Eating Disorders in Men

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Eating Disorders in Men
Your Name
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What we will cover

• Overview of the problem
• Risk factors
• Characteristics
• Why eating disorders are more common in females
  than in males
• The role of biology
• Different mindsets
• Impact of the media

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Overview of the Problem

• Men make up about one million of the eight
  million Americans with eating disorders.
• Not just a rich, white womans disease.
• The disorders most often surface during the teen
  years, but in rare cases men as old as 60 and
  boys as young as 8 can be affected.
• In both sexes, the disorders can lead to
  recurring medical and psychological problems and
  sometimes death.
• (Cook, Mens Health Concerns Sourcebook)
• (Cook, Mens Health Concerns Sourcebook)

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Risk factors for the development of eating
disorders in men

• Men who acquire eating disorders are often
  medically obese at some point.
• Athletic activities can sometimes spark the
  struggle to be thin.
• Men may adopt disease behaviors when teased or
  criticized about being fat.
• Dieting is one of the most powerful eating
  disorder triggers.
• Men with professions that call for weight
  restriction are at a higher risk for developing
  an eating disorder.
• (Cook, Mens Health Concerns Sourcebook)

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Characteristics of men with eating disorders

• Many anorexic males were raised in families with
  poor parent-child relationships.
• Many had parents who discouraged independence,
  may have been overprotective, and may have not
  demanded self-responsibility.
• Tend to be closer to their mothers than their
  fathers.
• Tend to have dependent, avoidant, and
  passive-aggressive personality styles.
• (Andersen, Males with Eating Disorders)

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Characteristics of men with eating disorders
(cont.)

• Anorexic males display more anxiety regarding
  sexual activities and relationships than do
  anorexic females.
• More eating disordered men exhibit gender
  dysphoria and/or homosexual orientation than
  their female counterparts.
• (Andersen, Men with Eating Disorders)

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The big question

• Why are eating disorders so much more common in
  females than in males???
• (Andersen, Males with Eating Disorders)

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Why are eating disorders more common in
females than in males?Speculation on the role of
biology

• We have learned that estrogen decreases
  appetiteso
• Does estrogen play a role in the development of
  anorexia in females during the onset of puberty?
• Should we consider the fact that men have less
  estrogen than women when examining the
  discrepancy in eating disorder cases between the
  sexes?

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Why are eating disorders more common in
females than in males?Speculation on the role of
biology(cont.)

• Leptin is a hormonal product of the ob gene
  secreted by adipocytes. Besides its role in the
  regulation of energy balance, leptin seems to be
  involved in linking energy stores to the
  reproductive system.
• Leptin reduces food intake and increases energy
  expenditure. Males have lower plasma leptin
  levels than females, so
• Does leptin play a role in the discrepancy in
  eating disorder cases between the sexes?
• (Luukaa, Pesonen, Huhtaniemi, Lehtonen, Tilvis,
  Tuomilehto, Koulu, and Huupponen, Inverse
  Correlation between Serum Testosterone and Leptin
  in Men, 1998)

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Why are eating disorders more common in females
than in males?Different mindsets

• Women report higher levels of body
  dissatisfaction and are more likely to diet to
  lose weight than men.
• The Gallup Organizations national body image
  survey revealed that the average American woman
  wants to lose 11 pounds, while the average
  American man wants to lose only one pound.
• (Andersen, Males with Eating Disorders)

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Why are eating disorders more common in females
than in males?Different mindsets(cont.)

• In a study done at Harvard University, normal
  weight and overweight men and women completed the
  Implicit Association Test and portions of the
  Eating Disorders Questionnaire. Grover, Keel,
  and Mitchell found that
• Normal weight women tended to rate themselves
  explicitly as being heavier than normal weight
  men.
• In women, an implicit heavy identity was
  correlated with low self esteem. This was not
  the case in men.
• Even when they are overweight, men fail to
  identify themselves as heavy.
• (Grover, Keel, and Mitchell, Gender Differences
  in Implicit Weight Identity, 2003)

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Why are eating disorders more common in females
than in males?Impact of the media

• The media portray men as concerned with physical
  fitness and women as obsessed with their weight.
• Magazine articles targeted primarily to women
  contain a greater number of articles and ads
  aimed at weight reduction, and those targeted at
  men contain more articles and ads pertaining to
  shape and muscularity.
• (Andersen, Men with Eating Disorders)

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Hmmm..
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The Medias Representation of the Ideal Male Body

• Richard a. Leit, James J. Gray,and Harrison G.
  Pope, Jr.
• (International Journal of Eating Disorders, 2002)

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Background

• Many studies have suggested that modern society
  praises an increasingly muscular male body ideal.
• This idea parallels the rise in
  anabolic-androgenic steroid use among men, along
  with an increasing prevalence of muscle
  dysmorphia.
• Many male images in the media are not attainable
  without drugs such as anabolic steroids.
• The cultural ideal of hypermesomorphy may be just
  as dangerous for men as it is for women.

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Method

• Participants 82 undergraduate men from a private
  university in the middle-Atlantic states.
• Conditions In each condition, participants
  viewed 30 slides of advertisements from magazines
  and clothing catalogs. In the control condition,
  the ads contained either no human images or ones
  that didnt focus on the body. In the
  experimental condition, 10 neutral slides
  accompanied 20 slides featuring ideal male body
  images.
• Measure The Somatomorphic Matrix, a
  computerized test of body image perception.
• Hypothesis Men exposed to images of
  hypermesomorphic males would display lower levels
  of body satisfaction than would men who were not
  exposed to these images.

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Results
Body shape discrepancies
Positive values mean that the subject chose
images more muscular than his own perception of
his body. Positive values mean that the subject
chose images less fat than his perception of his
own body.
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Conclusions

• Exposure to muscular male figures in
  advertisements produces measurable body
  dissatisfaction in men.
• Dissatisfaction was primarily with respect to
  musculature, rather than body fat.
• The manipulation did not affect mens perceptions
  of womens preferences for male bodies.

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Limitations

• The brief presentation of slides cannot mimic the
  lifelong effect of thousands of media exposures
  among men in todays society.
• The sample consisted entirely of college-aged men.

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The Take-home message
There are a few different explanations for why
eating disorders are so much more common in
females than in males -biology may play an
important role -men and women have different
mindsets -the media may have an impact
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Food is an important part of a balanced
diet -Fran Lebowitz
Never eat more than you can lift -Miss Piggy
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References

• Cook, A. R. (1998). Mens Health Concerns
  Sourcebook. Detroit, MI Omnigraphics, Inc.
• Andersen, A.D. (1990). Males with Eating
  Disorders. New York, NY Brunner/Mazel
• Luukkaa, v., Pesonen, U., Huhtaniemi, I.,
  Lehtonen, A., Tilvis, R., Tuomilehto, J., Loulu,
  M., and Huupponen, R. (1998). Inverse Correlation
  between Serum Testosterone and Leptin in Men.
  Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism,
  Vol. 83
• Grover, V. P., Keel, P. K., Mitchell, J. P.
  (2003). Gender Differences in Implicit Weight
  Identity. International Journal of Eating
  Disorders, Vol. 34
• Leit, R. A., Gray, J. J., and Pope, H. G.
  (2002). The Medias Representation of the Ideal
  Male Body. International Journal of Eating
  Disorders, Vol. 31.