By Lauren Wanko
Correspondent
“The fact that I am here and alive, it’s a miracle,” said Warren Township resident Afsaneh.
Afsaneh struggled with eating disorders for years.
“People usually hear eating disorders and think, ‘Eww it’s just a girl who doesn’t want to eat and just tries to lose weight’ and that’s the farthest from the truth. I felt so out of control over everything else that I could control my caloric intake or lack thereof,” she said.
“An eating disorder is a way people can cope with their issues and their problems, things that are going on, and they use food as a weapon,” said Lynn Corey.
The National Eating Disorders Association indicates 20 million women and 10 million men in the U.S. suffer from a clinically significant eating disorder at sometime in their life. Many will likely not be reported.
“I think it’s more widespread than is known,” Corey said.
Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Somerset’s Corey says her patients suffer from two different types of eating disorders — anorexia and bulimia.
How do you develop an eating disorder?
“A lot of ways. It’s a maladaptive coping, which means it’s not a good way of coping with different issues that you have in your life,” Corey said.
“I’ve had some sort of eating disorder issues since I was young, since I was a little kid, whether it was using food to cope, using it as some sort of alternative to a coping mechanism with the feelings I had been dealing with,” Afsaneh said.
“It is considered a psychological disorder but there are a lot of medical complications to it. All the major organs can be affected by eating disorders,” Corey said.
Afsaneh says over the past four years, she’s been in and out of treatment for anorexia. Last April she was too weak to walk up a flight of steps and went to the hospital.
“My organs shut down one by one and I went into a coma and I was admitted into the ICU and I was on 100 percent life support for seven or eight weeks and I literally had a 5 percent chance of living,” she said.
Eventually she was admitted into the Eating Disorders Program at RWJ Somerset, which offers inpatient, partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient programs.
“This does not have to be a lifelong battle. It can be, but it doesn’t have to be,” Corey said.
Afsaneh has been home since September.
“The fact I can look in the mirror and look back at myself is the greatest gift I can ever have,” she said.
The single mother works with an outpatient therapy treatment team, including a nutritionist. She says she follows a balanced diet and is grateful to be back home with her son and family.
The National Eating Disorders Association has a website and a helpline. NEDA is a resource for anyone looking for information on getting help and into treatment anywhere in the country. For treatment referrals, visit www.MyNEDA.org or contact NEDA’s live helpline at 800-931-2237 Monday to Thursday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. (EST) and Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (EST).