EKG for Anorexia?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At the risk of hijacking the thread, I’m at 43yo who recovered from years of anorexia and haven’t ever been given good info on follow up now that I’m years out in terms of cardiac care. I had an EKG done about 10 years ago because I was having recurrent palpitations but they have eased off and they were considered benign but I’ve always wondered about my lifetime risk/damage.

Why not see a cardiologist for a full workup?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anorexia can lower the heart rate to a point that can damage it. This is the reason that anorexia is the most dangerous mental illness. Even if people recover from it, it will often kill them in their 30's.

You know you can determine the heart by feeling the pulse, right? That's what the pulse it. You don't need an EKG for that.

"Often" is inaccurate though yes Anorexia and bulimia are both physically dangerous (Worked at all levels of care in the eating disorder field early in my career and did my dissertation on ED related subject). It happens, yes. And is noted in the literature. But I don't think one can say common, especially if a person resumes eating and working a recovery. Theoretically, vomiting decreases potassium whereby you can absolutely get an arrythmia and code/have sudden cardiac arrest. And yet I worked with many women with bulimia for years, and have known a few in my personal life, yet no one I know has died of sudden cardiac death. And some vomited for years. Even on the unit where we saw the sickest anorexics, I'm talking 70 pounds on tube feeding, most did
not die. Granted, some lived lives like a chronically mentally ill person and I suspect had serious physical issues as they aged. But death was not common.

[Anonymous]

In above post I was referencing the poster who said death in 30's from AN was common.

[Anonymous]

One of the rare patients who died during the time I worked in the field died I think technically of congestive heart failure caused by the years of severe eating disorder behavior, which included I think severe laxative abuse. (Which is correlated with more serious pathology, and worse outcomes,, as was the case with Karen Carpenter). The patient I'm thinking of had an incest abuse history, just a devastating trauma background. So the devil might be in the details: Chronic laxative use or someone with an underlying
heart arrythmia might be more vulnerable to early
death. A history of ongoing sexual abuse might also be a correlation.