Woke up way too early this morning and watched some dodgy TV. They were talking about binge eaters and their stomachs.
There was a pic shown here. They said that the purple organ is an over-extended stomach (a result of binge eating) and that this photo was taken during autopsy.
This person does not appear to be overweight (I thought binge eaters often were), so it has me wondering whether they simply sourced a graphic image where the person died from another cause. Or could this have been a one-off episode?
I remember when I was in my early 20s I went to one of those all-you-can-eat places and had been very hungry beforehand. I ate and ate and ate and was still eating when Mr S and his friend had finished. I knew that I had eaten way too much already but was still hungry. So I ate a little more and although I was still quite hungry, decided to stop and leave as I knew it was a very unusual situation. As soon as I walked outside I felt so sick that I couldn’t get into the car. Mr S and his friend had to wait for about half an hour (while I took deep breaths) before we could leave.
Also, we once dined with a relative who was suffering advanced dementia. He had consumed a huge volume of food and would not stop eating. Eventually, fearing that he would explode, we told him that he must be full and the food was taken away.
So is it really possible to eat so much food that it would kill you in this way? Could a “normal” binge eater go that far? Surely there is some mechanism in the brain which kicks in long before this becomes lethal. Would it be more likely from an episode like I had or from brain injury/dimentia?