National Diabetes Awareness Month

No recipes today! It's National Diabetes Awareness Month, and with that, I'd like to put the focus on a part of diabetes that people aren't quite so aware of.
Diabulimia.
As a dietetics student, I have only heard of this eating disorder (currently categorized as an eating disorder not otherwise specified - EDNOS) twice. It was on a British TV show I was interested in for a while, and in another video we watched in a nutrition therapy class at school. No one else in the class had heard of it before then.
Diabulimia is exactly what it sounds like: diabetes and bulimia combined. People affected by diabulimia are those suffering from Type 1 diabetes.
Here's a basic rundown of what type 1 diabetes is: the body does not produce insulin, or it may not produce enough. Insulin is a hormone which picks up the sugars in your blood after you eat, delivering it to your liver and muscles to be processed or stored. That's why on TV, when you see a character with diabetes, they talk about "insulin shots". Since the body can't make its' own, it must be put there through a shot or a monitor. You can find more information on Type 1 as well as Type 2 diabetes here.
So where does the bulimia come in? Why is it called 'diabulimia'? Isn't bulimia the same for everybody?
In general Bulimia nervosa, the sufferer binges and purges - they eat a lot, then get rid of it by throwing up, taking laxatives, or exercising more than is considered healthy (in some cases, 8 or more hours per day). With diabulimics, it is the same basic concept: they still eat, but they also still lose weight. Diabulimics typically only eat foods containing carbohydrates, the body's source of sugars. With no insulin to pick up that sugar and store in the body's tissues, it just gets peed out. No storage = no weight gain.
The dangers of skipping insulin include thirst, fainting, blurred vision which eventually progresses into permanent blindness, coma, and even death among numerous other harmful outcomes.
This is the video I watched that first informed me of this little-known disorder:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rs-g3fJJS8&t=40m39s

It's tragic, but a very real problem. Fortunately, it has been being recognized much more in recent media.

On the topic of eating disorders, I've decided that from here on out, I will no longer be posting the calorie content of my recipes. I had begun to cater to what I call "pinterest trends" in the way of blog content (basically: weightlossweightlossweightloss) to try to get more exposure to my blog, but I've begun to realize that in doing so, I've counteracted the ideas of health that I've been trying to convey in my posts. Though there aren't many people who read this blog, I don't want my blog to contain unnecessary triggers for those with or recovering from eating disorders. My blog is a health blog. I believe that there is more to health than weight, and that the nutrient content of a food is far more important than the calorie content. I want my emphasis to be on physical activity, lots of nutrients, and living a satisfactory, physically AND mentally well lifestyle. I will still be posting recipes, as well as nutritional information such as vitamins and minerals, as well as exercise tips and general fun health stuff.
If anyone would like to know the amount of calories in my recipes, there are plenty of websites and apps that you can plug recipes into to find out those numbers.
Also, my birthday is tomorrow!
Woo-oo-oo!