When food becomes am obsession

Press, 25 February 1988, Page 9

When food becomes am obsession

LIZ HODGKINS

reports that a dangerous preoccupation with body

shape is growing among Western women.

A hundred years ago it was not fashionable to be slim. But the dieting phenomenon of the 1960 s put enormous social pressures on millions of women to seek out the latest get-slim-quick diets.

It became more than just the “in” thing. For most it became a subconscious obsession. Women throughout the Western world are still striving to be the same shape and size as the nubile models they see but can’t emulate. This has led to eating disorders, a new phenomenon that the medical profession readily admit it still doesn’t fully understand or know how to treat.

Experts now believe bulimia, characterised by gorging and vomiting, is just as common as anorexia nervosa, misleadingly called “the summers’ disease.’’ Almost anyone can lose weight for a short time if they put their mind to it, but few people can maintain their wonderful new shape so they jump from one failed diet to another. It takes a lot of hard work and, more practically, a change of lifestyle to create a new you.

Now the obsession has turned into a moneyspinner — every second issue of a women's magazine puts out a new diet, and there are now dozens of weight reduction programmes. The medical profession has seen a great increase in the number of women suffering from anorexia and bulimia.

Anorexia nervosa has been around for hundreds

of years. It was first reported in 1684 by Richard Morton and the term anorexia was coined about 100 years ago simultaneously but independently by Sir William Withey-Gull (who was

Queen Victoria’s physician) and the French psychiatrist, Lasegne.

Bulimia was first described in 1957 in relation to obesity, although it was obviously evident long before that.

A University of New South Wales psychologist

and eating disorder expert, Gail Huon, for example, has received letters from women in their 60s and 70s saying they had bulimia when they were young. But it is only in recent years that the medical profession and the public have considered it a serious problem and tried to find ways of treating it.

While both anorexics and bulimics carry out their obsessions in secrecy, it is much more difficult to identify a bulimic because, although she is eating an enormous amount of food, she rarely changes weight because she is purging, whereas an anorexic is obvious by her abnormal thinness.

Studies show bulimics can eat up to 27 times the recommended dietary allowance, and use up to 20 times the recommended dose of purgatives. Some resort to rubbish bins or eat frozen food during a binge and others have reported trying to wire their jaws together to stop themselves eating. Often their condition is triggered by dieting. An estimated 95 per cent of diets fail, some ol them with long-term and severe physical and emotional consequences. In extreme cases dieting can lead to electrolyte imbalance (and ultimately death from heart failure), dehydration, chronic hoarse voice, dental erosion because of bile, Every day millions of women around the Western world are trying to become the shape they think they ought to be. Some achieve their goal, the majority give up in disgust, but some go on to develop eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia. Both are characterised by an obsession to be

slim, but according to a University of Sydney psychiatrist, Dr Stephen Touyz, bulimics are failed anorexics.

“Many people with anorexia nervosa have a certain character structure — they are often striving, hard working,

ambitious, and quite successful in what they take on so they are quite successful at dieting, so successful that they cannot stop. People who are not as determined go on to develop bulimia.” Dr Touyz, who is also clinical psychiatrist at Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, says there are several reasons why anorexics continue their obsession: it is usually attention grabbing, it often means they are able to manipulate their friends and family, In spite of popular belief, anorexics eat sensible foods and are very conscious of nutrition, according to one of Australia’s leading nutritionists, Professor Stuart Truswell, head of the Human Nutrition Department at Sydney University.

Professor Truswell describes the process your body goes through when you diet too much: First the fat cells shrink then there is loss of muscles, which may include the heart muscle, then the heart begins to shrink to a small brown thing.

“There is also thiamine deficiency, high blood cholesterol levels, dental caries — the pH of gastric acid (from your stomach) is very strong and a couple of months of daily vomiting will erode the enamel on your teeth. Hair changes quite a lot and often falls out of people with anorexia but it is not permanent. “The more you diet the more difficult it is each time because of hormonal changes which effect your

metabolism,” says Professor Truswell. —Copyright DUO.

‘Often a bulimic’s condition is triggered by dieting’

‘No doubt that anorexia and bulimia

UULLIILLU, are increasing’