Anorexic Twins May Hold Cure to Eating Disorders

Twin sisters Jessica and Jaime Parrish are best friends who share everything with each other. But when they were teenagers, they also began to share a deadly disease -- anorexia nervosa.

For years, Texas twins Jaime and Jessica Parrish suffered in secret, each not knowing the other was struggling with anorexia.

(ABC News)

Their eating disorder was a secret they kept from everyone -- even each other. Now, doctors are studying the twins in hopes of providing both better treatment and understanding of the disorder, which could be genetically linked.

Jaime said her relationship with food and weight started to change in the ninth grade.

"I wasn't happy with the way that I looked, and I don't remember people ever making comment about how I look fat in the mirror. It was more me looking in the mirror and not being happy with what I saw," she said. "So I started changing my food habits."

Comparisons to her sister didn't help Jaime's view of food.

"I'm staring at my beautiful sister and she was always skinnier than I was," she said. "We're twins, I know we should look alike, but I don't feel like I look as pretty as she does."

Sisters Struggling Secretly

Jaime began restricting what she ate, so much so that her five-foot-eight-inch figure went from 170 pounds down to a dangerously low 89.

"I was sad and crying and freaking out all the time. And I was a burden on my parents; I was a burden on Jessica and my family," she said. "And I thought … if I were to just take my own life, it would make everything so much better for the rest of the family."

In 2004, at Thanksgiving dinner, Jessica was so shocked by Jaime's appearance that she made a declaration, slamming her hands down on the table and telling her parents that Jaime was anorexic.

"[She] yelled it: 'Your daughter is an anorexic!,'" Jaime said. "And I was a deer in the headlights."

After the Thanksgiving episode, Jaime went into treatment. All the while, she and her family were unaware that her sister was struggling with the same disorder.

"Anything that I ate I would purge until I felt like I got it all up," Jessica said. "It was a miserable life. But at the same time, I felt like it was the life that I deserved to live."