{"id":28907,"date":"2025-06-03T07:00:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T07:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=28907"},"modified":"2025-06-03T07:26:55","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T07:26:55","slug":"anorexia-in-middle-age-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=28907","title":{"rendered":"Anorexia in Middle Age and Beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Sally Odenheimer starved herself because she was an athlete and thought she\u2019d run faster on an empty stomach.<\/p>\n

Karla Wagner starved herself because she wanted to be in charge of at least one aspect of her life.<\/p>\n

Janice Bremis simply felt too fat.<\/p>\n

They all sought perfection and control. Not eating helped.<\/p>\n

They are women in their 60s and 70s who have struggled with anorexia nervosa since childhood or adolescence. Years later, their lives are still governed by calories consumed, miles run, laps swum, pounds lost.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an addiction I can\u2019t get rid of,\u201d said Ms. Odenheimer, 73, a retired teacher who lives outside Denver.<\/p>\n

For decades, few people connected eating disorders with older people; they were seen as an affliction of teenage girls and young women. But research suggests that an increasing number of older women have been seeking treatment for eating disorders, including bulimia, binge eating disorder (known as BED) and anorexia, which has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder<\/a>, and brings with it an elevated risk of suicide.<\/p>\n

In a 2017 paper<\/a> in the journal BMC Medicine, researchers reported that more than 15 percent of 5,658 women surveyed met the criteria for a lifetime eating disorder while in their 30s and 40s. A 2023 review<\/a> of recent research reported that the prevalence rates among women 40 and older with full diagnoses of eating disorders were between 2.1 and 7.7 percent. (For men, they were less than 1 percent.)<\/p>\n

\n
\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.<\/p>\n

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into<\/a>\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe<\/a>\u00a0for all of The Times.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.<\/p>\n

Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sally Odenheimer starved herself because she was an athlete and thought she\u2019d run faster on an empty stomach.Karla Wagner starved herself because she wanted to be in charge of at least one aspect of her life.Janice Bremis simply felt too fat.They all sought perfection and control. Not eating helped.They are women in their 60s and 70s who have struggled with anorexia nervosa since childhood or adolescence. Years later, their lives are still governed by calories consumed, miles run, laps swum, pounds lost.\u201cIt\u2019s an addiction I can\u2019t get rid of,\u201d said Ms. Odenheimer, 73, a retired teacher who lives outside Denver.For decades, few people connected eating disorders with older people; they were seen as an affliction of teenage girls and young women. But research suggests that an increasing number of older women have been seeking treatment for eating disorders, including bulimia, binge eating disorder (known as BED) and anorexia, which has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder, and brings with it an elevated risk of suicide.In a 2017 paper in the journal BMC Medicine, researchers reported that more than 15 percent of 5,658 women surveyed met the criteria for a lifetime eating disorder while in their 30s and 40s. A 2023 review of recent research reported that the prevalence rates among women 40 and older with full diagnoses of eating disorders were between 2.1 and 7.7 percent. (For men, they were less than 1 percent.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28909,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28907"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28910,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28907\/revisions\/28910"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}