Quote:
Originally posted by jollyperv
How the fuck can something voluntary like sticking your finger down your throat be considered a disease?
Be right back, I'm gonna go give myself a disease.
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Definition, Signs, Symptoms: Bulemia is a disorder in which the person has recurrent episodes of binge-eating and acts to prevent weight gain by self-induced vomiting or other compensatory behaviors. Bulemia is a combination of binge-eating... i.e. eating, with a sense of lack of control, in a single time period, an amount of food that is definitely larger than most people would eat during a similar time period... and recurrent inappropriate compensatory behavior, in order to prevent weight gain.
After a binge, someone who's ill with bulemia may make him/herself ill, abuses laxatives or diuretics, fast, or exercise excessively. The binge eating and inappropriate compensatory behaviors both occur at least twice a week for 3 months.
Note that 'fasting' includes going without food for longer than the usual time between meals or snacks, ignoring hunger signals; that is, 'fasting' does not refer only to the more extreme practice of going days without food. Fasting between daily episodes of binge eating is probably the most common compensatory behavior used by bulimics. And please note also that although many people loosely self-define a "binge" as eating any food or quantity of food that does not conform to their personal diet rules--eating a muffin at coffee break, for example, when they had promised themselves never to eat at coffee break, this is *not* the clinical definition of a binge.
Bulimia nervosa has been identified primarily in men and women in their teens and 20s, with about 90% women and 10% men (the same as for anorexia). Studies using rigorous diagnostic criteria suggest that about 1% to 2% of pre-college and college women are bulimic, although occasional bulimic behavior appears to be much more common.
Although the majority of patients who are currently diagnosed as bulimic are of normal weight, bulimia nervosa may be unrecognized in obese persons. Self-evaluation of one's worth as a person is unduly influenced by body shape and weight. The disordered self-evaluation does not occur exclusively during episodes of Anorexia Nervosa. Some bulemics are also anorexic.