The incredible peer and societal pressures to look a certain way can manifest themselves both emotionally and physically in young women all over the world. Sadly, this can turn into a destructive cycle and take a serious toll on physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Thankfully, there is help available through eating disorder treatment centers. In treatment, women learn to appreciate themselves and their bodies better, develop a positive relationship with food, and create tools to overcome any reliance on drugs or alcohol. Contact Crossroads today at 877.978.1667 to get help with an individualized inpatient eating disorder treatment plan to battle the effects of bulimia.
What Is Bulimia?
Bulimia is an eating disorder that follows a destructive pattern of binge eating and then purging to control weight. Bulimia is a lot more than just eating a lot of food and then vomiting. The emotional and physical effects can be severe and long-lasting, some even life-threatening.
While bulimia is less common in men than women, it does affect both sexes. People with bulimia have regular episodes of eating excessive amounts of food in a small time frame. This uncontrollable binge is followed by a purge where they dangerously induce vomiting or other methods of ridding their body of food.
Among the symptoms of bulimia, these are some of the most common:
- Uncontrollable bingeing on a regular basis
- Self-induced vomiting, use of laxatives, fasting, and excessive exercise to control weight
- Negative body image issues
- Unhealthy obsession and fear of weight gain or body changes
Effects of Bulimia
Side effects of bulimia are varied, but they are all unpleasant. Some are longer-lasting than others, such as damage to teeth, inflamed throat, swollen salivary glands, dehydration, and hormone imbalances. More serious effects exist that can lead to stroke or heart attack. In addition to mental stresses, the physical effects of repeated binging and purging take a toll on the body. While bulimia doesn’t have symptoms of significant weight loss, there are plenty of noticeable unhealthy physical effects.
Some of the effects of bulimia include:
- Low blood pressure, causing you to feel faint
- Mood swings due to depression, anxiety, and irritability from the cycle of bingeing and purging
- Damaged salivary glands which cause the appearance of puffy cheeks
- A weakened heart illustrated by an irregular heartbeat
- Compulsive exercising results because of the constant desire to control weight
- Scars on hands can occur from fingers coming in contact with teeth repeatedly when vomiting
- Decreased sex drive because of mental strains and malnutritional
- Ovulation can be affected and even stop
- Acids in vomit cause tooth decay
- Repetitive and frequent vomiting can cause swollen throats and even damage to the esophagus
- Hemorrhoids can develop when laxatives are misused to control weight
Contact Crossroads for Help with Bulimia
Crossroads has been a leader in addiction and behavioral health since 1974. We have seen an increasing number of women struggling with substance use disorders and eating disorders. We created our eating disorder treatment center to deal with these co-occurring disorders. Both addiction and eating disorders are chronic diseases that can result in high relapse rates without proper treatment. So, we felt it was important to create a space where women can engage in therapy and programs to help them understand how these two conditions affect one another and their recovery.
We believe in treating women as a whole and not just focusing on symptoms. By addressing underlying issues and supporting physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual healing, women struggling with bulimia and other eating disorders have the greatest chance for recovery. At Crossroads, we offer both resident and outpatient treatment options. Call us today at 877.978.1667 to get started on the path to a successful recovery.
