Judith Garcia, 19, fills a syringe as she prepares to give herself an injection of insulin at her home in the Los Angeles suburb of Commerce, Calif., Sunday, April 29, 2012. A major study, released Sunday, tested several ways to manage blood sugar in teens newly diagnosed with diabetes and found that nearly half of them failed within a few years and 1 in 5 suffered serious complications. Garcia still struggles to manage her diabetes with metformin and insulin years after taking part in the study at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon) (AP)
A woman’s quest to lose weight has come at the cost of her teeth after she manipulated her type 1 diabetes symptoms to drop the pounds. Skye Simpson, 30, lost 60 pounds over the course of six months, the New York Post reported.
Simpson, a beauty therapist in Australia, would disregard her insulin injections so that her body would burn its fat stores. The practice among diabetes sufferers is known as diabulimia, a diagnosable eating disorder, The Post reported.
“I didn’t want to give up food, or exercise. I was too lazy for that. I loved snacking on chips, bread and biscuits,” Simpson told Caters News Agency. “At first, I was only skipping one injection a day. But as the weight dropped off, I became hooked and in just a few weeks, I was skipping my insulin all together.”
Simpson, who is 5 feet 7inches tall, was losing as much as 6 and a half pounds per week, and at her lightest weighed just over 100 pounds.
“First, I started losing clumps of my long blond hair, and then my vision became blurry,” she told Caters News Agency. “Stupidly I just ignored it. It felt worth it if it meant I could be slim.”
Over 18 months, Simpson was hospitalized multiple times, and her teeth began to crumble. A severe gum infection led to an operation that left her gums bare and exposed. She’s now forced to wear dentures, Caters News Agency reported.
She entered therapy and has regained 40 pounds, but the damaging side effects of diabulimia are still visible.
“My [head] is covered in bald patches, and I can’t leave the house without my extensions in. Plus, I’ll have to wear dentures for the rest of my life,” she told Caters News Agency. “I’ve started to lose my vision because the nerves have been so badly damaged, and my stomach is now so sensitive, I can only eat certain foods.”