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Her granddaughter India Faulkner-Wiley on a condition that is just as likely to affect the elderly as the young

Laura's body weight halved in six months. But then she wasn't eating normal-sized meals: she said she was scared of eating. A year before she had struggled to squeeze into a dress size 24, but her final purchase, a pair of black trousers, were a size 14, and they barely stayed up over her tiny hips and shrinking waistline.
Laura Faulkner was 80 when she died on April 19 this year. She was my grandmother and she was an anorexic.

Although anorexia nervosa is most commonly associated with teenage girls and young women, the latest research shows that it is as likely to occur in the elderly - and that eating disorders in the elderly are more deadly, accounting for 78% of all anorexia deaths.

Psychologists at the University of British Columbia examined 10.5m death records, for a four-year period, in the US. They found that the average age of death from anorexia nervosa for women was 69 and for men 80. And while in younger cases anorexia victims are 90% female and 10% male, for those over 45, the percentage of men doubled to 21%. Their findings astounded them. They scoured the literature and found that other doctors had found anorexia nervosa in people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, but not understood the scale of it.

Anorexia is a very secretive illness that is easier to hide for those who are unsociable, lonely or depressed - which means it is especially easy to hide if you are elderly.
A friend of my grandmother Laura says that her weight loss was never taken seriously, and was even encouraged, ironically, for health reasons. "I made an effort to visit regularly, and she would seem as though she were in denial when I pointed out her weight loss," she says.

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