Dangers of Anorexia/Bulimia – Short and Long Term

Personal story as told to me:

"When I was in college, well over 20 years ago, I lived in a high-rise dormitory that had a sub shop on the bottom floor in the student recreation hall. I'd succumbed to the "freshman 10," gaining 10 pounds my first year of college by eating late-night subs while studying."

"During that time I got to know one of the students who worked in the sub shop. Her name was Julie and she was a sweet girl who was just a year older than me. Someone had once commented to me that they didn't know how she stayed so thin after seeing her eating habits. At the time I thought that I was just one of those girls who had a slow metabolism and Julie must be one of those girls who had a fast metabolism."

"In the two years I lived at the dormitory, my roommates and I got to know Julie. The following year I was sad to learn that she had died of a heart attack in her dorm room. Her roommate was unable to wake her up one morning for class."

"At this point I'd been living off campus and read the news in the school newspaper. Not only did her family not know that she was bulimic, but her roommate and her boyfriend did not know. All those years of eating anything she wanted and staying thin was the result of her purging her food."

"In the days that followed, I learned that Julie had gone on a long hiking expedition the day before. The stress of that activity on her already weakened system due to bulimia had been enough to make her potassium level plummet and caused the massive heart attack that killed her."

The dangers of anorexia and bulimia are many over the long-term. The longer a person suffers with the disease, the more effects the disease has on the person's overall health.

Unfortunately, many times even knowing the dangers that a person with anorexia or bulimia faces is not enough to make the person stop their behavior. Since many girls who suffer from anorexia would rather die than be fat, scaring them with the realities of how their anorexia or bulimia will hurt them does not move them to change their behavior. For the person who is watching their loved one suffer with anorexia or bulimia, it can be quite frustrating to simply watch the disease slowly kill them.

People who have eating disorders can sometimes suffer short- and long-term problems as a result of the eating disorder. Some of these problems include:

• Gastrointestinal problems

• Heart complications

• Dehydration

• Heart attacks

• Severe tooth and gum decay from stomach acids

• Ulceration of the stomach, mouth, trachea, and esophagus

• Kidney damage

• Malnutrition and the results of malnutrition

• Death

As you can see, the quicker a person with an eating disorder is diagnosed and begins treatment the better their chances of not having long-term problems associated with their eating disorder.