Bulimia Anorexia Blog

Bulimia (bulimia nervosa) is an addictive eating disorder which begins
with physical cravings then evolves into a mental obsession and finally
turns into a spiritual illness. It usually comes from an unresolved
trauma (emotional, psychological or even physical) earlier in life.

The question is what is the mechanism of developing a bulimic food
addiction? What happens in a bulimic brain when she/he develops bulimia?

Here is the short and simple explanation. Our brain consists of two
halves (called hemispheres). Both hemispheres are covered by a thick
layer called the cortex. The cortex is the conscious part of the brain,
the part we think with (just logic thinking). But this part of the
brain is not responsible for our feelings.

We have another small part of our brain, which lies between the two
hemispheres and connects them. This little part is called the limbic
system. The limbic system as discussed in the next section, is involved
in regulating emotions and motivations. In addition, parts of the
limbic system, the amygdala and hippocampus, are important for memory.

The limbic system does not have a conscious thoughts it has only feelings.
In other words, the limbic system is what we call our subconscious
or subconscious mind.

It has been found that people with emotional problems have an imbalance
of the limbic system or subconscious. This includes problems like anxiety,
depression, eating disorders, alcoholism and other addictions.
 
In the period of acute stress, we also have an imbalance in the limbic
system (or subconscious) - that is why stress affects us, not only
emotionally, but mentally and physically as well.
 
After stress, some people recover quickly - and we call them “strong people.”
What “strong” actually means is that they know how to affect their limbic
system (subconscious) and put it in balance.

The question is: how to influence the limbic system and put it in the
right balance?

The answer is: the cortex, which is the conscious part of the brain
and through this we have influence over the limbic system the non-conscious
part. The cortex, which makes decisions for us, learns new things, and
understands things for us, should influence the non-conscious part of
the brain by giving signals to the limbic system to work differently.

Most eating disorders are a learned behavior. Initially you taught
yourself to diet, or to become slim. Initially it was your own conscious
decision to lose weight because you wanted to look better. This conscious
decision was made by your cortex and sent to your limbic system, which
then gave you feelings (like feeling good about yourself when you
become slim).

So, what you need to do is reverse this faulty teaching; you (or your cortex)
should make another decision (about changing your own image and feelings
that you have now, like starving yourself or purging, back to a normal
response) and send a signal to your limbic system to foster good
feelings about yourself and make new decision about your life.

How do you do this? There are lots of examples how this works. There
are special new programs that can automatically affect the limbic
system of your brain (the part of the brain where the eating disorder lives).
These programs can identify and eliminate your subconscious blockages
that created your eating disorder in the first place.

To conclude, bulimia food addiction develops as a result of subconscious
processes due to unresolved trauma or strong dissatisfaction with one’s
body image. The limbic system is responsible for developing the problem
but the conscious part of the brain (cortex) can affect it and reverse
the abnormal mental process.

To learn more how to do this read  http://www.bulimia-cure.com

The treatment for anorexia nervosa is often difficult and can take a long time. Some patients improve much slower then others do with many relapses during the recovery process. The treatment can be subdivided into immediate or long term anorexia treatment.

The immediate concerns of most people who present with anorexia nervosa is always low weight, nutrition balance and complications (like organs failure) due to long term starvation. All these have to be addressed first before long term psychological treatment can begin.

Some people who are a danger to themselves because they refuse to eat have to be hospitalized until they gain enough body weight to maintain their life. Many of these patients will need to have intravenous injections of highly nutritious products to replace their nutritional losses. If attempts to feed them fail they may need a tube inserted into their stomach to improve their nutritious status. The lengths of these treatments can vary depending on how the patients progress.  

Long time psychological treatment should start while in the hospital. A team of professionals are normally involved including psychologists, counselors, social workers, nutritionists and medical doctors.

The team has to be very supportive and cooperative in their attempts to persuade the sufferer to take the treatment seriously and understand the importance of it. Many patients have to be forced into treatment against their desires (like emergency and life saving situations due to starvation and organs failure). This can hamper the sufferer’s willingness for treatment in the first instance; but by building a trusting and supportive relationship with a patient over time can help to breakdown this barrier.

