Food is the enemy when one is struggling with an eating disorder. According to Addiction Center, there are three common eating disorders: Anorexia Nervosa, Binge Eating, and Bulimia Nervosa. However, I would be remiss if I did not mention Purging as well.
Anorexia: a person eats far less food than his or her body needs; the person generally measures his or her food intake by attempting to meticulously track each and every calorie eaten and burned. There is a sense of extreme control of food that is generally tied to an unhealthy body image.
Binge Eating: sudden and frequent severe overeating in one sitting in a manner that is often out of control.
Bulimia Nervosa: where an individual practices binge eating followed by unhealthy weight management techniques such as voluntary regurgitation.
Purging: forced regurgitation without a preceding binge which means that the individual may voluntarily regurgitate any food consumed without regard to the amount eaten or caloric value.
According to Mental Health America, eating disorders are complex medical and psychiatric illnesses categorized as bio-psycho-social diseases that may culminate into a life-threatening obsession with food, body image, and/or body weight caused by various biological, sociocultural, and psychological factors including genetic predisposition, low self-esteem, and abuse. These eating disorders have many health consequences including: heart failure, osteoporosis, muscle loss, growth of lanugo (fine hair) all over the body, gastric rupture, tooth decay, rupture of the esophagus, pancreatitis, heart disease, type II diabetes mellitus, gastric rupture, and gallbladder disease.
In Princeton Journal of Bioethics, Lauren Abruzzo, appears to argue that, in severe cases, replenishing the health of an individual suffering from an eating disorder should trump the individual’s autonomy to determine his or her medical care because the eating disorder actually undermines the individual’s autonomy in that the disorder itself disrupts the individual’s capacity to decide what is in his or her best interest health wise.
Similarly, permitting the individual to make the inevitable decision to decline treatment for a treatable life-threatening disease would seem immoral and contrary to the Hippocratic Oath. Autonomy for health does not appear to exist when the mind is preoccupied with waging war against the sustenance that the body needs to achieve a healthy state. In fact, one would argue that, in severe cases, the mind is on a suicide mission and, like suicidal individuals, patients who severely suffer from an eating disorder should not be permitted to have autonomy over their health because being healthy or staying alive is not their main goal.
