Eating Disorder Danger - You Can Be Too Thin

Often you see articles on obesity and the health risks associated with being severely overweight. Carrying an extra 20, 50, or 100 pounds or more can put great strain on your back, your muscles, your heart, and even your mental health. You might think it stands to reason, therefore, that if being obese is bad, then the extreme opposite - being very skinny - is good.

Not really. When you develop an eating disorder, health risks can be magnified, to say nothing of being fatal. One well-known case of an eating disorder that led to an untimely demise is that of singer Karen Carpenter. Fueled by self-consciousness and a desire to escape remarks of "chubbiness" that plagued her teen years, Karen literally starved herself, avoiding food and binging on laxatives and other over-the-counter medications to lose the weight more quickly.

As it happened, Karen did not need to lose the excess weight to be considered trim and healthy. Sadly, the excess took a toll on the perfomer's heart, and she died of cardiac arrest at the age of 32. If anything positive had come from Karen's death, it brought the plight of anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders to mainstream consciousness.

Now, one might think since Karen's death over twenty years ago people may have a better understanding of such disorders and work to avoid them. Unfortunately, we still find reed-thin actresses and models gracing the covers of fashion magazines. We still read tales of women and young girls who put their bodies through hell for the sake of attaining an ideal of beauty that few are able to achieve naturally. It is as if we have learned nothing.