Psychotherapy starts when a trusting relationship with the patient has been established. A number of issues have to be addressed: body image, anxiety, depression, fears, eating habits and other concerns. The most difficult one is the body image issue because the person is absolutely obsessed with being thin and staying thin. Putting on weight which is crucial for recovery can become a major fear for the sufferer that is difficult to overcome.

Personality issues, coping strategies, relationship problems – all have to be looked at in the therapy sessions with the patient.

Lots of people improve by the time of their discharge from the hospital but the treatment for anorexia nervosa should not finish there. Relapses at home after hospitalization is extremely common, over 95% of all sufferers have some kind of problem. Actually much more people do relapse than those who do not, a scary statistic for the sufferer.

And here is where research has shown that family therapy and home treatments should be the first choice of help after leaving the hospital or clinic.

Research has shown now that if a person does not have good home support and family involvement in their treatment, the person has a very slim chance for recovery.

Many parents and family members have no idea what it is they are supposed to do to help: what they should say to the sufferer and what they should not. Most uninformed family members still think that all the sufferer has to do is eat, and everything will be okay: but of course this is totally wrong.

Also family members do not know what kind of atmosphere in the house they should create to support the sufferer and make her/him understand that recovery is possible. It is here that most sufferers relapse because they are normally left to their own devices, simply because no one else has the slightest idea of what to do.

There are many ways to treat bulimia but not very many of them really cure bulimia.

Popular treatment is going to the doctors or clinics or a counselor. How helpful are these? Statistic shows that nearly 90% of suffers relapse after attending these kinds of treatment.

What happens to these people is they feel temporary better while they are in the clinic or in a doctor’s room, but lose all sense of self-control around food when they come back home or while on their own and unprotected.

The next way of treatment is group therapy where sufferers are supposed to get ongoing support and help from other sufferers and a group leader. But this way has many flaws and is not helpful either: it can actually become harmful to many sufferers.

The reasons of this are that while in the group there is often a competition for attention. In the group patients often deliberately get worse or engage in more symptoms just to get extra attention from each other or the therapist. This kind of competition always exists in eating disorder help groups but on many different levels. Sometimes it can get out of control and cause a lot of harm to some members of the group, the most venerable ones.

Also, while in the group people learn from each other. And they learn not necessary only the good things. They learn a lot of bad stuff too. Like say if a young woman has never heard of drinking ipecac to induce vomiting and learns this technique in group therapy. She may try the technique out herself at home; instead of getting positive help she has just learned how to mask her disorder even more. This can also have a detrimental effect on the group leaving the group leader or member feeling responsible for teaching her.

Some doctors prescribe drugs to treat eating disorders but this also does not fix the problem and in the long run even makes things worse.

The only way to cure bulimia in my opinion is to eliminate the reason why people have it.

You see what happens is that people understand that their bulimia is slowly killing them and want to stop but they can’t.It seems like something inside the person is stronger than their own free will and controls their logical thinking.  

What is this something?
It is basically another part of our brain called the subconscious mind that not only is responsible for people’s feelings, emotions and non-conscious actions that keep them alive, but it can also work against your own free will.

It is the part of the mind that is responsible for our actions when we do something but we don’t know why we did it.

The subconscious mind operates on feelings and senses. And very often people can’t even describe it logically because it consists of thoughts and feelings. Sufferers just do what the subconscious mind wants them to do.So, the main reason people have bulimia lies in the subconscious mind and to stop bulimia one needs to get rid off the subconscious blockages that always keep you being a bulimic against your will.

Subconscious blockages are described by many sufferers as being like voices or senses they have that make them binge and purge.

If someone has a subconscious emotional blockage preventing her/him from stopping their bulimia, they are unlikely to realize it. An example of this is a bulimic who doesn’t realize that they have “broken eye syndrome” - they see in a mirror a different picture from everyone else: basically their own mind is lying to them.

