Remaining Problems After Health Restoration From Anorexia Nervosa?
Question by allie182: Remaining problems after health restoration from anorexia nervosa?
To anyone who’s been in recovery (or knows someone, or is a professional, or just knows this information for some reason!),
First of all, breathing difficulty after eating, especially lunch, especially carbs, and it feels almost like the exercise-induced asthma w/ tight chest, can’t take deep breath, similar to anxiety-induced but really don’t think it’s solely anxiety.
Never had this problem before the illness got bad, before treatment, or even after the first time in treatment (the first time I didn’t gain to “goal weight” since it was higher than my semi-pre-anorexia-weight).
So anyway I went back because I was stuck in the stupid illness, and actually tried everything to get better this time. Ended up taking two years in treatment so I maintained first my hospital goal weight, then my residential “ideal weight” they had me get to, on their meal plan,
but I swear, physical health felt worse then than it did except when I was really sick!!
So then I left thinking I just want to be normal me again, which I know can’t be that low low weight, don’t want to starve myself again, so I’m trying to eat healthy, of course there’s the mental aspect of it too so I am being restrictive again first it seemed like it was body image but who knows, but I am challenging myself and definitely trying to eat normal, just it’s a little lower than pre-treatment/pre-illness-getting-bad…unfortunately. I’m working on it though, and I go to IOP.
But my question is this stupid breathing and extreme fatigue after eating regardless of size of meal, why?? Anyone else get this after recovery? I never had it before.
Then there are other problems too and I just don’t have answers to them, it drives me crazy because not many professionals really seem to get it, I’ve heard some say (who are recovered themselves) the dizziness/dissociating almost, never goes away completely once you get it once. I can at a higher weight now than before I got bad, have that anorexic feeling mentally, you know the feeling if you’ve been in eating disorder. 🙁 when I didn’t even get it before getting bad, at a lower weight!!
So I really tried but recovery is just soo complicated, soo confusing, and right now just not feeling good. I also wound up in ER for what they deemed herniated disks in lumbar and have osteoporosis in spine and hips, maybe spine was just osteopenia, but that was weird too and I still don’t have answers because I had no injury to cause it and it wasn’t until after health restoration that it happened, a year later!
Was that because of having been so anorexic before? And I never wanted to be…ever. I was afraid of getting an eating disorder. The only reason I wound up that way was a traumatic event triggered like a mental breakdown about another worse traumatic event that I thought I was past, and I just had these horrible feelings and fear and couldn’t manage my eating and then thought I was managing it with the eating disorder, until suddenly I’m even more afraid and can’t control it and too terrified to fix it because it’s messed with my body and then I’m in treatment. 🙁
Anyone have answers about the thing that feels like heartburn/tight chest/breathing difficulty catching after eating, extreme fatigue (only sometimes), dizziness while eating, mental fugue, back problems?
Thanks…
(sorry disorganized…please don’t judge :()
Best answer:
Answer by Arthur
Chest tightness, extreme fatigue and difficulty breathing after a meal could be a result of heart palpitations due to cardiac arrythmias from spikes in blood sugar because your body was so used to starving that now it’s experiencing a period of adjustment from your increased food intake. Eating more now puts more strain on your weakened heart since your digestive system needs more blood to digest the increased food you’re taking in; whereas before your heart barely needed to keep up with what little you ate. Anorexia nervosa is a complicated condition which some now theorize go beyond mental image issues, but also hormonal imbalance and genetic heredity. The osteopenia and osteoporosis is expected since you barely took in nutrients before for your bones to stay healthy. Your peak bone mass has been severely impaired and now with your increasing body weight there is added stress for your weakened skeleton to support so the risk of fractures is higher for you. Good luck with getting better and keep at it.
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