If you have diabetes, you know that your wellbeing depends, in part, on you maintaining a healthy weight through your diet and lifestyle, as well as with medication management, to prevent or delay medical complications of the disease. However, several diabetics are abusing their wellness by choosing to restrict or cease to use their insulin in order to lose an unhealthy amount of weight.
Insulin encourages your body to store fat, and so a growing number of people with type 1 diabetes are discovering the relationship between reducing the amount of insulin they take and corresponding weight loss. This is a practice known as “Diabulimia”, which is an eating disorder that is linked with type 1 diabetes. According to Certified Eating Disorder Specialist, Beverly Price, ‘Eating disorders are twice as common among girls and women with diabetes who use insulin compared with females without diabetes. Withholding insulin has been seen in girls as young as 13 and in women as old as 60. Type 1 diabetes affects nearly 21 million adults and children in the United States. The overall prevalence of diabulimia estimated is up to 1.4 million Americans.’
Price is the owner and founder of Inner Door Center® for Eating Disorder Treatment in Royal Oak, Michigan, and will address professionals and the public on the dangers of diabulimia next month at the 6th Annual Diabetes Today and Tomorrow Conference at the Wayne County Community College District. She says that the disease causes females with type 1 diabetes to have a poorer self-image, and to focus intently on their diet. Diabetes management involves a constant monitoring of blood sugar levels and carbohydrate intake, which can easily lead to a near-obsessive relationship with food and a full-blown eating disorder.
When you add this to insulin use, which tends to increase weight gain, the chances of an eating disorder developing are all-too high. According to various studies, diabulimia makes you more likely to have poorly controlled diabetes, which increases your risk of developing complications, such as heart disease, stroke, blindness, and nerve and kidney damage. If you have diabulimia, you have three times the mortality risk compared with those who don’t restrict insulin and are estimated to have a 13-year-shorter life expectancy. In order to achieve a positive outcome, treating an individual with diabetes and an eating disorder requires a very careful approach.