NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Many women may fail to recognize bulimia symptoms in themselves, particularly if they don’t go to the extremes of self-induced vomiting, new research suggests.
In a study of 158 women with bulimia-type eating disorders, Australian researchers found that nearly half did not acknowledge a problem with their eating. This was particularly true of those who did not vomit to control their weight.
Bulimia is widely known as a “binge-purge” eating disorder, in which a person goes through cycles of excessive eating followed by purging – through either vomiting or abusing laxatives and diuretics.
But there are also non-purging forms of bulimia, where tactics like excessive exercise or strict dieting are used to counter binge-eating episodes.
Still other people have certain symptoms of bulimia but fall short of all the criteria used to diagnose the disorder; they may fall into the category of “eating disorder not otherwise specified,” or EDNOS.
The new study, published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, focused on women with “bulimic-type” eating disorders. This included those with purging or non-purging bulimia, as well as women with EDNOS. Some women in the latter group were diagnosed with binge-eating disorder, which involves excessive eating but no purging to compensate]
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