SALVATORE: People usually picture an anorectic or bulimic as a young affluent, overachieving woman. Some high profile women with eating disorders like the late Princess Diana and singer Karen Carpenter fit the description.
But CNN's Health Correspondent Linda Ciampa reports that the disease has broaden its reach and the profile has expanded.
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CIAMPA (voice-over): Today, Tracey Prinzbach is the picture of health, teaching aerobics and training clients. But 12 years ago when she was battling bulimia, Prinzbach was anything but healthy.
PRINZBACH: Out of eating, I'd probably guess about 20,000 calories a day and purging -- I mean that's all I did from sun up to sun down was eat and purged.
CIAMPA: Prinzbach says her bulimia began at age 16 when she became obsessed with her body.
PRINZBACH: I started looking at my legs. Everyday I would stand up and look in the mirror, and I'd put my legs together, and if they touched, I was mortified. If my thighs touched, I was mortified. It was a horrible day.
CIAMPA: Eating disorders which include anorexia, bulimia and a new category, binge eating, have reached epidemic proportions in the United States. And doctors say it's not just young teenage girls who suffer from these illnesses, it's men and women of all ages.
DR. DAVID HERZOG, MASS. GENERAL HOSPITAL: So we are now seeing individuals as young as seven. We recently reported actually on a case of a 7-year-old with anorexia nervosa, who we had to hospitalize. And we're seeing women well into their 60s and 70s.
CIAMPA: Forty-year old Babs Schwarting battles the type of eating disorder called binge eating. Schwarting says food numbs her emotional pain.
BABS SCHWARTING, EATING DISORDER VICTIM: It would almost be like a knee jerk reaction that something would come up that I didn't know how to handle and I would immediately eat the food.
CIAMPA: Schwarting is now in therapy under the care of a social worker who specializes in eating disorders.
SUSAN WACHLER, CLINICAL SOCIAL WORKER: Set the promise that if she's 135, her life's going to be better. It's the promise that if she stops taking care of her life in food and start facing it more head on and develop other resources to deal with her life stressers, then she'll be well.
CIAMPA: Schwarting is optimistic about her future.
SCHWARTING: And there's ways of handling it now. You know there's the way of making phone calls to people who also have similar problems. Having a plan about what I'm going to eat. Praying, I mean that's a big one. You know, getting down on my knees.
CIAMPA: It took Tracey Prinzbach three therapists in three years of treatment to get her eating disorder under control. She admits at times she felt hopeless, but today, the mother of two, says she feels better than ever and she no longer lives in a prison of food.
PRINZBACH: I eat healthfully, eat nutritiously. I also eat chicken wings and Mexican food. I love all that stuff. I mean I think that's what's life about. You want to learn to have a good balance to enjoy life, live life.
CIAMPA: And that's exactly what Prinzbach does now.
Linda Ciampa, CNN Atlanta.
