Diabetic’s battle with ‘the world’s most dangerous eating disorder’
A SCOTS woman has told of her ten-year battle with ‘the world’s most dangerous eating disorder’ – a deadly condition most of us have never even heard of.
Becky Rudkin has diabulimia, which is when diabetes sufferers avoid taking their insulin so that they lose weight.
She became so frail she had to be sectioned to help save her life.
Miss Rudkin, 29, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes – which, unlike type 2, is not linked to poor diet or obesity – at 19.
By the age of 20 she was battling the deadly eating disorder.
She said: ‘It happened almost immediately when I was diagnosed – I just stopping taking it [insulin].
‘I had people staring at me when I would take my insulin injection if I was out for dinner – one woman told me I shouldn’t be “shooting up”.
‘It’s shaped like an EpiPen, so it’s clearly for medical use, but that had a knock-on effect with how I saw myself.
‘I thought people would think I had diabetes because of my weight.
‘If things aren’t going well in my life then I tend to sabotage myself by trying to control my eating. If I lose control of everything else, then I control my food.’
A type 1 diabetic’s pancreas does not produce insulin – the hormone required to absorb glucose and use it as energy or store it as fat.
Without injections, glucose builds up in the blood and is excreted in urine, which can cause dramatic weight loss. High blood glucose can also cause diabetic ketoacidosis – acid build-up that can cause a coma or death.
Miss Rudkin, of Aberdeen, suffered three diabetic comas within 18 months of her diagnosis. She said: ‘It was so bad that for the first three years I was going into hospital every fortnight.’
In 2011, when she was 22, she was moved to the Eden Unit, an inpatient service in Aberdeen for those with eating disorders.
She was last admitted there in 2013 and was so frail she asked to be sectioned.
Miss Rudkin, formerly of Inverness, said: ‘My life is scales and numbers. It’s a tug of war between my diabetes, which says to take the carbs, and the eating disorder which doesn’t want any carbs.
‘I’ve learned to take every day as it comes. I know it can flare up at any time.’
Miss Rudkin has also shared her story for a BBC Three documentary as part of her efforts to raise awareness of diabulimia.
She said: ‘There are so many diabetics in the UK and it is not like it’s only one in ten that get diabulimia, it could be nine in ten, we just don’t know.’ Diabulimia: The World’s Most Dangerous Eating Disorder is on BBC Three iPlayer .