Warning: This article contains discussion of eating disorders which some readers may find distressing.
Doctors are raising awareness of a type of eating disorder after seeing a case of a 17-year-old left with permanent ‘blind spots’ as a result of his diet.
The unnamed teenager reportedly went to see his doctor at the age of 14 explaining he’d not been feeling well and was constantly tired.
Despite being given a vitamin boost and sent away with dietary advice, several years later his sight rapidly deteriorated.
The teen first went to the doctors about feeling unwell when he was 14 (Getty Stock Images)
The diagnosis
An article published in the Annals of Internal Medicine explains the doctor was told the teenager was a ‘fussy eater’, but other than that was well.
The 14-year-old was diagnosed with microcytic anaemia – which can cause fatigue – and low B12 level ‘but no antibodies to intrinsic factor or tissue transglutaminese’.
He was administered vitamin B12 injections to help with the fatigue and sent away with recommendations on how to improve his diet. However, he soon began experiencing hearing loss and later progressive vision loss too and at the age of 17, he was diagnosed with ‘optic neuropathy’.
The Cleveland Clinic explains optic neuropathy is ‘a type of neuropathy (nerve disease) that can cause eye pain and vision loss or vision changes’ and occurs when ‘inflammation affects signals traveling through your optic nerve, which connects your eyes and brain’.
But how did it get to this stage?
The teen had low Vitamin B12 levels (Getty Stock Images)
The diet
One of the doctors who treated the teenager at Bristol Eye Hospital, Dr Denize Atan, told the BBC the teenager’s diet was ‘essentially a portion of chips from the local fish and chip shop every day’, combined with snacks of ‘crisps’ and ‘sometimes slices of white bread and occasional slices of ham, and not really any fruit and vegetables’.
The doctor continued: “He explained this as an aversion to certain textures of food that he really could not tolerate, and so chips and crisps were really the only types of food that he wanted and felt that he could eat.”
However, the diet ultimately led the teen to lose vital ‘minerals from his bone’ – tests showing he was low on B12, copper, selenium and vitamin D – the results reviewed as ‘really quite shocking for a boy of his age’.
The teenager was also provided with mental health support (Getty Stock Images)
The consequences
Nutritional optic neuropathy is a type of visual impairment which ‘occurs when nutritional deficiency damages the optic nerve,’ Barrow Neurological Institute states.
Dr Atan explains the patient has been left finding it ‘really difficult to read, watch TV or discern faces’ and ‘can’t drive’.
However, as a result of still having his peripheral vision, he can still ‘walk around on his own’.
While the teenager has since been put on vitamin supplements and referred to a dietician, he has been left with permanent ‘blind spots right in the middle of his vision’ and has been officially registered blind. The teenager was also given mental health support.
Advice
Dr Atan recommends parents try and ‘calmly introduce one or two new foods with every meal’ if their child is struggling with the variety of foods they consume as ultimately it’s better to try and add vitamins through ‘a varied and balanced diet’ oppose to supplementation.
If you have been affected by any of the issues in this article and wish to speak to someone, contact National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD). You can reach them on their free hotline at 1(888)-375-7767, which is open Monday-Friday, 9am-9pm CST.