Subconscious blockages cannot be identified and changed at the rational thinking level; this is where most conventional treatments fail: simply because they think logical actions will fix it.

For example, the “broken eye syndrome” gets worse and worse the longer you have bulimia, because the bulimic brain is constantly working on false information and is reinforcing false beliefs. You can talk logic to a bulimia sufferer all day long and it will not help one bit: because bulimia is not logical.

To conclude, identifying and eliminating your subconscious blockages is the best and really the only way you will ever cure your bulimia. There are special programs that help bulimics to do this at www.bulimia-cure.com

Anorexia is not just about weight loss and refusing to eat. Anorexia has major side effects on the mental, physical and emotional state of a person.

Contracting anorexia means getting a new life style, new coping strategies, new relationships, new thought pattern  and a whole new way of living and none of it is good.

You can say that a new sufferer becomes like a completely new person, different from what she/he used to be.

One of the very distinctive side effects of anorexia is a distorted perception about themselves. It is related to their own body image, their self being and also how they perceive other people as well.

The main measurement of all becomes how skinny they are. Anorexics perceive that their worth is directly related to their weight. They feel and think the same way about other people also.

For example a 19 year old anorexic girl I was talking to said once:” I know that the more weight I lose the better and stronger person I become. I understand that all overweight people are lazy, fat and no good”.

But the meaning of being overweight for her is far away from reality. She perceives even normal weight people as overweight, including herself. She was already only 49 kg (height 164cm) but she still saw herself like a fat and overweigh person.

She sees this picture because of the other major side effect of anorexia called “broken eye syndrome”. And because anorexics see a wrong picture of themselves and others they want to loose more and more weight and can’t stop starving themselves and over exercising.

 Their relationships with other people change a lot since they contracted their anorexia because they need to spend all their time counting calories, exercising and thinking over a new strategy to lose more weight. Plus anorexics become very judgmental and picky and loose interest in others and everything they did before. All these prevent them from having a normal relationship with others.

And the other side effect of anorexia is their changing respond to everyday stress. This encompasses everything that happens to them, anorexics respond by increasing their exercising time, cutting down on calories and withdrawing further away from other people.

To conclude, anorexia has many side effects on a person. And to stop these negative side effects it is important to change the sufferer’s perception back to what it was before the anorexia.

If their perception is returned back to normal a person will be able to lead a good and healthy life again. How to do it go to http://www.mom-please-help.com   for more in-depth information.

By Dr Irina Webster.

People with bulimia don’t experience a proper sense of satisfaction when they eat. They can eat food then more food and the feelings of hunger or cravings can still be present: this then makes them eat more and more. When they go on a binge it seems there isn’t enough food for them to stop and feel satisfied. Bulimics eat until they get so full they must purge it all up.

Why can normal people stop easily when they full and bulimics can’t?

For people without bulimia the intake of food is perfectly regulated so that they will be satisfied when they have eaten enough. And at that point eating more does not feel desirable, they feel happy and content.

Satisfaction with food is a feeling that the brain creates from different signals from different parts of the body.
For example, rising blood sugar levels during eating signals to the brain that the body is satisfied. When the stomach gets full it signals to the brain that it is time to stop eating. And of course, the knowledge about how much you have eaten can send a message to the brain that you have finished your meal time.

There are special enzymes like enterostatin that are produced when fat is digested in the intestines. Enterostatin sends impulses to the receptors saying “I am full”. These impulses go to the reward centers in the brain which then tells the brain and body “I am satisfied and I don’t want any more food”.

So, for normal people the brain puts together all these factors to decide that they are full. For people with bulimia or other eating disorders these factors do not work anymore or work only partially.
Some people do have feelings of satisfaction but ignore it (don’t listen to their body).

The reasons why people with bulimia and other eating disorders lose their feelings of satisfaction are:

1.A person who has been dieting recently gets messages from the body saying: “Eat more, this is a famine. Eat when the food is available. You don’t know when you will get food again.” This makes them lose sense of satisfaction from eating.  
 
2. A person who has vomited recently has similar signals from the body about the body is starving and needs food for nourishment.

