Eating Binges

Anorexia's sister ailment

For dessert one night, Cynthia B. ate a candy bar, two bags of cookies, an eclair, three sandwiches, crackers and dip, a jar of peanut butter and half a jar of jelly, raisins and berries, two slices of bread with cheese and mayonnaise, large pizza and four bowls of cereal. Then she made herself throw up.

Cynthia's eating binges, always followed by self-induced vomiting or heavy use of laxatives, are symptoms of bulimarexia (from the Greek words for ox and hunger), an eating disorder also known as gorge-purge syndrome and bulimia nervosa Some bulimarectics gorge themselves four or five times a week, putting away 40,000 calories, then take 200 to 600 laxative pills. "To many of them, a day without binging is like a day without sunshine," says Health Educator Mary Ellen Shanesey of the University of Illinois. "They have chosen this way to handle stress, as alcoholics use alcohol."

Almost all of those afflicted are women--also true of the better-known eating disorder anorexia nervosa, the "starvation disease." Like anorectics, some bulimarectics seem to come from homes where food was important and therefore a focal point for power struggles and gibes about weight. Anorectics are mostly shy, withdrawn females who develop their symptoms around the onset of puberty. Bulimarectics tend to be extraverted, successful perfectionists who start the gorging behavior in their late teens, and often have trouble seeing their problem as more than an idiosyncrasy--one reason why it is so little known to the public. Anorectics are cadaverously thin, while bulimarectics generally weigh in at normal levels.

Dr. Craig Johnson, director of the Anorexia Nervosa Center at Chicago's Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center, who is heading an epidemiological study of the disorder, estimates that "up to 20% of women on college campuses are involved in some degree in bulimia and purging." A study at Ohio State University produced an even higher estimate: 30%. Johnson reports some colleges have informal groups of women who "pig out" regularly in frantic feasting.

In group therapy, individual psychotherapy or behavior modification--the standard treatments--some women cut down on their binges, but so far cures are unknown. Says Shanesey: "If we could get them to binge-purge once every three weeks instead of four or five times a week, that would be a start." One of the few things known for certain about bulimarectics is that they hate to cook for friends. Reason: they are afraid they will eat all the food before the guests arrive.

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