Anorexia and eating disorders

Anorexia or anorexia nervosa is a mental disorder involving distorted thoughts around food, eating or body weight combined with reducing food intake and/or other behaviors that lead to sufferer being significantly underweight. Other eating disorders include bulimia or bulimia nervosa, which involves intentional vomiting or purging food to avoid weight gain; binge eating disorder, and orthorexia (eating an extremely restricted diet based on fear of eating "unhealthy" foods; and eating disorder not otherwise specified (EDNOS)

Anorexia and ME/CFS
Severe myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome can cause
 * dysphagia (swallowing difficulties or an inability to swallow)
 * a symptom also found in some people after a stroke, and in multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's diseases

These swallowing and eating symptoms can lead to the sufferer becoming severely underweight; this can cause a misdiagnosis of anorexia or another eating disorder, which may lead to inappropriate treatment.
 * vomiting
 * food or medication intolerance
 * this may cause a reluctance to eat/swallow

Some people severely affected by ME/CFS need feeding tubes or artificial nutritional, and may become severely underweight purely as a result of their ME/CFS symptoms, and may starve to death. This is also the case for some people with anorexia or eating disorders.

Children and "refusal" to eat
Some parents have reported that their child’s swallowing difficulties or vomiting have resulted in medical professionals interpreting these ME/CFS as an indicator of a mental disorder, for example some children originally diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome have had their diagnosis changed to Pervasive Refusal Syndrome because they were wrongly judged as "refusing" to eat, wash, or increase their activity levels.

Prevalence
Unknown.

Symptom recognition
Anorexia is recognized as a possible symptom in the Canadian Consensus Criteria for ME, but is not regarded as a diagnostic symptom. A number of patient groups have raised concerns that anorexia may be a misdiagnosis in some patients with ME, particularly children or young people, and the severely ill.

Digestive symptoms problems are well recognized, particularly irritable bowel syndrome, and food intolerances.

Notable studies
There do not appear to be any significant studies assessing swallowing or eating issues in patients with ME/CFS, or investigating the presence of comorbid eating disorders, or the potential misdiagnosing of eating disorders, although there are many different accounts from patients or their carers/parents.

Learn more

 * KNOWLEDGE IN THE HOPE OF PROTECTING M.E. SUFFERERS FROM UNNECESSARY SECTIONING - The 25% ME Group


 * ME - The Illness and Common Misconceptions: Abuse, Neglect, Mental Incapacity. A summary originally produced for the legal profession - Tymes Trust
 * Wikipedia