I am 27 years old. I suffered from anorexia and bulimia for several years in my teens, and have had occasional bulimia relapses ever since, fortunately they’ve become very infrequent (last year no more than 10 relapses). I am wondering how this may have affected my gut health. Is there any research on this topic?

side note; I have quite a healthy/varied diet, eating lots of vegis, fermented foods, yogurt etc, and I gave up refined sugar two years ago. I do however often feel tired. I would love to get a personalised diet through DayTwo/the Erans study, but it’s not available in my country (yet).

Have you discussed your concerns about your gut health with a medical professional?
Disordered eating is unique to each individual. Restricting food can obviously cause macronutrient and micronutrient insufficiencies or deficiencies. Binging and purging can irritate, inflame or damage the any portion of the digestive tract from mouth to rectum. However this can calm and repair with a consistent nutrient dense wholefood diet. Hence the Clever Guts diet!

Given that you relapse regularly it may be unwise to seek out a prescriptive personalised eating plan, but rather to consult a registered dietician in person.

Dr Mosley recommends to “keep a detailed daily food and symptom diary for at least a week before you start, to help identify any pattern in relation to diet … Ideally keep the diary going throughout the programme until you identify any culprits” (p.187). This will be be very valuable to any medical professional that you consult.

HTH!