3. The food a bulimic normally eats (like biscuits, chips, candy,  sweets, white bread etc.) does not give proper satisfaction impulses.  You have to eat food like root vegetables, meat, fish, porridge, eggs etc to make your body satisfied with the eating.
 
4.When people eat rapidly (compulsively like people with bulimia) the satisfaction processes fail to work. The slower you eat, the longer you chew the greater satisfaction you get.

5. Anxiety can be a reason for losing sense of satisfaction. A person who is anxious and agitated eats to reduce these feelings because food reduces anxiety. Managing anxiety with different strategies (like meditation, relaxation etc.) will help to obtain
proper satisfaction from eating.

6.Some bulimic people are not aware of their hunger and satisfaction feelings. They may just need to learn it again. Learn to differentiate hunger from anxiety, from fear or tiredness. They need to learn to name their feelings, acknowledge them and cope with them by other means (not with food).
  
To conclude, people with bulimia need to work on their subconscious first of all to return their sense of food satisfaction back to normal.  Feelings of satisfaction are an important component for bulimia recovery. You can return you feelings of satisfaction back by removing subconscious blockages from your mind. This will then in turn, allow
the proper feelings to return and normalize once again,
http://www.bulimia-cure.com

 By William Webster

Getting the right help for eating disorders isn’t easy.

Why you may ask? This is because most people relapse and suffer again, even after repeated treatment programs and hospital stays.

 Medical literature often characterizes anorexia-bulimia as “cunning” and “baffling.” It doesn’t have to be that way, but how do you find the best treatment possible?I have been dealing with eating disorder people for many years and I have noticed that people who go to clinics feel OK while they are in the clinic or with the counselor but lose all sense of self-control when they are at home. They normally slip back to their bad eating habits in a matter of weeks even days after visiting medical professionals.What has been proved to be helpful for these sort of people is an eating disorder home treatment program that a sufferer can follow at home (herself or with family). One of the most successful programs I know is by Karen Philips her Home Treatment Program is called “Mom Please Help” designed for sufferers of anorexia-bulimia. http://stores.ebay.com.au/Asarakas-Treasures 
Karen is a dedicated mother who successfully treated her daughter Amy for 11 years of eating disorder hell after all the conventional treatments for Amy failed.She developed a step by step individual home treatment program: one for adults and one for under 18s. This eating disorder home treatment program has already helped many people to recover. Karen also does individual counseling for people who have read her book and she does it for free as her personal contribution to eradicating eating disorders. In her book Karen tells you everything she did to treat her daughter. She also shows everything what works and what doesn’t work in a successful eating disorder treatment process. So, for those who have tried many methods to treat their eating disorder and failed Karen’s book “Mom Please Help” will be a good alternative to try. Read about it at http://stores.ebay.com.au/Asarakas-Treasures

 By Dr Irina Webster

I have noticed a growing trend in the emails I receive from people asking for help with eating disorder problems. It has become obvious that something is terribly wrong with the normal medical approach to helping eating disorder sufferers.I would like to share with you just some of the pleas for help I get so you can see what I mean. 

“Dear Doctor
My daughter is away at university she had a week to go before the end of the term/academic year.  Her weight is very low (under 5 stones) and although she has some help (psychiatrist/art therapy/dietician) she is really struggling and desperate for some rest bite and help but the resources available are scarce and a hospital admission initially to a medical ward is what is most likely to happen.  Over the years she has had 3 admission to specialist units where she has gained weight over many month only to lose it all once she resumes independent living.  She does not believe another hospital admission would really help but to be honest she is getting so ill she may not have a choice”. 

Here is another email from a desperate mother.

“Dear Doctor
I am a mother who has a 17 year-old daughter suffering from bulimia and anorexia.  She is receiving no help whatsoever from our doctor or counseling services here in Northern Ireland. It fact she seems to be getting worse although she is under treatment. I can’t understand what is happening can you help me please”. I receive many of emails like these from people who just can’t understand why their love one is finding it so hard to recover even though they are under medical supervision. And I will explain the reasons in a moment but first here is another plea from a grandmother I received. 

