Bulimia

The term bulimia refers to an enormous hunger. It has been said that the word comes from the Greek words limos (hunger) and bous (ox), giving rise to two different meanings of the word: denoting a hunger as big as that of an ox or a hunger of such an intensity that one could eat an ox whole. Today, the term primarily refers to an eating disorder, bulimia nervosa, characterized by alternating episodes of binge eating when unusually large amounts of food are eaten in a short time followed by compensating behavior—for example, self-induced vomiting and exercising to avoid weight gain.

The disorder is associated with the idealization of thinness since the 1960s and has a negative impact on quality of life and psychological and physical ...