Bulimia

Medical Author:

Roxanne Dryden-Edwards, MD

Roxanne Dryden-Edwards, MD

Dr. Roxanne Dryden-Edwards is an adult, child, and adolescent psychiatrist. She is a former Chair of the Committee on Developmental Disabilities for the American Psychiatric Association, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, and Medical Director of the National Center for Children and Families in Bethesda, Maryland.

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Medical Editor:

Melissa Conrad Stöppler, MD, Chief Medical Editor

Melissa Conrad Stöppler, MD, Chief Medical Editor

Melissa Conrad Stöppler, MD, is a U.S. board-certified Anatomic Pathologist with subspecialty training in the fields of Experimental and Molecular Pathology. Dr. Stöppler's educational background includes a BA with Highest Distinction from the University of Virginia and an MD from the University of North Carolina. She completed residency training in Anatomic Pathology at Georgetown University followed by subspecialty fellowship training in molecular diagnostics and experimental pathology.

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• Bulimia Overview
• Bulimia Causes
• Bulimia Symptoms and Signs
• When to Seek Medical Care
• Diagnosis of Bulimia
• Bulimia Treatment
• Self-Care at Home
• Medical Treatment
• Follow-up
• Bulimia Prevention
• Bulimia Prognosis
• Synonyms and Keywords
• Authors and Editors
• Read more on Bulimia from Healthwise
• Viewer Comments: Bulimia - Describe Your Experience

Bulimia Overview

Bulimia, also called bulimia nervosa, is an eating disorder. Someone with bulimia might binge on food and then vomit (also called purge) in a cycle of binging and purging. Binge eating refers to quickly eating large amounts of food over short periods of time. Purging involves forced vomiting or the misuse of laxatives, diet pills, diuretics (which control blood pressure by increasing urination), or other medications. It might also involve excessive exercise, dieting, or fasting in an attempt to lose weight that might be gained from eating food or binging. The bulimia sufferer might induce vomiting by putting their finger down their throat or by consuming a substance that causes vomiting, like syrup of ipecac.

Affecting nearly 1% of people in the United States at sometime in their lifetime, bulimia affects millions of people, women more often than men. Other statistics about bulimia include its tendency to affect more than 3% of women and that its frequency of occurrence has doubled since the 1960s.

The risks associated with bulimia are many. People with this or other eating disorders also often suffer from a personality disorder, substance abuse problem, or a mood problem, like depression or anxiety.

The strict medical definition of bulimia used by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) requires two binge-eating episodes a week for at least three months to make the diagnosis, but it's likely that some people with symptoms of bulimia may not fit these exact criteria.

A person with bulimia often feels a loss of control over their eating, in that they engage in compulsive overeating, as well as guilt over their behavior. They are usually aware that their behavior is abnormal. Bulimia is most common in adolescent and young adult women. People with bulimia are often of normal or near-normal weight, which makes them different from people with anorexia nervosa (an eating disorder in which the person severely limits how much they eat). Bulimia is also different from binge eating disorder, an eating disorder in which the sufferer engages in recurring episodes of binge eating without engaging in purging behaviors to try to control his or her weight.