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from CNN

Diabetics risk health to feed obsession with thinness

POSTED: 7:20 p.m. EDT, June 17, 2007

Story Highlights
Teens, young women fixate on fact that skipping insulin equals weight
loss
Skipping insulin can also lead to coma, problems with eyes, kidneys
Recovered diabulimics work to encourage others to get help

(AP) -- Like many teenage girls, Lee Ann Thill was obsessed with her
appearance. A diabetic, she was already suffering from bulimia --
forcing herself to throw up to lose weight. But it wasn't enough, and
she'd recently put on 20 pounds.

Then one day at a camp for diabetic teens, she heard counselors chew out
two girls for practicing "diabulimia" -- not taking their insulin so
they could lose weight, one of the consequences of uncontrolled
diabetes.

Don't you realize you could die if you skip your insulin? the counselor
scolded. Don't you know you could fall into a coma or damage your
kidneys or your eyes?

But that's not what registered with Thill, who has Type 1, or juvenile
diabetes. Instead, she focused on this: Skipping insulin equals weight
loss. For the next 17 years, diabulimia was her compulsion.

"I took just enough insulin to function," said Thill, now 34, of
Magnolia, New Jersey.

Today, she worries about the long-term damage that may have come from
her weight obsession. At 25, a blood vessel hemorrhage in her eye
required surgery. At 28, doctors told her she had damaged kidneys.

"I'm fearful for the future," Thill said. "I feel very strongly that had
I taken care of myself, I could have lived as long as anyone without
diabetes. I don't think that's going to happen now."

Diabulimia is usually practiced by teenage girls and young women, and it
may be growing more common as the secret is exchanged on Internet
bulletin boards for diabetics and those with eating disorders.

One expert who has studied the phenomenon estimates that 450,000 Type 1
diabetic women in the United States -- one-third of the total -- have
skipped or shortchanged their insulin to lose weight and are risking a
coma and an early death

more....

www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/conditions/06/17/diabetes.bulimia.ap/index.html
Wiser to eat less down to the optimal amount all the while adjusting