Can Bulimia Lead To Cancer?

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Do you ever find yourself looking in the mirror and not liking what you see, looking at a magazine wishing I want to be just as skinny as her, looking at all the billboards and its just some pretty slim girl and you tell yourself that can never be me I'm just way too big?
Well, if your that girl, you will find this blog interesting. Do you know about bulimia. Many people who are insecure about there weight or are bullied about it or who have the mindset that only skinny people can be models go through this process called Bulimia. Bulimia is a disorder where you eat, then you make yourself vomit. Some people may be thinking, "Hey, that's not so bad what's wrong with making my body vomit there's no risk in that" But little do they know Bulimia can be cancer-causing.

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Have you ever heard of esophageal cancer. Well, let me explain to you what it is and then the connection it has with Bulimia. Esophageal cancer is cancer that takes place in the esophagus. The esophagus is a tube in your throat that helps you to take down to your stomach for digestion. Esophageal cancer occurs when a tumor forms in the lining of the esophagus as you can see in figure 2, which makes it harder to swallow, and you may feel the tightness of the throat. A study by Shinohara and co-workers at UPenn examined a patient who went through bulimia and later developed esophageal cancer. 

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 The patient was a 27-year-old woman who was complaining of worsening epigastric pain reflux, and fatigue. And they soon found out that she had a history of bulimia for 1 year when she was seventeen. At least once a day she binge ate and self introduced vomit also she smoked 10 cigarettes per day since the age of 20 she was in denial of the fact that she was a drug abuser which may have caused a synergistic effect. She was not chronic bulimia. There was no physical evidence of dorsal finger calluses or parotid enlargement. In her upper gastrointestinal she had a 10mm ulcerated lesion near the gastroesophageal and poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma and had evidence of serosal invasion, and was staged with having T3 N0 M0 disease stage 11a. It's extremely important that you diagnose esophageal cancer early and pay attention to the different risk factors prime example smoking, gastroesophageal reflux disease, Tabacco use obesity, and Barrett's esophagus. As this disease carries a devasting prognosis. due to the lack of other risks, her bulimia seems to be one of the main risk factors for her cancer. The patient went through 7 treatments but it had already been too late because cancer had started to spread everywhere in the body so that caused her death. 

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vomiting when you don't have to is extremely bad because it damages your esophagus and strains it so when you are purposely sticking your finger down your throat think of the risk factors. Cancer is not the only one its many more risk factors to bulimia, but cancer is the one that stuck out to me the most. I believe that many people don't take bulimia serious enough. if a patient has a history of bulimia I believe they should be checked early to see if they have cancer. Many lives would be changed by taking early action.

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Reference:
Shinohara, E.T., Swisher-McClure, S., Husson, M. et al. Esophageal cancer in a young woman with bulimia nervosa: a case report. J Med Case Reports 1, 160 (2007) doi:10.1186/1752-1947-1-160