friend with bulimia

[tasha123]

my friend has told me she has bulimia, and has been for 5 months. she told me she has stopped recently but i am not so sure. she always talked to me about one of her biggest concerns were her teeth, i was wondering how long it takes when purging once a day (thats how many times she said she did it) does it take for your teeth to decay, or whatever. how long can a person be doing it for their teeth to not be affected by it. please reply with as much info as possible, very concerned about my friend. and do u think i should encourage her to seek medical help even though she says she's stopped?
thanks so much.

[Jerome Bogin, D.D.S.]

Without a doubt your friend should be encouraged to seek professional help. I couldn't tell you how long it would take for the teeth to be effected but I can assure you that quite a bit of damage can occur. The sooner the better that your friend gets the help she needs.

[mike1105]

the acid from the stomach eats away at the teeth from day 1. eventually, it will become noticable but it's not predicatable when that will happen. your "friend" needs to get medical and psychological help, even if she's stopped..... she needs to be examined medically to see if ay damage to her digestive tract has already occurred,and evalated psychologically to see why this happened and counsel her so it does not happen again.