Eating illnesses

Please, no apologies for asking questions. We're glad to know you're writing.

I'm no medical person, but surely there are illnesses/conditions where wasting away is a problem, and the caloric input needs to be high. I used to know a woman with tuberculosis who ate like a lumberjack and remained underweight. I don't know if this is typical, or if she just had a metabolic rate that did that.

There are also conditions like hypoglycemia where the blood sugar level needs to be maintained by frequent meals.

Maryn, who'll leave it at that and wait for our doctors and nurses to arrive with real information

DamaNegra said:

No, not like anorexia or bulimia. Not diabetes, either. I was just wondering, what kind of sickness can a young woman (say, 23-28) have to make it imperative for her to eat at her hours and eat plenty, otherwise she may faint or something. Any ideas?

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She could have an insulin-secreting tumor, called an insulinoma. They are usually in the pancreas, but are not malignant -- not a cancer. They just secrete a lot of insulin into the bloodstream. This makes the blood sugar go down, and would cause fainting if it got down to around 30-40 mg/100mL of blood or so (normal is 70-100 when fasting.) She could counteract this by eating frequently, especially foods high in carbohydrates. The cure is surgery to take out the tumor, although they can be very small and very tough for the surgeon to find. Hope that this helps.