walk the stairs in a hurry, take a brisk walk without getting winded, you're not too heavy and your ticker works just fine.

Another thing the article omitted is that ED's have problems with being truthful and eventually lie about anything just as sport. They also have problems with stealing/shoplifting and substance abuse is very common.

If anyone has a loved one seeing psychiatric help for this problem, don't go cheap and get dis-served by your health insurance company's mental health limitations. Those shrinks are just licensed drug pushers. Seek someone who is a recognized proven expert in the field, even for yourself as the patient if it will give you a better approach to dealing with the problem as a spouse/parent/or loved one.

[blackdog]

ED's of a timeline over 20 years are not statistically offering much hope. The long term prognosis for recovery in a patient with an ED for more than 20 years is around 10%. The other 90% eventually die of complications such as esophegeal cancer, stroke, kidney failure, heart failure, sepsis, or suicide.

Good luck with your co-worker. She'll need some.

A strange possibility coming from our Botox crowd may offer some real promise for those really bad cases of ED's. Botox injections into the abdominal wall muscles paralyzes them and the ED can't purge what they ate. That still leaves laxatives, diuretics, enemas, and such, but those can be access controlled in a situation where the ED patient needed an intervention.

[angcat]

Scary stats. indeed. All I can is worry about her, she is in denial.

[blackdog]

She's not in denial. She's just lying to you and doesn't want your input regarding this matter. All you can do is be there if she discovers bottom.

One thing I've known all along is that there is much more to a person than their ED. Recognize those qualities and often. If they insist on being deceptive and dishonest in other areas of their life as well as the ED, stay away.

[blackdog]

Also, ED's know more about nutrition, diet, calories, than you ever will and even how to mix additives to foods to prevent caloric absorption. They will mix fiber based bulk laxatives like metamucil directly onto their food in order to make it easier to purge and to eliminate. It turns the meal into a glob that they can purge in one effort. They will even put certain marker foods into their meal so they can be assured it's all gone. Stuff like spinach leaves, blueberries, cottage cheese, etc......They just keep gulping water/purging until it comes out clean.

[Billthedrill]

This is not the only manifestation of obsessive self-destructiveness; it is, however, the only one that is validated by Hollywood. (There is a rather disturbing "cutting" subculture that is so far mercifully uncelebrated in Tinsel Town). There was a time when "consumptives" (i.e. tubercular patients) were considered romantic - brave, doomed, and possessed of an artistic sensitivity as a result. These days you have to work a little harder at it to become that unhealthy, but the obsession is the same.

I suspect that control is at least part of the problem, at least among young people who don't really have many outlets for that other than their own bodies (although they do through video games, a factor that no doubt helps to explain the latter's seductiveness and the obsessive nature of its aficionados). Killing oneself seems an odd expression of power, but that it very much is.

[blackdog]

Hollywood is a convenient horse to whip, but in this case is not really a factor by large. It's also not a new thing either. I can remember as a kid in grade school, observing the school secretary in her 50's and finding it odd that a woman so skinny was alway's eating. I knew something was up with that. Next time you are in a mini-mart, look for the women who come in alone and buy lots of junk food. One of the gateway foods is those pint/quart containers of icecream. All the ones I know of thru the years start off on binging on ice cream. I was in the grocery store last week and was in front of a woman who was buying eight pounds of butter, a case of diet Pepsi, and three boxes of saltines. She weighed about 90 pounds and I knew exactly what she was doing. They will also eat those mayonaise/condiment packs as a way of hitting food like a hit of drugs. Ever see someone eat a jar of mayonaise with a spoon?

It's not a thing about trying to look beautiful, it's about self abuse, punishment, and OCD.