Anorexia in Middle Age and Beyond
Sally Odenheimer starved herself because she was an athlete and thought she'd run faster on an empty stomach.
Karla Wagner starved herself because she wanted to be in charge of at least one aspect of her life.
Janice Bremis simply felt too fat.
They all sought perfection and control. Not eating helped.
They are women in their 60s and 70s who have struggled with anorexia nervosa since childhood or adolescence. Years later, their lives are still governed by calories consumed, miles run, laps swum, pounds lost.
'It's an addiction I can't get rid of,' said Ms. Odenheimer, 73, a retired teacher who lives outside Denver.
For decades, few people connected eating disorders with older people; they were seen as an affliction of teenage girls and young women. But research suggests that an increasing number of older women have been seeking treatment for eating disorders, including bulimia, binge eating disorder (known as BED) and anorexia, which has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder, and brings with it an elevated risk of suicide.
In a 2017 paper in the journal BMC Medicine, researchers reported that more than 15 percent of 5,658 women surveyed met the criteria for a lifetime eating disorder while in their 30s and 40s. A 2023 review of recent research reported that the prevalence rates among women 40 and older with full diagnoses of eating disorders were between 2.1 and 7.7 percent. (For men, they were less than 1 percent.)
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