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Help Your Teenager Beat an Eating Disorder
Purging is when a person tries to rid him or herself of food or drink they have consumed by using methods such as self-induced vomiting, enemas, diuretics or laxatives.
Usually people purge because they want to avoid gaining weight, and this is often a symptom of more complex, unresolved, emotional, psychological and biological issues associated with eating disorders.
Purging is a trait of the eating disorder bulimia as well as a particular type of anorexia.
Purging is a potentially hazardous practice regardless of how often or to what degree it is done, and sometimes it can even be fatal.
Self-induced vomiting
Often people make themselves vomit after a binge (or what they perceive to be a binge) because they believe they have found a way to eat without putting on weight from the calories they have consumed.
This is ineffective as a large percentage of calories are still absorbed into the body regardless of whether or not vomiting takes place. Vomiting is not an effective method of weight control, it is likely to lead to more problems than it solves.
There are several ways in which self-induced vomiting can be harmful to health and general wellbeing, including teeth and gum problems, swollen salivary glands, burst blood vessels in the eyes, and extremely serious conditions such as tearing and rupture of the oesophagus, malnutrition, dehydration, and lung problems (including pneumonia).
Laxatives
The usual purpose of laxatives is to aid constipation by stimulating a bowel movement. People with eating disorders use them because they believe it will help them to quickly eliminate the food they have eaten and they will therefore avoid gaining weight.
This, however, is a false belief because laxatives do not get rid of calories. Calories are absorbed into the body before food gets into the colon, which is where the laxatives do their job.
Any measurable weight that is lost as a result of laxative abuse is actually water weight, and the body’s response will be to retain as much water as possible in order to compensate for this loss.
The effects of taking too many laxatives include persistent diarrhoea, constipation, bloating, dehydration, and stomach cramps among other things. There is the possibility of long-term damage to bowels and the risk of developing a dependency on laxatives.
Diuretics
Diuretics, or ‘water pills’ are intended for increasing the rate of fluid loss from the body via urine, and are used to treat conditions such as high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, and liver disease.
Eating disorder sufferers believe they will lose weight by taking diuretics. But as with laxatives, the concept that diuretics can aid weight loss is a myth.
Diuretics cause the body to lose vital fluids, not calories or fat, so any weight loss observed after using them can be attributed to water weight, which the body will subsequently do its best to replace.
Diuretic abuse can lead to increased heart rate, arrhythmias and palpitations, dehydration, bloating, headaches, weakness and dizziness, and electrolyte imbalances. Consequences can be impaired functioning of the heart, liver and kidneys, and even organ failure.
Enemas
Enemas used in their proper context serve to relieve constipation by pouring fluid into the rectum and emptying the bowels.
People with eating disorders erroneously believe enemas will prevent them from gaining weight and so use them to this effect.
Enemas, like laxatives, do not prevent the body from absorbing the calories from food, and can lead to electrolyte imbalances, infections and even rupture the colon when administered incorrectly.
Serious health effects of purging
Dehydration, low blood pressure, malnutrition and electrolyte imbalances are serious, dangerous health consequences of purging, which in turn can cause a whole host of potentially life threatening conditions such as kidney damage, seizures, heart problems, and vital organ failure (including cardiac arrest).
Purging can cause death.Help Your Teenager Beat an Eating Disorder
