Expert: Joanne - 10/2/2006

Question
Hello,

I think that i am in the beginning stages of an eating disorder. I lost a lot of weight last year by severely restricting my diet, but now i have put all the weight back on again through binge eating. I think i am stressing out so much because i am trying not to put on too much more weight, but this leads to me binge eating and sabotaging myself.
Anyway...something interesting has started happening and i saw another girl ask a similar question though i dont think that the answer given actually answered the question. When i binge eat, (without purging) even if i eat a lot of healthy food like fruits and nuts, i will wake up the next day and my skin will feel sore to touch. Not the actual surface of the skin, but underneath it, like the fleshy part is sore. It feels like i have been poisoned. It is mostly my neck, back and chest but will extend further if i have eaten more. Once or twice i have actually developed a fever/ high temperature. Twice now i have had instances where it feels like my whole digestive system has stopped and i cant go to the toilet, and i have a fever and extremely painful indigestion symptons which are not relieved by indigestion medication. I also burp a LOT and it smells garlicky. This goes away after a day or two, but i have to stop eating for this time.

What is happening? I am particularly interested in why my skin feels sore after binge eating.

Answer
I'm sorry but I have never heard of this before.

From what you are describing, I'm wondering if you maybe have an allergy or intolerance.  A friend of mine gets really weird feelings in her skin on her chest when she eats eggs.  Is there anything that you eat everytime you binge that could be triggering a reaction.  If you eat nuts all the time during a binge they could be the culprit.  I think that you should make an appointment with your Dr and ask him to test for intolerances to different foods that you eat and see if that solves the problem.

I'm sorry that I wasn't much help!

Holly