Eating disorders are often described as female. If they are largely, male cases are underestimated according to a recent American study.
Anorexia and other eating disorders (ACD) are female illnesses in the eyes of most parents and even doctors. A study of Boston Children’s Hospital, published this November 4 in the JAMA Pediatrics, comes to contradict this preconceived idea. In fact, the prevalence of ACTs in adolescent males is said to be underestimated. Thanks to a survey carried out over 10 years and the accounts of consultations of more than 5,500 young people, the authors of this study reveal that 17.9% of boys are concerned about their weight and their appearance at a level considered extreme.
The musculature preoccupies
The main reason why boys are underestimated ACT is because their profile changes according to gender, as the study’s lead author, Alison Field explains: “Both boys and girls have very different concerns about their weight and appearance. Teenage girls are most often obsessed with being thin. Boys are more worried about their muscles. One in eleven participants say they are “very concerned” about their muscles. On the other hand, they are 2.5% to be worried about their thinness and 6.3% by these two aspects.
Most of the reports concerning eating disorders reflect a desire for thinness. Statistics and doctors therefore often neglect these boys who want to build muscle by lowering their weight. “Doctors may not be aware that some of their male patients are so preoccupied with their weight and appearance that they are using unhealthy means to achieve the physique they desire. Parents are not aware that they should be worried about eating disorders and excessive interest in weight and appearance in their son and daughter, ”insists Alison Field. According to the Boston Children’s Hospital team, young men who take substances to build muscle are the equivalent of young girls who lose weight using vomiting and / or laxatives.
Hormones and steroids for boys
Boys with TCA are a bigger problem. To build muscle, they use food supplements that are harmful to their health: growth hormones and steroids for example. These products also increase the risk of developing other behavioral disorders. Thus, boys who follow these supplements double the risk of frequently abusing alcohol (binge drinking) and increasing that of being drug users. To better understand the link between ACT and obesity, drug use or depression in male patients, the team reviewed responses to questionnaires completed in the “Growing Up Today” survey (1999-2010).
A worrying figure: a third of respondents admit in this survey to have bulimic behaviors, to make themselves vomit or to eat too much. In France, the number of people affected by TCA is estimated at 10% of the total population, and around one in ten anorexic is a boy according to the French Association for the Development of Specialized Approaches (AFDAS).
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