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ANOREXIA NERVOSA
AND BULIMIA
ARE NO STRANGERS
TO THE JEWISH
COMMUNITY, BOTH
YOUNG AND OW.

BY

22

FRIDAY, MAY 22, 1992

PHIL

S

ome tell of horror sto-
ries. They talk of their
demons. They know of
them personally.Lau-
ra refers to her "per-
sonal hell." And
Michael — he has
trouble talking at all.
These aren't stories of
supernatural experiences
or fictional chainsaw
massacres. Yet they can be
just as haunting or fatal as
in any beach novel. Con-
sider the bulimic who exer-
cised two hours a day,
seven days a week after
bingeing each day on a diet
of M&M candies, potato
chips and pizza.
Consider another bulimic
who binged on frozen steak
and hamburger from her
freezer. She did this so she
could identify the meat's
red color when she vomited
to make sure it was out of
her system.
Consider the anorexic
who would cut her salad
into minute pieces, killing
time while everyone else
finished. She ended up
throwing it all away.
For Laura, Michael and

JACO

your neighbors, friends,
daughters, brothers and
others, the internal fire
rages over control of food.
It's a growing concern over
the diseases anorexia ner-
vosa and bulimia, two con-
ditions that have latched
iron jawed into household
members of the Jewish
community.
Anorexia, simply stated,
is a person's choice to over-
control his eating habits to
the point where he doesn't
eat or eats precious little.
When an anorexic looks in
the mirror, he sees a fat
person.
Bulimia is another form
of control. In this case, a
person will typically binge
on thousands of calories of
food or junk foods and then
purge the food by forced
vomiting, laxatives or even
exercise.
There is nothing,
however, that is simple
about either one of these
conditions. They are both
psychopathological dis-
orders that, if not caught
and controlled, can lead to

BS