The homeopathic treatment of eating disorders and the case of a starving child

- A. Maslan

Anorexia

Three years ago, a young woman came to my office suffering from anorexia nervosa. Besides starving herself, she was also purging with ten to twenty laxatives per day. She had several health problems as well as possible heart damage. I felt she needed additional support, possibly admittance to an eating disorder clinic. I spent hours contacting clinics nationwide and could not find one that charged less than $20-40,000 for a maximum four-week stay. My client could not afford these fees.
 In my research on eating disorders in America, I found some startling statistics:
 • The mortality rate for anorexia nervosa is higher than that of any other psychiatric disorder and it is the leading cause of death in young women.
 • Ten to twenty percent of anorexics will eventually die from complications.
 • Female fashion models are on average 23% below what is considered normal weight.
 • Between 13-20 % of female college students report engaging in the binge/purge cycle of bulimia. Signs posted in one university's women's dormitory bathroom read: "Please stop purging: stomach acid is destroying the plumbing."
 • 70-80% of fourth grade girls report they are dieting, some claiming they would rather be dead than fat.
 • An estimated seven million women and one million men suffer from eating disorders.
 An eating disorder reflects a complete obsession with body image and food. This compulsion can be so severe that it becomes the focus of a person's entire existence and cripples them from functioning day to day in the real world.
 Yasgur's Dictionary defines anorexia nervosa as "an abnormal or hysterical aversion to food which can lead to serious malnutrition." The contemporary meaning for bulimia is an insatiable craving for food, with episodes of continuous eating, followed by self-induced vomiting or purging, often with depression and self-deprivation. All that's missing from this definition is death.
 The starvation can begin as early as birth. When caregivers do not properly comfort and nurture babies, the children grow up not knowing how to self-soothe in a healthy way. Instead, they seek abnormal amounts of external comfort or relief. Caregivers who do not accurately listen, acknowledge and validate, make it difficult for children, in turn, to learn how to validate themselves. This results in a distorted, negative self-image or no self-image at all. Previous attempts to receive love and attention have brought disappointment, frustration, or even abuse. These children turn to eating disorders as a substitute. They deal with indigestible facts and feelings by eating or not eating, soothing their hurt by eating or not eating food, and gathering self-esteem in accordance with their ability to control their intake of food.
 If they fail at controlling their eating habits, (and they will, because it is a natural instinct to feed our bodies) they follow by abusing their bodies with starvation or purging. This vicious cycle repeats, over and over again.
 Societal influences and the media play a huge role in influencing the manifestation of eating disorders. Liz Taylor said, "The more you lose weight, the more they love you. It was not a healthy job." (Gross 350) In the 1960s, the model, Twiggy, was admired by many adult women who went on starvation diets to mimic her emaciated looks. There has been a dramatic change in our view of beauty over the recent decades. For example, in 1951, at the Miss America Pageant, Sweden was represented by a woman 5'7" tall and weighing 151 lbs. In 1983, Miss Sweden was 5'9" and weighed 109 lbs. This epidemic has become so prevalent in our cultural landscape that many of us do not even recognize the illness as we look it straight in the face.
 As homeopaths, how can we help these patients? To successfully treat this obsession, we need to address the underlying disordered belief or trauma. Where did things go wrong? This is the key. The starving, binging or purging are just symptoms of the underlying cause. These are common symptoms; we must find the uncommon element. One person suffering a trauma may manifest a completely different set of symptoms from another. These symptoms can include violence or other types of addiction. I believe that the vital force has a tendency to react in a certain way based on the patient's unique make-up. For instance, there are 490 remedies listed in ReferenceWorks under anorexia. That does not mean that everyone who matches those remedies will become anorexic. However, the tendency is there in each of those remedies and given the right circumstances, the symptoms of anorexia may develop. One of the keys to finding the right remedy is to dig underneath the outward manifestation in order to heal the source. The following case and analysis illustrates this.