Word: nervosa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Unlike anorexia nervosa, whose sufferers think constantly about food yet deny them-selves nourishment while exercising their bodies into a state of abnormal emaciation, bulimia often afflicts women who appear healthy, radiant and at an ideal weight. Despite their differing approaches to weight loss, however, bulimics and anorectics are alike in a number of ways. Their inflated fear of fatness, distortion of true 'body image, and extremely low self-esteem lead them to manipulate their metabolisms and turn an innate self-disgust into a dangerous attack on their own bodies...
Cynthia's eating binges, always followed by self-induced vomiting or heavy use of laxatives, are symptoms of bulimarexia (from the Greek words for ox and hunger), an eating disorder also known as gorge-purge syndrome and bulimia nervosa Some bulimarectics gorge themselves four or five times a week, putting away 40,000 calories, then take 200 to 600 laxative pills. "To many of them, a day without binging is like a day without sunshine," says Health Educator Mary Ellen Shanesey of the University of Illinois. "They have chosen this way to handle stress, as alcoholics use alcohol...
Almost all of those afflicted are women-also true of the better-known eating disorder anorexia nervosa, the "starvation disease." Like anorectics, some bulimarectics seem to come from homes where food was important and therefore a focal point for power struggles and gibes about weight. Anorectics are mostly shy, withdrawn females who develop their symptoms around the onset of puberty. Bulimarectics tend to be extraverted, successful perfectionists who start the gorging behavior in their late teens, and often have trouble seeing their problem as more than an idiosyncrasy-one reason why it is so little known to the public. Anorectics...
...Craig Johnson, director of the Anorexia Nervosa Center at Chicago's Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center, who is heading an epidemiological study of the disorder, estimates that "up to 20% of women on college campuses are involved in some degree in bulimia and purging." A study at Ohio State University produced an even higher estimate: 30%. Johnson reports some colleges have informal groups of women who "pig out" regularly in frantic feasting...
...Massachusetts Anorexia Nervosa Aid will sponsor a self-help group for active and recovering anorexics at Harvard, Patricia R. Warner, head of the organization, said yesterday...