A new and troubling trend in which youth deliberately do not eat and then go on to drink alcohol in excess appears to be sweeping US college campuses, new research suggests. 
 
 Known as "drunkorexia," the practice refers to a combination of diet-related behaviors, such as food restriction, excessive exercise, or binge eating and purging, with alcohol use, lead investigator Dipali V. Rinker, PhD, research assistant professor, University of Houston, in Texas, told Medscape Medical News. 
 
 Dr Rinker's research showed that 8 of 10 college students, many of whom were men, recently engaged in at least one behavior related to drunkorexia. 
 
 The aim of the practice, said Dr Rinker, seems to be to get drunker or get drunk faster. This may involve induced vomiting, the consumption of laxatives or diuretics, or not eating at all before drinking. 
 
 Dr Rinker presented the findings at the 39th Annual Research Society on Alcoholism Scientific Meeting in New Orleans. 
 
 The study included 1184 college students from the University of Houston and from a crowdsourcing Internet marketplace. All participants completed a Web-based survey. They had to have engaged in at least one episode of heavy drinking in the past 30 days. An episode of heavy drinking was defined as having four or more drinks in one sitting for women and five or more drinks in one sitting for men. 
 
 The mean age of participants was 22.3 years. Almost 60% were women, and almost two thirds (63.3%) were white. 
 
 Results showed that 81% of the sample reported engaging in at least one drunkorexia behavior once in the past 3 months. 
 
 The analysis also showed that young people living in fraternity or sorority houses were the most likely to engage in negative behaviors surrounding alcohol use. The next most likely group were those living in residence halls, followed by those living off campus, and, finally, those living at home. 
 
 Living away from family for the first time and feeling intense stress at school may be contributing factors, said Dr Rinker. But there are other driving forces. 
 
 "Our data suggest that college students are more likely to engage in these specific compensatory behaviors if they are athletes, are already heavy drinkers, are coping with negative emotions, are engaging in disordered eating practices already, and, most importantly, because they perceive it to be a highly normative behavior among college students." 
 
 She said she was surprised that it is not just young women who engage in drunkorexia. 
 
 "Our study suggested that males are just as likely, if not more likely, to engage in these behaviors. We suspect that this is because men, in general, just tend to engage in riskier drinking behaviors than women." 
 
 Drunkorexia can have significant fallout in terms mental and physical health. "Engaging in these behaviors is associated with heavier and more problematic drinking and alcohol-related consequences, such as blacking out, getting into fights, passing out, or driving under the influence," said Dr Rinker. 
 
 Because the phenomenon has only been studied among college students, researchers do not know whether nonstudents are also engaging in these behaviors. 
 
 Clinicians can play a role in reducing or controlling the drunkorexia phenomenon, said Dr Rinker. 
 
 "They can provide information to college students that indicates that these behaviors are far less normative than they think they are and can encourage students to eat and exercise in a healthy manner." 
 
 The research was supported by a grant from the University of Houston and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. 
 
 39th Annual Research Society on Alcoholism Scientific Meeting: Presented June 27, 2016. ||||| “Drunkorexia” is a colloquial term for the practice of skipping meals or exercising heavily before consuming alcohol. The trend isn’t new for college students, with the word “drunkorexia” appearing in news headlines -- and alarming parents -- for a few years now. 
 
 But a new study, presented this week at the Research Society on Alcoholism’s annual meeting, suggests the behavior may be more common than previously thought, and is an issue for male and female students. Eight out of 10 college students who participated in the study said they had recently engaged in at least one behavior related to drunkorexia. 
 
 "College students appear to engage in these behaviors to increase alcohol effects or reduce alcohol-related calories by engaging in bulimic-type or diet/exercising/calorie-restricted eating behaviors," Dipali Rinker, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Houston and author of the study, said in a statement. "Our information examines the association between these different types of drunkorexic behaviors and other predictors of problem drinking among college students, such as gender differences." 
 
 Rinker’s study was based on a survey that included responses from 1,184 college students, most of them from the University of Houston, who had drunk heavily at least once in the past 30 days. More than 80 percent of the students said they had engaged in at least one behavior in the last three months that Rinker considered to be related to drunkorexia. 
 
