How often are laxatives used for eating disorders? Laxatives are used frequently with people who have eating disorders. It's more frequent than most people realize. Laxatives are similar to self-inducing...
It's more frequent than most people realize. Laxatives are similar to self-inducing vomiting in the sense that they cause dehydration. So one person who abuse laxatives, they are usually what we call osmotic laxatives. They create a situation in the bowel that sucks in all the water in the body and then people overdose on laxatives. They have diarrhea, but they also become dehydrated, which can be dangerous. We have seen patients that abuse laxatives daily sometimes 3-4 times a week who become dependent on it. In other words they can't go to the bathroom without it or develop a chronic bowel or in other words a bowel that's paralyzed without it. We have also seen patients here that abuse 10 laxatives a day, but I have seen patients that have abused 200 a day. With laxative dependencies if you stop without being under medical supervision you can develop an impaction, which is very dangerous and life threatening. So we usually have a protocol in treating that by using things like stool softener, Metamucil, lots of water, exercise. With the stethoscope we listen for bowel sounds and monitor people to make sure they don't get impacted. Usually if someone is younger their bowel will restore functioning from laxative abuse relatively soon within a week, two weeks or whatever. If someone is in their 40s or 50s it takes much longer and it's much more dangerous.
Other prevalent tools for abusing are laxatives, abusing diuretics, self-inducing vomiting, using diet pills like amphetamine, Tenuate, cocaine. Cocaine abuse and speed abuse amongst people with eating disorders are typically women. Other means are compulsive exercising, fasting, juice fasting, anything that manipulates body weight or expenditure of energy.
