Anorexia and eating disorders

Anorexia or anorexia nervosa is a 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 swallowing difficulties, vomiting and food intolerances, leading to the sufferer becoming severely unweight; this can cause a misdiagnosis of anorexia or another eating disorder.

Some people severely affected by ME/CFS need feeding tubes, or artificial nutritional. This is also the case for some people with anorexia or eating disorders.

Our son’s main symptom was dizziness / orthostatic intolerance and abnormal gait which he adopted because of his dizziness. We were told that as neurological examination was normal there must be a psychological element to his problems (this was from a very eminent Consultant Paediatric Neurologist).

When we finally had to give in and admit him to hospital he was too weak to swallow his own saliva and had lost 20% of his body weight. Within 24 hours of admission he developed myoclonic jerks. We were asked whether he had a negative body image (ie was he anorexic) and whether we thought he was ‘putting on’ the muscle jerks. HELP! Please educate the Doctors and Nurses.

— From a family outside Essex, UK, Our needs, our lives (2003)

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 judged as "refusing" to eat, wash, or increase their activity levels.

See also

• Ethical issues
• Pervasive Refusal Syndrome
• Swallowing symptoms

Learn more

• Wikipedia