Extreme situation of eating disorder and binge eating

She was 19 and had anorexia and bulimia for 5 years.

Died at 5' 1" (155cm) and 94 lbs (43kg) after her stomach ripped after eating 5.6 liters (pic of stomach contents) of food.

Case notes:

She was in full rigor mortis - which is present from 12-72 hours. The bruises set the time frame at around 8+ hours.

When they did the autopsy, they found that her stomach had been extended from where your ribs meet each other all the way to her pubic bone, right behind that pad of fat above the genitals (mons pubis). And her stomach had a large rip in it...

She also had some other abnormalities going on. Her heart was small and displayed typical characteristics of a starving heart - destroyed muscles and dead immune cells (lipofuscin bodies).

Like a typical binger, her stomach was dying before it ripped. What I mean is that every time we binge our stomachs expand, if they expand far enough, the vessels supplying them blood are crushed - cutting off the blood supply to that area, killing the tissue. That area is weakened and the next binge of that caliber becomes more dangerous. Purging just adds fuel to the fire by increasing stomach pressure above and beyond the natural level.

But believe it or not the ruptured stomach didn't kill her. A natural reaction did.

When the stomach exploded, her body responded with a typical immune reaction. It dilated her blood vessels, her blood pressure dropped, she blacked out, and her heart slowed down and stopped. They also did a tox screen and found nothing. Potassium levels are obviously of no use as when you die potassium leaks out of your cells.

"...her stomach ripped after eating 5.6 liters [picture above] of food."

Another things to note about this. Back in the 1800s, they determined that the stomach should only be able to hold 4 liters of stuff (by filling corpses). To surpass this, we have to adapt our stomach sizes - resulting in gastric dilatation.

Apart from the intellectual value of the report it does illustrate an important point - the endpoint of these diseases is very ugly.

There is no glamour or beauty spending your last living moments over a toilet."