Anorexics are a strange breed of dieter. No matter how thin they become, they still feel fat. They literally stave themselves down to nothing, all the while insisting that they ”should really lose a few more pounds.” When anorexics do give in to hunger, they don’t just nibble.

They binge compulsively (called bulimia), craving and eating up of several pounds of food. Then, to cancel out their guilty feelings of indulgence and to relieve the bloating the food produces, they force themselves to vomit or purge themselves with laxatives, diuretics and diet pills.

A frightening number of people between 10 and 30 years of age, most of them women, have this distorted attitude toward food and body image known as anorexia bulimia. It's the flip side of obesity. And doctors don't know for certain what cause it – or what to do about it.

Because most psychiatrists blame anorexia bulimia on deep feelings of anxiety, depression and poor self image, counseling and antidepressant drugs are standard treatment. Sometimes those help, but sometimes they don't. About 65 percent of the women continue their self destructive habits, and about half of them eventually die from malnutrition, infection or other kinds of physical breakdown.

Anorexia bulimia is far from a harmless weight loss scheme. ”It's a very tragic illness in that anorexics are usually highly intelligent, creative people,” says Bernard Raxlen, M.D., a psychiatrist and director of the Graduate Center for Family Studies in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Reforming an anorexia bulimic is about as difficult as reforming an alcoholic, though.

”The compulsive eating and purging is emotionally soothing,” says Dr. Raxlen. ”It relieves not only hunger but distressing thoughts and emotions. Normal eating is not enough to dispel that tension, but binge eating is – even though it is accompanied by a constant fear of not being able to stop.”

The binge and purge cycle is the sort of addictive behavior that’s typical of unsuspected food allergy. Acting on that observation, Dr. Raxlen and a colleague, Leonard Galland, M.D., tested eight women with anorexia bulimia for allergies and gastrointestinal problems, among other possible health problems.

All the women showed serious abnormalities of some kind or another. Drs. Raxlen and Galland then designed an experimental treatment program that, in addition to psychological therapy, included:

• A Rotary Diets for food allergies;
• Immunotherapy injections for food, chemicals and other inhalant;
• A Yeast Free Diet with aggressive treatment of abdominal candidiasis (yeast infestation of the small bowel); and
• Digestive aids, including pancreative enzymes, betaine hydrochloride and Lactobacillus acidophilus (a beneficial bacteria commonly found in yogurt).

While the treatment did not produce dramatic results, three of the women seemed to do much better on the program, says Dr. Raxlen. The binge and purge cycle of anorexia bulimia may be a bizarre twist in the basic workings of food cravings and allergy. Hopefully, DR. Raxlen’s research will stimulate more doctors to investigate Food Allergy as a possible cause of distorted eating habits in people (usually women) with anorexia bulimia.