As Bev just pointed out, diabulimia is a serious condition when a type 1 diabetic is not taking their insulin in order to lose weight. Diabulimia is a term that has only cropped up in recent years. Most people who experience diabulemia are stuck between two fears: taking increasing doses of insulin, which leads to weight gain, and the damage the destructive behavior is causing their body in the long-term.
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. Ann Goebel-Fabbri, a clinical psychologist at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston says, "People who do this behavior wind up with severe diabetic complications much earlier". Is that supposed to be a warning or a promise? It sounds like she's saying complications are inevitable - but if you're contented with the weight gain - you'll deter the early arrival of complications. Poor advice, doc.
The caution of do as you're told and complications will arrive later is not a very promising guarantee. The behaviors of tight diabetes control are almost tantamount to cultivating eating disorders. Studies show that women with type 1 diabetes are twice as likely to develop an eating disorder. After all -- good diabetes management requires a preoccupation with food, counting carbohydrates and following a diet. Sounds like the ingredients for an eating disorder - throw in a hormonal imbalance (genetically modified insulin that arrives late to the brain, unlike natural vertebrate pork and cow insulin) and you've got yourself diabulemia. Thanks again, Big Pharma!! Where is the prize in good diabetes management if you are punished with weight gain?
1. That's ludicrous to blame the pharmaceutical companies for diabulimia. The insulins of today cause fewer allergic reactions, and are better absorbed and more efficiently utilized by most diabetics. Furthermore, who do you think processed and manufactured beef and pork insulin back in the day? It was the pharmaceutical companies.
And what is this?
"throw in a hormonal imbalance (genetically modified insulin that arrives late to the brain, unlike natural vertebrate pork and cow insulin) and you've got yourself diabulemia."
What do you mean? Are you trying to suggest that the hormonal imbalance is caused by manufactured synthetic insulin that is genetically identical to human insulin? Are you suggesting that beef or pork insulin is more quickly absorbed into the blood stream? How is the brain related in this particular equation you are proposing? You do know that insulin is absorbed into the blood stream for the body to metabolize glucose, don't you? And you do know that today's insulins actually expedite absorption compared to Regular beef or pork insulin, don't you? Are you starting to see how your argument is filled with too many loopholes to close, and is based on assumptions and/or fabricated 'facts' of convenience? What 'hormonal imbalance' are you even referring to and how exactly does that contribute to the development of diabulimia?
Also, the doctor is stating a fact. Studies have shown that women who engage in insulin omission as a method of weight control for extended periods of time on a regular basis are more likely to develop diabetes complications earlier and to a greater severity. I am living proof of this, and there are studies to back up her assertions. She's not suggesting that weight gain is the only alternative either. That's an inference you've made that happens to be incorrect.
Don't get me wrong. I have a laundry list of complaints about the pharmaceutical industry since I am type 1 diabetic, and my life has depended on them for the last 29 years. However, I can't say that I'm not grateful for the pharmacologic and technical advancements they have made because those are the reason I am even alive today. I'll complain about them and blame them for things they do that are wrong, but I won't blame them for things in which they have no role.
Posted at 10:23PM on Jun 19th 2007 by Lee Ann