Hi Doctor
I hope I am not fussing too much but we are so desperate as my granddaughter is rapidly going downhill with really bad tantrums etc., and is so thin and won’t eat hardly anything, we are all in despair and so scared for her health she continues to lose 2lb every week she has been seeing councilors and the weight loss has increased since then. We cannot understand why she is getting worse, we thought she would get better after seeing a counselor.

Another cry for help. 

Dear Doctor
I have just finished speaking to my brother and sister-in-law who are at a crisis point in trying to deal with their daughter’s anorexia. Alice says they are both beyond hell and do not know how to recover the lives of their daughter or themselves. I suspect it is putting immense strain on their marriage as well.  Their 16 year old daughter knows what the condition is doing to her but is powerless to ignore the voices in her head telling her to do the opposite of everything that will help get her better. She is critically thin and starting to be suicidal. After the phone call I got on line and was lead to you.  I do not know how else to help. They are on that dreadful treadmill of Doctors, hospitals and counselors, today they have been told by the doctors to go to her school and sit with her while she eats her lunch!! This is no life.

There is a reason why all these people are understandably confused and it stems from the lack real understanding of the condition by conventional medical practice in treating eating disorders.

Most eating disorder specialists are highly trained and very competent it looking after sufferers and most of the doctors I have talked to are equally baffled by the results they are getting.  

One of the main things you have to understand is eating disorders are not logical so you can not treat them with logic. An eating disorder is all about feelings and emotions and these are certainly not logical.

You can’t counsel a person by pointing out they could die from their disorder: most already know this but still cannot change.

Sitting around just listening to the sufferer talk about how they feel, or asking them to keep charts on what they eat is only making them focus on their ED even more.  Getting them involved in group therapy does not work in most cases either. In fact this can cause more problems that it fixes as sufferers can get attached to the group. They make friends with other sufferers and then if they get better they have to leave all their friends, so they choose not to get better.

So what is the remedy for the sufferer and their families?

The only way to beat an eating disorder is by attacking the eating disorder where it lives and that is in the subconscious mind of the sufferer.

To do this you have to reprogram the mind of the sufferer by using positive input.This does not simply mean just trying to think positive or telling them self that everything is rosy, because this does not work either.What you need is a specific method and set of exercises that are tailor made to change the way the sufferer sees them self and thinks about them self. A treatment method that helps the sufferer defeat the voices in their head that is leading them down the dark path that is their eating disorder.

One of the best places to start finding out about this kind of treatment method is an www.mom-please-help.com written by a mother who battled for years to save her daughter’s life when all else failed.

I have seen the results first hand myself and was very impressed with the high success rate sufferers had when they followed the program.  

By William Webster BA.

It was with great interest that I read in the UK Telegraph about the ex deputy prime minister of the UK John Prescott and his battle with bulimia. It is good that man in such a high powered position has finally come out and said he was a sufferer of this insidious disorder.

It was also with interest that the headline in the Times online said “How could a big man like John Prescott have a girl’s illness”? This has always been a huge misconception that only women and girls get eating disorders and of course this could not be further from the truth.

Although there are more women with the disease than men, it does not mean there are not many more male sufferers out there who have hidden the disorder like Mr. John Prescott has.

Statistics say that there are many more women with the disease than men but this could be because men will not come forward and seek help. It boils down to the fact that men will not tell anyone because of the stigma attached to people with eating disorders, especially males with this problem: this in turn can easily skew the statistics.

Mr. Prescott put his bulimia down to the fact he was under enormous stress associated with his job as a parliamentarian, working long hours and deriving his only pleasures from eating large amounts of food. He stated himself that he ate huge amounts of food and no one ever suspected he was a bulimic because he was not thin.

This is another misconception; you do not have to be really thin to have bulimia: Mr. Prescott is certainly no stick figure. I have been asked the same question many times by family members of a sufferer who say, but he does not look really thin. My answer back is you don’t have to be to be thin to be bulimic.

