Still Starving for Thinness

Older Women Not Immune to Eating Disorders: Study

By Amy Norton
Reuters

Nov 10, 2006 — NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Even into their 60s, many women are unhappy with their weight and body shape, and a small percentage suffer from full-blown eating disorders, a new study suggests.

Though anorexia, bulimia and other eating disorders are mainly problems of young women, there has been some evidence that body-image issues and eating disorders also affect women in middle-age and beyond.

In the new study, Austrian researchers found that among 475 women 60 to 70 years old, 60 percent said they were dissatisfied with their bodies. Moreover, 4 percent met the criteria for an eating disorder diagnosis.

For most of these women, the diagnosis was "eating disorder-not otherwise specified" — where a person has eating disorder symptoms but does not meet all the criteria for anorexia or bulimia.

People with this diagnosis may, for example, have symptoms of anorexia but weigh in the normal range. Or they may purge by vomiting or abuse laxatives, but not binge-eat, as in bulimia.

It may surprise many people that older women can suffer from eating disorders, as even doctors are largely unaware of the problem, according to Dr. Barbara Mangweth-Matzek, the study's lead author and a professor at Innsbruck Medical University.

That's because there's been virtually no research into the body-image and eating disturbances of older women, she told Reuters Health.

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