Diabetics Skipping Insulin to Lose Weight

Jun 18, 10:57 PM

Current Headlines: By JIM ELLIS

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 skipping insulin to lose weight. For the next 17 years, diabulimia was her compulsion.

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

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.

The American Diabetes Association has long known about insulin omission as a tactic to lose weight.

But "diabulimia" is a term that has only cropped up in recent years and is not a recognized medical condition.

Type 1 diabetes is a disorder in which the body's own immune system attacks insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. People with this disease produce little or no insulin, so they take shots of the hormone daily. It differs from Type 2, the form associated with obesity.

When Type 1 diabetics skip or reduce their insulin, they risk falling into a coma or even dying. Blindness, amputations and kidney failure are some of the long-term complications that can develop.

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