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In a sense, eating disorders
are diets and fitness or sports programs gone horribly wrong. A person
wants to lose weight, get fit, excel in his or her sport, but then loses
control and ends up with body and spirit ravaged by starvation, binge
eating, purging, and frantic compulsive exercise. What may have begun as a
solution to problems of low self-esteem has now become an even bigger
problem in its own right.
Statistics
Several studies suggest
that participants in sports that emphasize appearance and a lean body
are at higher risk for developing an eating disorder than are
non-athletes or folks involved in sports that require muscle mass and
bulk.
Eating disorders are
significant problems in the worlds of ballet and other dance, figure
skating, gymnastics, running, swimming, rowing, horse racing, ski
jumping, and riding. Wrestlers, usually thought of as strong and
massive, may binge eat before a match to carbohydrate load and then
purge to make weight in a lower class.
One study of 695 male and
female athletes found many examples of bulimic attitudes and behavior. A
third of the group was preoccupied with food. About a quarter binged at
least once a week. Fifteen percent thought they were overweight when
they were not. About twelve percent feared losing control, or actually
did lose control, when they ate. More than five percent ate until they
were gorged and nauseated.
In this study, five and a
half percent vomited to feel better after a binge and to control weight.
Almost four percent abused laxatives. Twelve percent fasted for
twenty-four hours or more after a binge, and about one and a half
percent used enemas to purge.
Another research project
done by the NCAA looked at the number of student athletes who had
experienced an eating disorder in the previous two years. Ninety-three
percent of the reported problems were in women's sports. The sports that
had the highest number of participants with eating disorders, in
descending order, were women's cross country, women's gymnastics,
women's swimming, and women's track and field events.
The male sports with the
highest number of participants with eating disorders were wrestling and
cross country.
Male and female
athletes: different risk factors
The female athlete is
doubly at risk for the development of an eating disorder. She is subject
to the constant social pressure to be thin that affects all females in
western countries, and she also finds herself in a sports milieu that
may overvalue performance, low body fat, and an idealized, unrealistic
body shape, size, and weight. Constant exposure to the demands of the
athletic subculture added to those bombarding her daily on TV, in
movies, in magazines, and transmitted by peers, may make her especially
vulnerable to the lures of weight loss and unhealthy ways of achieving
that loss.
Males also develop eating
disorders but at a much reduced incidence (approximately 90% female; 10%
male). Males may be protected somewhat by their basic biology and
different cultural expectations.
Many sports demand low
percentages of body fat. In general, men have more lean muscle tissue
and less fatty tissue than women do. Males also tend to have higher
metabolic rates than females because muscle burns more calories faster
than fat does. So women, who in general carry more body fat than men,
with slower metabolisms and smaller frames, require fewer calories than
men do.
All of these factors mean
that women gain weight more easily than men, and women have a harder
time losing weight, and keeping it off, than men do. In addition, women
have been taught to value being thin. Men, on the other hand, usually
want to be big, powerful, and strong; therefore, men are under less
pressure to diet than women are -- and dieting is one of the primary
risk factors for the development of an eating disorder.
Special concerns:
wrestlers and quick weight loss
Everyone who uses drastic
and unhealthy methods of weight loss is at risk of dying or developing
serious health problems, but the deaths of three college wrestlers in
the latter part of 1997 triggered re-examination of the extreme
weight-loss efforts common in that sport. Athletes in other sports have
died too; runners and gymnasts seem to be at high risk. The deaths of
three young men in different parts of the U.S. in the late 1990s has put
the problem once again before the public.
News reports say that the
three were going to school in North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
Authorities believe they were trying to lose too much weight too rapidly
so they could compete in lower weight classes. The wrestling coach at
Iowa State University has been quoted as saying, "When you have deaths
like this, it calls into question what's wrong with the sport. Wrestlers
believe that, foremost, it's their responsibility to make weight, and
that mind set may come from the fact that they find themselves
invincible." They share that mind set with others who use dangerous
methods of weight loss, both athletes and non-athletes.
Two of the young men were
wearing rubber sweat suits while they worked out in hot rooms. One died
from kidney failure and heart malfunction. The other succumbed to
cardiac arrest after he worked out on an exercise bike and refused to
drink liquids to replenish those he lost by sweating. One was trying to
lose four pounds, the other six.
Wrestlers share a
mentality with people who have eating disorders. They push themselves
constantly to improve, to be fitter, to weigh less, and to excel. They
drive themselves beyond fatigue. One coach reports that "wrestlers
consider themselves the best-conditioned athletes that exist, and they
like the fact they can go where no one's gone before. The instilled
attitude among these kids is that if they push and push, it'll pay off
with a victory." No one expects to die as a consequence of weight loss,
but it happens.
When a clamor arose for
the NCAA to do something, to make rules prohibiting drastic methods of
weight loss, a representative said, "We could make every rule in the
book, but we can't legislate ethics. That's where the wrestlers and
coaches have to put the onus on themselves."
What price victory? It
takes wisdom indeed to realize that in some circumstances the price is
too high.
Update: August
2001
Researchers at
Toronto General Hospital and York University in Toronto have reported a
study which indicates that "there is little valid support for the theory
that athletes with eating disorders are psychologically different from
their non-athlete counterparts, nor any justification for the label
'anorexia athletica' or 'activity anorexia.' Scores on test instruments
were no different in groups of non-athletic ED patients and groups of
elite athletes with EDs. "There is no support for the concept that
athletes with eating disorders are less ill than other eating disorders
patients, or that their symptoms are simply due to over-training and the
intensive training frequently required of elite athletes." (reported at
the Academy for Eating Disorders conference, May 2001, Vancouver, and
excerpted in Eating Disorders Review, July/August 2001,
Gurze Books)
© 2002, Anorexia Nervosa and Related Eating Disorders, Inc.
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