Male Anorexia

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anorexia, anxiety, binge eating, Body Image, bulimia, Depression, fashion industry, health problems, Male Eating Disorders, mental health issues, obsessive compulsive hoarders, perfectionism, skinny male models

Male Anorexia

When in history has a male ever been concerned about fitting into a pair of skinny jeans? Media has hyper-focused on the skinny male model. Today’s fashion is geared towards the emaciated male in a pair of skinny jeans. This male body image does not occur naturally unless someone is ill. We now have a whole culture of men trying to obtain an impossible body image.

There appears to be a rise in the number of males with eating disorders. According to NEDA, at least one million males in the United States have an eating disorder such as anorexia or bulimia. But these numbers are skewed due to the high prevalence of undiagnosed males with eating disorders.

Twenty years ago, very few people even knew what an eating disorder was. Today, the public awareness of eating disorders has allowed some men with anorexia to come forward. But most males will not seek treatment for eating disorders because of the shame, the fact that there are fewer male residential treatment centers and the misperception that eating disorders only occurs in females or gay men.

How can you tell if someone has anorexia nervosa? A male with anorexia nervosa is less than 85 percent of normal body weight. He avoids eating, has poor body image and may exercise obsessively. He is intensely concerned about losing flab or building muscle. He believes he is fat when others are telling him that he is too thin. It is important to note that he really does see himself as fat. It is caused by deficiencies in the brain brought on by starvation. Anorexia nervosa may actually compromise the ability to reason in its victims.

People with anorexia usually also have one or more co-occurring disorders such as anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder or depression. Males and females both suffer many of the same symptoms of anorexia, such as:

• Dehydration (fainting)
• Performing food rituals
• Bursts of energy followed by fatigue
• Constantly talks about body image, weight and diets
• Avoids eating
• Purges (anorexia nervosa — purge type)
• Isolates
• Thin hair and brittle nails
• Excessive movements even when seated to burn calories

When someone with anorexia under-eats, the brain may dispense feelings of euphoria that briefly counteract anxious or depressed feelings. In this way, food restriction is used as an anti-depressant or a way to “zone out.” A male with anorexia uses the obsessive thoughts of weight, diet, food (not eating) and body image as a way of pushing down feelings or past traumas. This is common for all types of eating disorders.

The highest number of males with eating disorders have binge eating disorder, compulsive overeating or obesity. These boys and men often do not get treatment until they have diabetes, heart attacks or other weight-related diseases.

There are many causes of eating disorders. Genetics can make a person more predisposed to acquiring an eating disorder. This usually occurs in families who have eating disorders or other addictions.

The desire for control makes a male more vulnerable to the disease. This is often the result of feeling smothered or abandoned and misunderstood by their families. Many males report that they had parents who overemphasized physical appearances. In these families, the individual learned to keep his feelings, doubts, fears, anxieties and imperfections hidden. There may be family issues that they try to avoid by focusing on their disorders and their ability to control their food intake.

Having a perfectionistic personality type can be a factor in the development of anorexia. Most males with anorexia are above average students and may have excelled at sports. Some say perfectionism is the leading cause of male anorexia. Perfectionism leads to the desire to be good, accepted, perfect and in control — all of which are prerequisites of anorexia.

Male anorexia is lethal. When the body is not fed it will take fat from the muscles and organs to sustain life. Males generally have less fat than females, so there is the added complication of losing muscle mass. The heart is an important muscle that may be affected. In addition, potassium and electrolyte imbalances may be a risk factor for cardiac problems such as heart attacks.

With the rise in male eating disorders and associated risks, it is imperative that men with eating disorders seek help!

Skinny male models and new fashions fuel eating disorders among men

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'bigorexia', 'manorexia', anorexia, binge eating, Body Image, bulimia, Bullying, Eating Disorders, fashion industry, Male Eating Disorders, mannequin, masculinity, skinny male models, stigma

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/may/16/skinny-models-fuel-male-eating-disorders?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

Skinny models, clothes designed for unrealistic body shapes and pressures at work are all fuelling an increase in eating disorders and body anxiety, as well as a rise in demand for cosmetic surgery. For men. Fat is no longer just a feminist issue, since the number of men suffering problems with food and body image is rising fast, with experts suggesting that 40% of binge eaters and a quarter of anorexia and bulimia sufferers are male – compared with 10% a decade ago – while the equivalent rates for women have not changed significantly.

Along with the rise in so-called “manorexia” is the body dysmorphia condition of “bigorexia” – men who become ever more muscle-bound in their obsessive pursuit of the perfect six-pack body.

Eating disorder campaigners are worried that a shift in men’s sizing in fashion is exacerbating the crisis and have criticised a British mannequin manufacturer for its latest super-skinny male model that they say could encourage vulnerable boys and men to starve themselves in a repeat of the “size zero” trend that encouraged many women to endanger their health. Next month Rootstein will debut a mannequin with a 35in chest and a 27in waist – 12in smaller than the average British man.