So why do men contract a disorder like bulimia?

Like Mr. Prescott says his was due to stress and this is certainly one of the keys. But it can also be for job reasons and many male sufferers start of being bulimic because of their occupation. We have come across many male sufferers who are dancers, gymnasts, jockeys, airline stewards, male models and many more industries where being a certain size is a must for the job.

Most people, who know little about a disease like bulimia and this includes many journalists, say why can’t they just stop: I wish it was as simple as that but it is not. Like Mr. Prescott said he got some weird satisfaction from binging and then purging and all bulimics get the same thing.
 
When a bulimic purges they get a release of a pleasure hormone not unlike the endorphins an athlete gets after exercising. This feel good hormone is one of the reasons a bulimic continues on with his erratic eating behavior. The problem is the rush they get is very short lived, so they have to binge and purge even more. So asking a bulimic to simply stop is like asking a non-sufferer to give up breathing air: it is not going to happen.
 
Most non-sufferers and many others think that you can beat bulimia with logic and by pointing out the errors of their ways they will stop. But again this is an impossibility and simply cannot happen. Mr. Prescott and his wife knew for years it was wrong and that he was in danger of serious medical problems, but he could not stop. If bulimia was a logical disease then he should have been able to stop when he realized he was doing harm to himself, but he couldn’t.

This is because bulimia lives in the subconscious mind of the sufferer and the subconscious mind does not work on logic, it works on feelings and emotions and these are certainly not logical. The longer the bulimic has the disorder the more ingrained it becomes in the subconscious mind of the sufferer.

There is a way you can see how the subconscious mind works for yourself. The next time you explode at one of the kids or go off for no apparent reason, just ask yourself if it was logical. I bet you do not have the slightest idea why it happened; it is because it came from your subconscious mind and not your logical mind.

There is only one way you can really stop bulimia and that is through the subconscious mind where the bulimia lives. It lives there because it was programmed by the sufferer to be there over months or even years as was the case with Mr. Prescott.

If you are a bulimic or if you are a family member of a bulimic, the best place to find out more about how the subconscious mind works is at www.bulimia-cure.com  where it explains all about the connection with the subconscious mind and bulimia.

This site has a very big success rate in treating Bulimia and Anorexia all around the world and is run by Dr Irina Webster an expert in eating disorders.

I have been ask this question so many times by lots of worried parents who think their child may have bulimia but don’t know any of the warning signs.
                           

If you are one of these parents then here is a list of things to look out for, I will start with simple things first:

1: Look for an excessive amount of food that is missing. Things like packets of biscuits you have just bought and they have disappeared overnight. Packets of sweets gone without you even having one yourself. Look for easy accessible foods that seem to be gone faster than what is normal for your family use.

2: The child is starting to act unusual around meal times. Being a bit anxious and not wanting to eat certain food groups, or may play with their food. They may say they have eaten at a friends place but then start to raid the food cupboard for easy food soon after dinner.

3: You notice that the child may have lots of food rappers in their bedroom hidden under the bed or in their trash basket. Half eaten candy bars or potato crisp packets hidden in places that are unusual.

4: The child may start to miss family gatherings or not want to go out to events where they normally would have, like picnics or parties preferring to stay home. Even making excuses they feel ill or have a headache.

5: The child may start to do more exercise that they use to do. Go for long runs or bike rides and start to really push themselves to the extreme.

These are all little things but point to a change in the Childs habits although you can’t come to the conclusion that your Child has Bulimia from these alone. You need more concrete evidence to go with these before you can be sure.

Bulimics normally become very good at hiding their condition from family and friends. Bulimia has been described as secretive and sneaky and it most certainly is.

So you as a parent have to become just as sneaky if you suspect your child of this disorder.

Here are some more concrete things to look out for.

1: The child after finishing their meal disappears to the bathroom for a long time. This starts to become a habit and is a surefire clue to the child being bulimic.

2: You notice the smell of toothpaste on their breath when they come from the bathroom, or a sour smell on their breath.3: You start to find laxatives in their bedroom or empty packets in their trash bin.

