Can Anorexia Cause Diabetes?

What we call anorexia is actually a very dangerous eating disorder which is occasionally seen in men. It is mostly seen in women, specifically teens, specifically teens. This situation is rampant in models, actors, dancers and all in the showbiz. While anorexia is known to cause loss of bone loss and loss in minerals, the question of whether diabetes can cause anorexia is debatable.

Anorexia does not directly cause diabetes, but one can say that it definitely gives a foundation for diabetes given the erratic eating behaviour.

Understanding Anorexia

Anorexia also known as anorexia nervosa is driven by immoderate food restriction and the fear of gaining weight, and as well as the fear of gaining weight and a distorted body self perception. As you can very well understand that this is true for most models and actors, they are in constant pressure to look good and presentable.

People who are anorexic are usually classified as people who have a body weight of 15% or even lower than the safe body weight in accordance to the height, size and body frame of the person. Anorexics go take extreme measures to stay thin; they skip meals, vomit after eating and exercise excessively.

Understanding Diabetes

We have a general perception of diabetes, a diabetic isn’t supposed to consume sugar or sugary items, but why?
Diabetes is a disease where in the blood has very high levels of blood sugar, this happens due to the body’s inability to either utilize or produce insulin. Normally, blood sugar level range is 70-110 mg/dl, lower than this is hypoglycemia and above 110 mg/dl is hyperglycemia. This is known as pre diabetes that can lead to diabetes. If the blood sugar level shoots up to extreme levels then this can lead to coma or even death.

Anorexia and Diabetes

Those who are anorexics they tend to limit their choice of foods in order to stay thin, therefore they invariably end up eating a lot of unhealthy sugary foods or worse not eat at all, thus upsetting their blood sugar levels which then would lead to diabetes. This type would generally be type 1 diabetes. What may happen is that your poor anorexic diet will cause your body organ such as pancreas to fail, this can be dangerous as pancreas are responsible for the production of insulin. Insulin metabolizes sugar, and with a scarcity of insulin in the body, the blood sugar will rise to abnormal levels, making the anorexic diabetic. However, this does not happen in every case.

The erratic eating habits of an anorexic person can increase the chances of severe and unpredictable hypoglycemia events, and this can in turn lead to diabetes. Therefore we can draw the conclusion anorexia whether indirectly or even in part may lead to diabetes, it has also been found that patients with both the diseases are at a greater risk of developing diabetic retinopathy that can turn into blindness.

Read more articles on Diabetes.