 The behaviors included inducing vomiting, consuming laxatives or diuretics, or not eating anything before drinking. 
 
 “Long term, it’s not a good idea to skip nutritious meals in order to consume more calories from alcohol,” Aaron White, the program director of college and underage drinking prevention at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, said. “Then there are the short-term consequences. Having food in your stomach reduces peak blood alcohol levels about a third, so if you flip that, your peak level is significantly higher, increasing risk of blackouts, injuries and poor decisions. The consequences are worse than the consequences of not saving the calories.” 
 
 It's often students who drink heavily that engage in the behaviors, White added. 
 
 "We're not talking about someone concerned about a 150-calorie glass of wine," he said. "We're talking about someone who is concerned about 1,000 calories from binge drinking, and that's the person you just don't want skipping meals." 
 
 Rinker found that students who lived in fraternity and sorority houses were the most likely to report engaging in the behavior, followed by those living in residence halls. Women were more likely to engage in the bulimic-type behaviors than men, according to the study, but both genders were equally likely to engage in some kind of drunkorexic behavior, such as skipping meals. 
 
 The new study aimed to expand the definition of drunkorexia, Rinker said, which may explain why earlier research had suggested fewer students engaged in the behavior. Other studies had also suggested there was a sharper gender divide. 
 
 A 2009 study found that 50 percent of college women reported restricting food intake before drinking, more than 1.5 times the share of men who reported the behavior. Research also suggests that men and women often have different motivations for engaging in the behavior. A 2014 study, published in the Journal of American College Health, concluded that “women were significantly more likely than men to restrict what they ate prior to alcohol consumption,” and that “this was driven by women’s greater desire to control their weight.” 
 
 Nearly 60 percent of female college students responding to a 2012 survey who reported drinking alcohol said they had also engaged in self-induced vomiting. The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders states that 72 percent of women who say they abuse alcohol also suffer from an eating disorder. 
 
 In 2011, researchers at the University of Missouri at Columbia found that 16 percent of college students responding to a survey reported restricting calories to “save them” for drinking. Women were three times as likely to report engaging in the behavior than men. Male students, on the other hand, were more likely to engage in the behavior to save money for purchasing alcohol. 
 
 A study from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism found that 20 percent of incoming female freshmen responding to a survey said they had engaged in drunkorexic behavior in the last two weeks. Most of them said they did it not for dieting or cost-saving reasons, however. 
 
 Instead, they skipped meals because they knew they could get more intoxicated more quickly on an empty stomach. 
 
 “We are now aware that this is happening, but there’s still a lot that we just don’t know,” White, of the NIAAA, said. “For instance, how do we prevent it? Students doing this to save calories are different than students doing this to save money or students who are doing it to get as drunk as possible. There’s a lot left to untangle here about what exactly is happening.”
– The term "drunkorexia" has been used for several years to describe a particularly risky type of behavior on college campuses—students skip meals or exercise intensely before drinking, or deliberately purge during or afterward. Generally, the idea is to cut down on calories consumed or to increase the buzz, and sometimes a little of both. A new study, however, suggests that the practice is far more common that thought, reports Inside Higher Ed. The University of Houston survey rounded up nearly 1,200 students who had at least one bout of heavy drinking in the previous month and found that eight in 10 had engaged in at least one behavior linked to drunkorexia, including inducing vomiting, consuming laxatives, or skipping food entirely before drinking. The other surprise to lead researcher Dr. Dipali Rinker: This wasn't a phenomenon exclusive to female students. "Our study suggested that males are just as likely, if not more likely, to engage in these behaviors," she tells Medscape. "We suspect that this is because men, in general, just tend to engage in riskier drinking behaviors than women." Rinker presented her findings at the Research Society on Alcoholism's annual meeting in New Orleans, and another researcher's paper shows that the issue isn't confined to America. An Australian study of female college students found that nearly 60% used drunkorexia behavior. “It’s a new phenomenon ­involving disordered eating purely for the sole purpose of saving calories for alcohol,” says researcher Alissa Knight of the University of South Australia. (These are the heaviest drinking cities in America.)