muscle atrophy in long term anorexia is one thing and obviously happens to eye muscles too; after all, why wouldn't it, if after a certain point the anorexic body, in its desperate quest for a smallest crumb of nutrition, goes after the
heart? i'm pretty sure eye muscles are further down the list of things a human body can't keep itself alive wihtout.
here's a full list of fun things making yourself a bit too spoopy does to your eyes:
[...]
dry eyes; lagophthalmos (inability to close the eyelids completely - if you're too far gone, you might need a surgery for it, which apparently consists of weighing down the upper eyelid by insertion of a gold plate: in the meantime, your eyelids will be sewn halfway shut to prevent your cornea from further damage, in a procedure known by a lovely name of tarsorrhaphy);
acute and chronic visual loss (apparently the macula and the nerve layers feeding it are significantly thinner in the eyes of anorexic patients. The macula is responsible for fine detailed central vision and the processing of light. There's also less dopamine-mediated electrical activity present - and dopamine is kinda important for the brain's ability to process visual images, so you can guess how well that goes)
;
nystagmus (repetitive uncontrolled eyeball movements)
;
and finally
, ophthalmoplegia (weakness or paralysis of eye muscles - if your anorexia is severe enough to cause vitamin B1 defficiency, you might end up with something called Wernicke syndrome, where the reported triad of symptoms often consists of ataxia (uncoordinated movements in general), confusion, and either nystagmus or ophthalmoplegia. Wernicke syndrome is usually caused by either severe alcoholism or beriberi, but anything that leads to severe depletion of B1 reserves in the brain can be the cause)
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cheers, Eugenia.
