Why is anorexia so much deadlier than obesity?
In: Biology
Obesity doesn’t outright kill you but it does put a lot of normal processes in your body in a bad shape. It speeds up and promotes disease processes like metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease. These things won’t kill you overnight, they take years to decades to build up and in the same way are a slow march to death. You can slow or stop progression but you’re left with the damage you’ve accumulated but not reverse it.
That’s different in anorexia, or more often, starvation. Your body only has so many stores of particular components in your body. Electrolytes are particularly important because they have to be within very narrow levels, your blood has to be at a certain pH, you need to have particular essential vitamins and nutrients to make the building blocks that go in your body. Once you’re into starvation, low levels of these things in your body quickly cause things to go wrong. The biggest killer is low potassium, which messes the rhythm in your heart. This means your heart can no longer function properly and goes into an electrical rhythm that’s unstable, then later likely lethal. Refeeding syndrome is dangerous as well – when bringing these people back into normal function, feeding them can also cause disturbances in electrolytes which can quickly become lethal.
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