Anorexia nervosa takes a huge toll on the body. But that’s not all. It has the highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses. Between 5% and 20% of people who develop the disease will eventually die from the disease. The longer you have it, the more likely you are to die from it. Even for those who survive, the disease damages nearly every body system.
What happened? Here are the effects of anorexia on the human body.
The first victim of anorexia is often the bones. The disease usually occurs during adolescence, when young people should lose critical bone mass that maintains them into adulthood.
“Building a lifetime of bone mass is a must,” says Diane Mickley, MD, co-president of the National Eating Disorders Association and founder and director of the Wilkins Center for Eating Disorders in Greenwich, Connecticut. The time window is short. “You’re supposed to inject bone, but you lose it.” This bone loss can occur within six months of the onset of anorectic behavior and is one of the most irreversible complications of the disease. .
But the most life-threatening damage is often severe damage to a system Heart. When the body loses muscle mass, it loses heart muscle at a preferential rate—so the heart becomes smaller and weaker. “It gets worse with increased circulation with exercise, and your pulse and blood pressure decrease,” Mickley says. “Cardiac death is serious and severe, and it happens quickly.” Lead singer Karen ·The heart damage from which Carpenter ultimately died is the most common reason for hospitalization for most patients with anorexia.
Anorexia is a multisystem disease, although the heart and bones often bear the brunt of the damage. In fact, no part of the body escapes its effects. About half of people with anorexia have low white blood cell counts, and about one-third are anemic. Both conditions reduce the immune system’s resistance to disease, making a person susceptible to infection.
These medical consequences begin even before an anorexic begins to look “too thin.”
Many young women who begin a severely restricted diet stop menstruating before they lose weight seriously.
“Among patients with anorexia and bulimia who have truly fully recovered, the rate, frequency and number of pregnancies appear to be normal,” Mickley said. “However, if you look at infertility clinics, look at those clinics Most of those who suffer from infrequent or absent menstruation appear to have a hidden eating disorder. They may think they have fully recovered, but in fact they are not getting the help they deserve.
Many women with anorexia would rather seek fertility treatment than receive treatment for their eating disorder, Mickley said. Even among women who have fully recovered from anorexia and bulimia, the rates of miscarriage and caesarean section may be slightly higher. “The incidence of postpartum depression may be 30 percent higher compared to other women,” she said.
Bulimia often co-occurs with anorexia, and it has unique health consequences. Bulimia patients who purge through vomiting will be immersed in stomach acid for a long time, which will cause serious damage to the digestive tract, leading to digestive system diseases such as reflux esophagitis.
“It feels like I’ve been drinking Draino,” said one woman who posted on a digestive disease forum about the consequences of her lifelong anorexia and bulimia. Some reported cases suggest that bulimia may lead to a condition called Barrett’s esophagus, which may lead to esophageal cancer.
The good news: Many of these complications are reversible if the patient returns to a normal weight. “If you want to reverse the results, the real focus has to be on weight restoration,” says Rebecca Peebles, M.D., an adolescent medicine specialist at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto, California. “This is the most important aspect of treatment. The important part.
Unfortunately, experts say, too many people think anorexia is strictly a psychological disorder and ignore its medical complications unless the patient is clearly dangerously thin. “A lot of people — parents, even some doctors — think complications from anorexia only occur if you’re too thin and lose weight,” Peebles said. “Practitioners need to understand that a good therapist is only one part of the treatment for anorexia and other eating disorders, and these patients also need medical attention.”
Research has found that many people who need treatment for anorexia don’t get it. In large part, this may be due to cost. Inpatient treatment can cost more than $30,000 per month, while outpatient treatment can cost up to $100,000 per year.
Miami woman Melissa Román spent years recovering from anorexia, paying $800 a month out of pocket for treatment that her insurance didn’t cover. According to the National Eating Disorders Alliance, health insurance companies pay for an average of 10 to 15 treatment sessions for eating disorder patients, and true recovery may require more long-term care (as many as 40 sessions).
“Access to care is a huge issue,” Mickley said. “Eating disorders manifest differently than cancer, so we couldn’t convince insurance companies that low potassium levels could be like a small metastasis. Only recently have we begun to understand the genetic and neurochemical underpinnings of anorexia and say it’s a A real disease, not the whims of a spoiled rich girl.
