Bulimia

Bulimia nervosa
Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by recurrent binge eating, followed by compensatory behaviors. The most common form is defensive vomiting, sometimes called purging; fasting, the use of laxatives, enemas, diuretics, and over exercising are also common. The word bulimia derives from the Latin (būlīmia), which originally comes from the Greek βουλιμία (boulīmia;ravenous hunger), a compound of βους (bous), ox + λιμός (līmos), hunger.
Bulimia nervosa was named and first described by the British psychiatrist Gerald Russell in 1979.
Diagnosis
According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV TR) published by the American Psychiatric Association, the criteria for diagnosing a patient with bulimia are:
• Recurrent episodesof binge eating. An episode of binge eating is characterized by both of the following:
o Eating, in a fixed period of time, an amount of food that is definitely larger than most people would eat under similar circumstances. Mainly eating binge foods.
o A lack of control over eating during the episode: a feeling that one cannot stop eating or control what or how much one iseating.
• Recurrent inappropriate compensatory behavior to prevent weight gain, such as: self-induced vomiting; misuse of laxatives, diuretics, or other medications; fasting; excessive exercise.
• Triggers include periods of stress, traumatic events, and self-evaluation of body shape and weight.
• These symptoms may occur after every meal, on a daily basis, or once every few months.• The disturbance does not occur exclusively during episodes of anorexia nervosa.
There are two sub-types of bulimia nervosa:
• Purging type bulimics self-induce vomiting (usually by triggering the gag reflex or ingesting emetics such as syrup of ipecac) to rapidly remove food from the body before it can be digested, or use laxatives, diuretics, or enemas.
• Non-purging type bulimics(approximately 6%-8% of cases) exercise or fast excessively after a binge to offset the caloric intake after eating. Purging-type bulimics may also exercise or fast, but as a secondary form of weight control.
The onset of bulimia nervosa is often during adolescence (between 13 and 20 years of age) and many cases have previously suffered obesity, with many sufferers relapsing in adulthood intoepisodic binging and purging even after initially successful treatment and remission.
Bulimia nervosa can be difficult to detect, compared to anorexia nervosa, because bulimics tend to be of average or slightly above or below average weight. Many bulimics may also engage in significantly disordered eating and exercising patterns without meeting the full diagnostic criteria for bulimia nervosa.Prevalence
There is little data on the prevalence of bulimia nervosa in-the-large, on general populations. Most studies conducted thus far have been on convenience samples from hospital patients, high school or university students. These have yielded a wide range of results: between 0.1% and 1.4% of males, and between 0.3% and 9.4% of females. Studies on time trends in the prevalence of bulimianervosa have also yielded inconsistent results.

|Country |Year |Sample size and type |Incidence |
|Australia |2008 |1,943 adolescents (ages 15–17) |1.4% male |

USA |1996 |1,152 college students |0.2% male |1.3% female[17] | |Norway |1995 |19,067 psychiatric patients |0.7% male |7.3%female[18] | |Canada |1995 |8,116 (random sample) |0.1% male |1.1% female[19] | |Japan |1995 |2,597 high school students |0.7% male |1.9% female[20] | |USA |1992 |799 college students |0.4% male |5.1% female[21] | |There are higher rates of eating disorders in groups involved in activities which idealize a slim physique, such as dance, gymnastics, modeling, cheerleading, running, acting, rowing...