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Lady Gaga's revealed that overcoming the eating disorder bulimia helped to save her music career.

The US star says as a teenager she used to make herself sick and only stopped when it started to cause damage to her vocal cords.

Lady Gaga was speaking to pupils in Los Angeles. "I used to throw up all the time in high school," she said.

The 25-year-old took questions from an audience at the It's Our Turn conference, held at Brentwood School.

When a student asked her about body issues, she said it was her music career that helped her beat bulimia, where sufferers make themselves sick after food.

"It made my voice bad, so I had to stop," she said. "The acid on your vocal cords - it's very bad."

"I wanted to be a skinny little ballerina, but I was a voluptuous little Italian girl whose dad had meatballs on the table every night."

She went on the criticise magazines and newspapers for promoting unrealistic images of women.

She said: "Every video I'm in, every magazine cover, they stretch you, they make you perfect. It's not real life.

"I'm gonna say this about girls. The dieting wars have got to stop. It's making girls sick.

"It's really hard. But you've got to talk to somebody about it. I'm encouraging you to know what you're worth."

Lady Gaga will perform at the 54th annual Grammy awards on Sunday in Los Angeles, where she is nominated three times.

For more information on Bulimia visit ����ý Advice: Eating Disorders