Many people think of eating disorders as a female problem, but new research suggests more males suffer from them than was previously believed.
"Males and females have very different concerns about their weight and appearance," study lead author Alison Field, ScD, from Boston Children's Hospital Adolescent Medicine Division, said in a Boston Children's Hospital news release.
They found 9.2 percent of the boys were concerned about their muscularity while 2.5 were concerned with thinness; 6.3 percent were concerned about both physical aspects.
A research team looked at 5,527 male teenagers and found 17.9 percent overall were "extremely concerned about their weight and physique." The boys that were overly concerned about their appearance were more likely to participate in self-harming activities such as binge drinking.
The team looked at participant answers from the Growing Up Today Study, in which teens filled out questionnaires every 12 to 36 months between the years of 1999 and 2010.
Boys who were especially concerned with muscularity and who used potentially harmful "supplements, growth hormones, and steroids" were twice as likely to engage in binge drinking than their peers; they were also more likely to use drugs. Boys who were more concerned with their waistline proved to be more likely to experience "depressive symptoms."
Out of all the study subjects 2.9 percent had full or partial criteria binge-eating disorder, one-third participated in infrequent binge-eating or purging.
"Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are characterized by an excessive influence of weight and physique on self-evaluation, with patients focused on being thin or wanting to losing weight," the news release reported.
Field believes when boys are extremely concerned with their muscular figure and use supplements to aid their body transformation it can be comparable to girls who are worried about their weight and use laxatives and other methods as an aid.
"Clinicians may not be aware that some of their male patients are so preoccupied with their weight and shape that they are using unhealthy methods to achieve the physique they desire, and parents are not aware that they should be as concerned about eating disorders and an excessive focus on weight and shape in their sons as in their daughters," Field said.
