Breaking down eating disorders in young men

Aaron Berkowitz – General Assignment Reporter

For years now, light has been drawn upon women’s struggle with eating disorders, but what many are failing to realize is a lot of males struggle with similar issues regarding their body images they just receive less attention.

“Eating disorders can occur at a young age, even for males,” said Gary Smart, an off shift executive at Yale New Haven Hospital and an adjunct men’s health professor at SCSU. “A lot of kids struggle with weight [or body image in general] can be a result of pressure from parents or peers calling them ‘fat’.”

Smart said living with any eating disorder is not to be taken lightly; each individual case should be considered a disease and treated to assure the person’s health.

“People who suffer from eating disorders can undergo a lot of damage to their self-esteem,” said Smart. “But they can also experience organ damage; you can cause issues with your liver or end up with stomach ulcers.”

Patricia De Barbieri, LPC., professor and part of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program on campus, said she thinks these types of diseases have always been under diagnosed in men, but athletes in particular.

“It’s always been an issue with athletes,” said De Barbieri. “Especially the ones whose physical types are a part of their performance; such as divers, tennis players, wrestlers, and runners in general.”

According to Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders’ (ANAD) website, almost 50 percent of people with eating disorders meet the criteria for a form of depression and as many as 24 million people of all ages suffer from at least one form of eating disorder in the US.

De Barbieri said as a society we have observed the tendencies of women for so long and we need to catch up on the studies of men.

“We live in a society that vilifies obesity and that glorifies thinness.” said De Barbieri. “Now for men they have to be ‘trim’ or muscular. Now men are having their bodies objectified. There’s also a genetic predisposition where we know there is a correlation between alcoholism and the development of Bulimia, depression and the development of Bulimia, and that eating disorders tend to run in families.”

ANAD’s website also estimates that 15 percent of people with anorexia or bulimia are males and 95 percent of all dieters gain their weight back within five years.

De Barbieri said wrestlers often struggle with Bulimia during season because they binge after matches and before matches they are purging.

“What they don’t realize when they are doing this is they are actually losing muscle strength, endurance, and concentration,” said De Barbieri. “You can also have a breakdown of your esophagus from all of the acid during purging; you can have blood-vessels that burst, you can have internal bleeding. I’ve had clients who had to go to the emergency room just to re-hydrate.”

De Barbieri and Smart both said these diseases may not always show their harsh effects on the body when a person is young, but can appear later down the line.

“Prevention is better than a cure,” said De Barbieri. “We need primary prevention for people during their early years. We need to change how we talk to people about their body weight and learn to accept that people come in a variety of shapes and sizes.”