Overeating is a heart disease

Author: Fan Qinyi, Chief Physician, Harbin First Specialist Hospital

Li Yang, deputy chief physician, Harbin No. 1 Specialist Hospital

Reviewer: Xu Zhaoyuan, Chief Physician, Harbin No. 1 Specialist Hospital

Xiaomei’s strange disease?

Xiaomei is a 17-year-old girl, a sophomore in high school. She has excellent academic performance since she was young and gets along well with her classmates. When she was in high school, her parents chose a private school for her. After going to school, she was under intense study pressure, and her grades were not as outstanding as before, and her popularity was not as good as before. In order to ease the relationship with her classmates, Xiaomei began to please all of them as much as possible, and she tried her best to fulfill the requests made by others, even if she was unable to do so.

But she gradually found that her efforts were not appreciated or recognized by her classmates, and they were dissatisfied with her because she could not meet their requirements occasionally. As a result, she was often criticized by her classmates, and gradually began to feel bad, lonely, and irritable. Gradually, she developed a strange disease. Whenever she was in a bad mood, Xiaomei would secretly buy a lot of snacks and eat them non-stop, and she would not stop until her stomach was bloated and uncomfortable. If she didn't eat what she wanted, she would be in a bad mood, not in the mood for class, and even couldn't sleep well at night.

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Xiaomei became noticeably fatter due to frequent overeating. She was very distressed and vowed again and again not to overeat. But once she was in a bad mood, she could not control herself and ate even more. Over time, she entered a vicious cycle, her figure became more and more bloated, her grades plummeted, and she began to refuse to go to school.

What disease does Xiaomei have?

Xiaomei's symptoms are medically classified as a psychosomatic disease, called bulimia, which is more common in young women and is a type of disease characterized by recurrent episodes of binge eating. The main manifestations are recurrent, uncontrollable, and impulsive binge eating, without compensatory behaviors such as vomiting and exercise. Bulimia patients often fall into binge eating, then regret it very much, and then cannot extricate themselves due to emotional problems, entering a vicious cycle of binge eating again. Bulimia patients often have digestive system complications, such as nausea, abdominal pain, bloating, indigestion, severe acute gastrointestinal dilatation, acute pancreatitis, etc. Due to rapid weight gain, obesity-related complications occur, such as hypertension, diabetes, sleep apnea syndrome, and severe obesity may even lead to congestive heart failure.

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How to treat binge eating disorder?

Bulimia is a serious psychological and behavioral problem. Its treatment is a multidisciplinary treatment model, which is mainly based on psychotherapy, supplemented by drug therapy, and combined with physical therapy. The psychological treatment of bulimia is mainly cognitive behavioral therapy. Binge eating behavior is mainly an emotional problem. The psychological treatment of bulimia should start with emotions, break the vicious cycle of abnormal behavior of patients with self-dissatisfaction, increase patients' self-confidence, intervene and monitor patients' behavior, and reduce binge eating behavior as much as possible, so as to achieve the purpose of curing the disease. Drug treatment is mainly based on antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs, which can alleviate patients' emotional disorders and inhibit binge eating behavior. Physical treatment mainly provides symptomatic treatment for patients' digestive system and complications of obesity to relieve patients' pain.

In short, bulimia is a psychosomatic disease, and the principle of treatment is to treat both the mind and the body. The goal of treatment is not only to reduce or stop binge eating behavior, but also to treat the patient's physical health and help the patient restore his or her mental and physical health so that they can better return to society.