4: They start to become really edgy and anxious for no apparent reason and may start telling you to mind your own business if you say anything to them. They act out of character towards you.

5: They start to look sickly and feel the cold more that was normal for them. They may start having problems with their teeth or complain of a sore throat all the time.

 6: They start to become obsessed with there weight and are looking at the bathroom scales all the time, or asking you if they look fat or looking in the mirror more that they use to do.

If you noticed a number of these symptoms together then there is a good chance your child may have Bulimia. But do not simply confront them as this can drive the child away or warn them you are on to them, so they may become even sneakier.

You should educate yourself first from people who have faced what you are facing now. One of the best educational information around on this subject is at www.mom-please-help.com written by a mother whose daughter nearly died from bulimia anorexia. She was able to save her daughter herself when all else had failed.   

 By Dr Irina Webster.

There are many ways to treat bulimia but not very many of them really cure bulimia.
Popular treatment is going to the doctors or clinics or a counselor. How helpful are these? Statistic shows that nearly 90% of suffers relapse after attending these kinds of treatment.

What happens to these people is they feel temporary better while they are in the clinic or in a doctor’s room, but lose all sense of self-control around food when they come back home or while on their own and unprotected.
 
The next way of treatment is group therapy where sufferers are supposed to get ongoing support and help from other sufferers and a group leader. But this way has many flaws and is not helpful either: it can actually become harmful to many sufferers.

The reasons of this are that while in the group there is often a competition for attention. In the group patients often deliberately get worse or engage in more symptoms just to get extra attention from each other or the therapist. This kind of competition always exists in eating disorder help groups but on many different levels. Sometimes it can get out of control and cause a lot of harm to some members of the group, the most venerable ones.

Also, while in the group people learn from each other. And they learn not necessary only the good things. They learn a lot of bad stuff too. Like say if a young woman has never heard of drinking ipecac to induce vomiting and learns this technique in group therapy. She may try the technique out herself at home; instead of getting positive help she has just learned how to mask her disorder even more. This can also have a detrimental effect on the group leaving the group leader or member feeling responsible for teaching her.

Some doctors prescribe drugs to treat eating disorders but this also does not fix the problem and in the long run even makes things worse.

The only way to cure bulimia in my opinion is to eliminate the reason why people have it.
You see what happens is that people understand that their bulimia is slowly killing them and want to stop but they can’t.

It seems like something inside the person is stronger than their own free will and controls their logical thinking.

What is this something?
It is basically another part of our brain called the subconscious mind that not only is responsible for people’s feelings, emotions and non-conscious actions that keep them alive, but it can also work against your own free will.

It is the part of the mind that is responsible for our actions when we do something but we don’t know why we did it.

The subconscious mind operates on feelings and senses. And very often people can’t even describe it logically because it consists of thoughts and feelings. Sufferers just do what the subconscious mind wants them to do.

So, the main reason people have bulimia lies in the subconscious mind and to stop bulimia one needs to get rid off the subconscious blockages that always keep you being a bulimic against your will.
Subconscious blockages are described by many sufferers as being like voices or senses they have that make them binge and purge.

If someone has a subconscious emotional blockage preventing her/him from stopping their bulimia, they are unlikely to realize it. An example of this is a bulimic who doesn’t realize that they have “broken eye syndrome” - they see in a mirror a different picture from everyone else: basically their own mind is lying to them.

Subconscious blockages cannot be identified and changed at the rational thinking level; this is where most conventional treatments fail: simply because they think logical actions will fix it.
For example, the “broken eye syndrome” gets worse and worse the longer you have bulimia, because the bulimic brain is constantly working on false information and is reinforcing false beliefs. You can talk logic to a bulimia sufferer all day long and it will not help one bit: because bulimia is not logical.

To conclude, identifying and eliminating your subconscious blockages is the best and really the only way you will ever cure your bulimia. There are special programs that help bulimics to do this. One of the programs that works in this direction and has proved to be helpful is at http://www.bulimia-cure.com