The firm said it was just reflecting demand and a shift to gender-blending fashion led by the slim and cool: Mark Ronson, Russell Brand, designer Hedi Slimane, and a new crop of male models, like Calvin Klein’s Tomek Szmulewicz and Top Man’s Sam Bennett. It talked of allowing “the boys a little of what the girls were getting with a beautifully angular physique that’s all about the youthful thrill of life on the edge”.

The mannequin’s designer, Kevin Arpino, said demand was up for smaller models. “It is a collection dictated by current fashion trends for skinny jeans and very tight tailoring, as seen everywhere from Topman to Gucci and in the edgier fashion magazines like Numéro. It’s a trend which you can see in celebrities and rock stars – Russell Brand has a little bit to do with it. But I am sure that muscle boys will have their time again.”

But for Rob Richman, 35, a recovering anorexic from London, it’s a deeply worrying shift. “I’m staggered, shocked, at what the fashion industry is doing now, trying to mould men to aspire to a different shape than one that is natural, the same as they did with women. Between the tiny sizes and the six-pack look, the pressure on men just seems to have escalated,” he said.

“In my early 30s I couldn’t get clothes to fit me and I would have to buy girls’ jeans; now I can get tiny sizes on the High Street. You’re telling teenage boys to reach unrealistic and unhealthy sizes. Of course you get guys like Pete Doherty and Stephen Merchant who are naturally tall and thin, but this is about pressure to conform to a false ideal. We should allow men and women to be the different shapes and sizes they naturally are.”

Richman, who developed his eating disorder aged 12 after years of vicious bullying at his public school, said he used to be the only man at treatment clinics or hospitals. “Now I’m never the only guy. Ten years ago if a guy went to his GP it’s unlikely they would think of him having anorexia.

“Now all the ones with the really chronic levels are the men.”

But whether men are developing the “excessively muscular or excessively skeletal” shape, said Dr John Morgan, a leading eating order specialist, the risks are high.

Eating disorders have the highest morbidity and mortality rates of all psychiatric illnesses. Bullying can be a major trigger towards eating disorders in boys as young as seven.

“Ironically the government’s anti-obesity campaign has had a flip effect of making perhaps slightly overweight boys more likely to be picked on and bullied. Interesting that, while one in four children are overweight, two in three think they are,” said Dr Morgan.

“The rates of body image disparities are indeed rising among men. Ten years ago a young woman and a gay man suffered similar rates of risk while the attitude of the heterosexual male was much more ‘we’ve got beer bellies because we’re men and we don’t care’, but now that’s changed quite significantly.

“There’s a broader crisis of masculinity in our society and men are facing the same growing pains that women went through in the 50s and 60s.

“Men are being presented with many more choices, and while choice is liberating, for many young men they struggle through and there remains a lot of stigma attached to them admitting weakness; it’s such a threat to the male identity.

“The difference between men and women,” Dr Morgan went on, “tends to be that men focus on shape more than weight, and also men have the extra issue of being expected to be an ideal which is not incompatible with health, so George Clooney might have a great body but we’d also expect him to scale Mount Kilimanjaro, whereas Keira Knightley would struggle with the mountain, but that would be expected.”

The eating disorder charity Beat protested furiously at the Rootstein mannequins. A spokeswoman for Beat said that men and eating disorders was an issue that now had to be taken seriously and the charity was campaigning hard for more awareness among GPs.

“More and more men are coming forward. Generally speaking, there is just as much pressure on guys as women to have a certain body shape. Imagery presented as something to attain, skinny styles, and making sizes smaller, it’s all a dangerous ideal,” she said. “Men are subject to the same insecurities around their body and self-image as women are.”

Former TV host Steve Blacknell, 57, developed bulimia months after starting a new job in the image-obsessed music industry.

“The pressure to be thin and lovely is the same whether you’re a girl or a bloke in that world, and it’s impossible, just as the washboard stomach is an unreachable thing.

“I’d take down and burn every image on those men’s magazines and advertising hoardings of rippling abs, along with those mannequins.

“It’s hard enough being a bloke coping with an eating disorder – imagine then having to look at images like that, imagine the pressure.

“I work with the corporate world now, with men who know that how you look is very much part of the package you are presenting and so how you look is important.”

And that workplace image is what is fuelling the increase in men going for cosmetic surgery, said Liz Dale, director of the Harley Medical Group. The company has seen a 55% increase in men having “tummy tucks” and a 23% rise in Botox treatments, in the first two months of 2010 compared to the same period in 2009. “Men are a lot less embarrassed than they would have been 10 years ago. Now they are quite proud of looking after themselves and coming in for Botox and skin peels. They don’t want to look like celebs, they want to look thinner and healthier. We see a lot of City men where the pressure is more pronounced to look good,” said Dale.

