Anorexia in Middle Age and Beyond

[Pelican Press 0]

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Anorexia in Middle Age and Beyond

Sally Odenheimer starved herself because she was an athlete and thought she’d run faster on an empty stomach.

Karla Wagner starved herself because she wanted to be in charge of at least one aspect of her life.

Janice Bremis simply felt too ****.

They all sought perfection and control. Not eating helped.

They are women in their 60s and 70s who have struggled with anorexia nervosa since childhood or adolescence. Years later, their lives are still governed by calories consumed, miles run, laps swum, pounds lost.

“It’s an addiction I can’t get rid of,” said Ms. Odenheimer, 73, a retired teacher who lives outside Denver.

For decades, few people connected eating disorders with older people; they were seen as an affliction of teenage girls and young women. But research suggests that an increasing number of older women have been seeking treatment for eating disorders, including bulimia, binge eating disorder (known as BED) and anorexia, which has the

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, and brings with it an elevated risk of suicide.

In a

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in the journal BMC Medicine, researchers reported that more than 15 percent of 5,658 women surveyed met the criteria for a lifetime eating disorder while in their 30s and 40s. A 2023

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of recent research reported that the prevalence rates among women 40 and older with full diagnoses of eating disorders were between 2.1 and 7.7 percent. (For men, they were less than 1 percent.)

These studies add to the evidence suggesting that a number of older women continue to suffer from the untreated or poorly treated eating disorders of their youth. Some eating disorders are newly diagnosed during menopause, when many women feel a loss of control over their changing bodies. But, said Margo Maine, a clinical psychologist in West Hartford, Conn., who specializes in eating disorders: “It’s very rare that it’s all of a sudden.”

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No Treatment

In general, the earlier an eating disorder is diagnosed, the greater the

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in treating it. But before the mid 1980s, little was known about them.

For her forthcoming memoir,

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, Mallary Tenore Tarpley, a journalism professor at the University of Texas, Austin, surveyed more than 700 women, men and trans people ages 18 to 78 with eating disorders.

“Many of the older women I spoke to said they never received proper treatment — or any treatment — when they were younger,” said Ms. Tarpley, 40, who was hospitalized with anorexia as a teenager and still grapples with eating issues. “This was especially true of women who were struggling in the 1970s and 1980s, when eating disorder treatment was nascent.”

Doctors are now seeing the long-term impact of disordered eating on older bodies, including osteoporosis, arthritis, dental issues and heart disease.

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#Anorexia #Middle #Age

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