Skye Simpson skipped insulin injections in the name of getting
thin. Simpson, now 30, is on the road to recovery, gaining back weight,
but she lost all her teeth in the process. Photo: Caters News Agency (2)
Be careful what you wish for.
Skye Simpson, a 30-year-old Australian beauty therapist, manipulated
her long-time diabetes to lose weight. But those 60 pounds she shed over
the course of six months didn’t come cheaply: Simpson lost all of her
teeth and now has to wear dentures.
Simpson, who has suffered from Type 1 diabetes since age 7, would
purposely disregard prescribed insulin injections so that her body would
burn up more food and sugar, ostensibly minimizing the amount that
stayed in her system to build up as fat.
“I didn’t want to give up food, or exercise. I was too lazy for that.
I loved snacking on chips, bread and biscuits,” Simpson tells Caters
News Agency. “At first I was only skipping one injection a day. But as
the weight dropped off, I became hooked and in just a few weeks, I was
skipping my insulin altogether.”
Known as diabulimia, the condition Simpson suffered from is a
diagnosable eating disorder in which diabetics avoid insulin in order to
shed pounds.
The tactic worked: She slimmed down from a size 14 to a size 6 (in US
sizes, from a 10 to a 2), sometimes losing as much as 6 ¹/₂ pounds a
week. At her lightest, Simpson weighed in at just over 100 pounds — and
she’s 5-feet-7. Then the health consequences kicked in.
“First I started losing clumps of my long blond hair, and then my
vision became blurry. Stupidly, I just ignored it,” she says. “It felt
worth it if it meant I could be slim.” Modal TriggerSkye
Simpson’s teeth started to deteriorate, and had to undergo surgery to
remove them all after an infection. Now she wears dentures.Photo: Caters News Agency
Over the course of 18 months of insulin abuse, Simpson was
hospitalized multiple times. Her teeth began to crumble, and a severe
gum infection led to an operation that left her gums bare and exposed.
(She now wears dentures.)
After realizing she needed help and discovering what diabulimia was,
Simpson approached her doctor. She now receives psychotherapy and has
gained back about 40 pounds. Sadly, the after-effects of her illness
aren’t going away anytime soon.
“My [head] is covered in bald patches and I can’t leave the house
without my extensions in, plus I’ll have to wear my dentures for the
rest of my life. I’ve started to lose my vision because the nerves have
been so badly damaged, and my stomach is now so sensitive, I can only
eat certain foods,” she tells Caters. “The worst thing about having
diabulimia was the fact that no one knew what it was. I’m lucky that I
had support from my family and partner, but I hate to think that there
are other Aussie women out there like me suffering alone.”
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