What is the nature of bulimia nervosa?

Although the term " bulimia nervosa " was coined by Gerald Russell back in 1979, it is only recently that researchers have attempted to uncover the cause of this "newfangled" disease, which no one had ever heard of before because it simply did not exist.

What has so profoundly affected human nature in such a short time? And is it possible to combat this unknown factor?

Bulimia nervosa is an unusual disease in many ways. Its risk group is mainly girls aged 13–20. Before the first description of the disease, made in 1979, bulimia sufferers were often considered victims of anorexia, another nervous disease associated with eating disorders. But if anorexia dulls a person's sense of hunger, then with bulimia nervosa, on the contrary, he is struck by sudden attacks of overeating. After them, the patient tries to induce vomiting in order to avoid excess weight, which he is panicky afraid of. Even after repeated explanations from the doctor of the uselessness of such procedures for combating excess weight, people suffering from bulimia continue to torment their bodies with these "exercises".

But that's not the worst part. Some unfortunate people develop what appears to be a psychologically conditioned gastroesophageal reflux disease, when the stomach unconsciously throws some of the food they swallow into the esophagus. Which, of course, affects the organ, which is not used to hydrochloric acid. The worst part is that some patients with bulimia develop more serious psychological and psychiatric problems, including suicide. All this happens despite the fact that the victims of bulimia usually did not exceed (or only slightly exceeded) their natural weight, characteristic of their body type. In other words, they were perfectly fine. And then suddenly...

J. Russell and colleagues conducted extensive historical research in an attempt to establish the earliest cases. The findings were strange: no clear symptoms of bulimia were found in anyone until the 1960s. That is, while anorexia has been clearly traced since the Middle Ages, bulimia is not recorded in any sources at all. Constructing age pyramids of patients gave even more discouraging results: only people born after 1950 had any chance of developing the disease; this probability became serious only for those born after 1958.

Ugly grimaces of the times? Twiggy syndrome - this is how doctors described bulimia in the 1980s. Indeed, the first supermodel of modern times, who became "Face of the Year" in Britain in 1966, also became the first female cultural hero with such unnatural proportions. "Reed", as her pseudonym is translated from English, with a height of 169 cm weighed 40 kg! The pressure exerted by the images of unnaturally graceful supermodels on the psyche of the masses seriously affected the "popularity" of anorexia: according to statistics, the number of cases of this disease jumped sharply from the second half of the 60s.

But Twiggy left the catwalk in 1970, at the age of 20. Is it possible that four years of "activity" of one teenager will forever be imprinted in the consciousness of the masses? Did Ilyich do better during his four years in power? No! For some reason, not a single one, even the most loyal Leninist, shaves his own artificial bald head.

There were also other inconsistencies. It turned out that twins, one of whom suffered from bulimia between the ages of 13 and 20 (and this is the highest-risk group), had a probability of the other being afflicted with the disease with more than 70%. But the assumption of a genetic predisposition had to be put aside when it was discovered that this pattern only applies in cases where the twins were raised together.

The strangest situation was revealed when analyzing the country distribution. Firstly, a number of countries throughout the known history had standards of female appearance very close to Twiggy's. Japan is one such example. This is not least due to the specifics of the Japanese diet. Let us recall: according to measurements, up until the 1970s in Japan (we are not considering sumo wrestlers) there were practically no cases of excess weight. But there was no bulimia either, the first case of which was registered in 1981. Now, however, about 2% of local women aged 13-20 are subject to this affliction. Obviously, Twiggy syndrome is not to blame: Japanese women today are inferior to European women in terms of the "height-to-weight" ratio, and many of them are Twiggy at the peak of her fame in the 60s.

In recent studies, experts from Oxford (UK) have suggested that previously, when studying the disease, the causes were confused with the effects. It seems that it is not excess food that leads to the patient's induced vomiting, but the opposite - the loss of nutrients caused by such a dubious "cleansing" of the body from "excess" food leads to attacks of wolfish appetite, with which the body simply tries to normalize the situation. In other words, a person's real constitution is in no way connected with his desire to "lose" weight by extreme methods.

Moreover, if it was previously accepted that the spread of bulimia was directly related to the economic development of the country, now this can apparently be forgotten. According to medical statistics, after the appearance of television in the Fijian province of Nadroga-Navosa, the percentage of women with bulimia in the risk age group increased from zero in 1995 (before television) to 11.8% in 1998 (three years after its appearance).

A careful study of statistics from third world countries led experts to the conclusion that if the state's media are English-language, then bulimia occurs even in the poorest places, like the Fiji Islands. And the higher the linguistic and cultural isolation of the population of a particular state or province, the less often such a phenomenon occurs. For example, in Portugal, no study has revealed anything more than 0.3%, which is almost forty times lower than the Fijian figures. And this is despite the fact that the GDP per capita in Fiji is five times less than in Portugal. British scientists have recognized Cuba as the best example of cultural and linguistic isolation among countries with open medical statistics. Not a single case of nervous bulimia has been recorded there, although even according to the CIA, there are more wealthy people there than in Fiji.

As the researchers explain, in fact, the speech is most likely about the reference to the samples characteristic of modern Anglo-American culture as a whole. And Twiggy here is just a drop of water in which the Sun is reflected.