Unlike other girls, she discovered that she possessed a powerful weight-loss gimmick, a secret reward for being diagnosed at age 10 with her detested disease, type 1 diabetes.

“When I was 14, I realized that by not taking my insulin, I could eat anything I wanted and lose weight,” recalls Akers, now 21, of Seattle. “For an overweight kid, that’s like a dream come true. I lost 55 pounds that summer. I thought I was a genius. I thought no one else knew about this.”

Akers spent the next six years in and out of hospitals, recovering from the life-threatening complications of skipping her insulin shots, before confronting the fact that she had an eating disorder. In 2008, she underwent intensive therapy, then set up an online nonprofit group to help women like her.

She is part of a recent wave of attention, activism, and research focused on type 1 diabetics who restrict their insulin for weight control.

The ranks of these complex patients are growing, according to eating-disorders treatment programs such as the Renfrew Center of Philadelphia. Yet recognition and understanding of their pathological pursuit of thinness remain sketchy.

In fact, there was no formal name for the dual diagnosis until three years ago, when an international group recommended “Eating Disorders-Diabetes Mellitus Type 1.”

Patients and the media have embraced a catchier label: diabulimia.

“Clinicians have qualms about using that term because it’s a media” invention, said Ann Goebel-Fabbri, a clinical psychologist and eating-disorders specialist at the Joslin Diabetes Center, a Harvard Medical School affiliate. “But it has given voice to a lot of women who are struggling with this, and now realize they aren’t alone.”

Type 1 diabetics, typically diagnosed in childhood or adolescence, can’t make insulin, the hormone that cells need to convert sugar from carbohydrate foods into energy.

Without insulin, the body effectively goes into a state of speeded-up starvation, dumping unused sugar into the urine and breaking down muscle, fat, and liver cells for fuel. This process produces acids called ketones, which build up in the blood, leading to a metabolic crisis called diabetic ketoacidosis.

An infection such as the flu or an injury can accidentally set ketoacidosis. But diabulimics try to skate on the edge of it, strategically omitting insulin to purge calories and suppress appetite – and enduring the resulting thirst, frequent urination, dehydration, weakness, fatigue, racing heart, nausea, and vomiting.

Cumulatively, bouts of ketoacidosis can permanently damage the kidneys, liver, stomach, arteries, and nerves – especially nerves in the feet and eyes.

Like the well-known eating disorders anorexia (self-starvation) and bulimia (bingeing and purging by vomiting or laxative abuse), diabulimia involves a cycle of low self-esteem, struggle for control, fear, depression, shame, secrecy, deception, and guilt.

Yet doctors and parents may not recognize the psychological complexity, assuming instead that the diabetic is being “noncompliant” – neglecting or defying onerous dietary, blood-sugar monitoring, and insulin regimens. In fact, after reports of weight loss induced by insulin restriction first appeared in medical journals in the 1980s, diabetes experts disagreed about the implications.

“There was a huge debate: Is this an eating disorder or not?” recalled Goebel-Fabbri at the Joslin Center.

Since then, she and other researchers have found that young women with type 1 diabetes are more than twice as likely to develop an eating disorder as their nondiabetic peers. One study found 10 percent of teenage diabetic girls had eating disorders, compared with 4 percent of same-age girls without diabetes. (Researchers have found no clear association between type 2 diabetes and eating disorders, probably because disturbed eating behaviors usually begin many years before the onset of type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity.)

Anecdotally, the number of diabulimics is growing.

The Renfrew Center’s residential treatment program on Spring Lane, for example, now admits a few dozen diabetics a year.

“When I started working at Renfrew seven years ago, we had maybe one diabetic a year. It was rare,” said Julie Dorfman, director of nutrition. “Now, we’ve created a special menu for them with the carbohydrates already counted.”

Medical director Susan Ice said diabetics were also a big factor behind an increase in the number of newly admitted Renfrew patients who had to be transferred to a hospital because they were critically ill.

“Twenty percent who come in for admission, we send to the ER right away or during the course of treatment,” she said. “Two years ago, just five percent” required such care.

Read the full article at Philly.com.

Even though the American Diabetes Association has known for years about people depriving themselves of their insulin injections in hopes of shedding pounds, “diabulimia” is a term that has just come about in the past few years.

Type 2 diabetes is the more common form of diabetes, accounting for about 95% of all cases. Type 2 is associated with obesity.

Individuals with Type 1 diabetes produce little or no insulin naturally because their immune system attacks the cells in the pancreas that usually make insulin. These individuals must inject insulin daily in order to stay healthy. Without insulin, a person’s cells will starve because they do not receive the insulin-delivered glucose they need to survive. The excess glucose instead builds up in the bloodstream, causing blood sugar levels to skyrocket. This results in frequent urination because the kidneys are forced to work harder to rid the bloodstream of the excess glucose. Purging the excess sugar through the kidneys is similar to the purging that a bulimic individual will do in the form of vomitting.

When an individual with Type 1 diabetes skips their insulin injections, some of the health risks can include blindness, amputations, kidney failure, coma, and early death.

Unfortunately, women with Type 1 diabetes are more susceptible to developing an eating disorder due to the strict measures associated with good diabetes management, such as watching what they eat and following a diet.