Coincident hormonal surges that prompt sexual curiosity can fuel a host of related doubts about one's attractiveness.
Many teenagers respond by adopting extraordinary tactics to remain fashionably slim.
Gary M. Rodin, head of psychiatry at Toronto Hospital in Ontario, said his curiosity was initially piqued by the unusually high number of young diabetic girls that were being referred to him because of eating disorders. For instance, these women may periodically induce vomiting or use laxatives to expel some of what's been eaten before it's been fully digested. They often engaged in binge eating or withholding insulin. In the June 26 New England Journal of Medicine, his team now reports finding that this population indeed has a very high rate of eating disorders, that their maladaptive behavior persists to at least adulthood, and that it sets in motion a series of degenerative changes that place these young women at strikingly high risk of developing blinding eye complications. One-third of the girls were trading off an increased risk of medical complications in order to prevent weight gain.