John Updike wrote in a 1993 essay: “Inhabiting a male body is much like having a bank account; as long as it’s healthy, you don’t think much about it. Compared to the female body, it is a low-maintenance proposition: a shower now and then, trim the fingernails every ten days, a haircut once a month.”

Lord Byron thought having to shave every day was as bad as women having to deal with the pains of childbirth. Although Byron had his own issues with food – he was a binge-eater, according to Dr David Veale, consultant psychiatrist and co-author of Overcoming Body Image Problems – neither he nor Updike would have recognised the expectations placed on the modern man.

“There is still greater pressure on women than men,” said Veale. “But undoubtedly some men are more vulnerable – they put all their worth and identity into their appearance. At the severer end of the spectrum it is just as common to have a male sufferer as a woman.

“Eating disorders in women may well be more biologically driven with genetic links, but for men it seems to have a more sociological aspect. An individual who is teased or bullied or humiliated or suffers emotional neglect at a crucial stage of their life obviously is going to feel that impact.

“Generally human beings go around thinking we are a lot more attractive than we actually are, and the greatest paradox is that men with eating disorders are actually more unattractive the harder they try to sculpt themselves into the perfect aesthetic, not because of their bodies but because of the behaviours and their obsessions.”

PERFECT FIGURES

■ Byron, Kafka, Elvis Presley, Elton John, Uri Geller and John Prescott all suffered from eating disorders.

■ The average British man is 5ft 10in tall, has a 39in waist and weighs 13 stone, heavier than most fellow Europeans.

■ The Royal College of Psychiatrists estimated last year that one in every 1,000 young men and seven in 1,000 young women have an eating disorder.

• Symptoms of anorexia include worrying about weight, exercising more, and being unable to stop losing weight. In men and boys, erections and wet dreams stop and testicles shrink.

■ Overall male cosmetic surgery grew by 21% last year, including an 80% rise breast reductions. The most popular treatment remains nose surgery

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/may/05/skinny-male-mannequins-eating-disorder?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

The State Of Male Eating Disorders

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Male Eating Disorders

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/02/male-eating-disorders_n_915338.html

It took Matt Wetsel, 26, more than a month to work up the courage to try group therapy for anorexia, the eating disorder he says consumed two years of his life. A college student at the time, Matt said he would plan to attend a meeting, become overwhelmed and would shy away.

When Wetsel finally steeled himself enough to attend, a woman stopped him and asked if he needed help. Unable to explain himself, he handed her a flier promoting the group. The woman disappeared, returning a few minutes later with the news that he could not take part. The group, it seemed, was for women only.

“I have never felt so defeated,” Wetsel said in a speech on Capitol Hill last spring.

Eating disorders have long been believed to be a female issue. The National Institute of Health estimates that girls are two-and-a-half times more likely to have an eating disorder than boys, while groups like the nonprofit National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders state that women are “much more likely than men to develop an eating disorder.” Yet a growing body of evidence suggests that such numbers and statements may not truly reflect the large number of boys and men with eating disorders — be it anorexia, bulimia, binge eating or the broader category of “eating disorders not otherwise specified.”

Earlier this month, the BBC reported that hospital admissions for men with eating disorders increased by 66 percent in the last decade in the U.K. In the U.S., a recent study in the Archives of General Psychiatry found that binge eating and bulimia were indeed more prevalent among adolescent girls than boys, but that the prevalence of anorexia nervosa was exactly the same.

“The one million dollar question is what this means,” said Daniel Le Grange, Ph.D, director of the eating disorders program at The University of Chicago and an author of that study.

“We don’t know what happens to them, we don’t know if [the prevalence] has changed or increased,” he continued. “We don’t know if the fact that we tend see more girls in a clinical realm means that boys tend to recover more readily on their own; we don’t know why they don’t come in for treatment more. We don’t know.”

Sam Thomas, founder of the U.K.-based charity Men Get Eating Disorders Too, echoed the sentiment, saying that the recent findings raise questions about whether eating disorders are up in earnest or if more practitioners are simply recognizing the symptoms.

“We suspect that these new findings are only the tip of the iceberg, as we know that there is still a large majority of male sufferers who struggle to get the help they need, due to the stigma and stereotypical gender assumptions still made about eating disorders,” Thomas told The Huffington Post.

For his part, Wetsel — who has been in recovery for more than five years and has become an eating disorder activist, running the blog …Until Eating Disorders Are No More — has written that his recovery mandated he fit himself into a “culture mostly designed, tailored and intended for females.” Many of the books he read referenced women only, using the pronoun “she.”

Wetsel said he developed a thick skin about such gender issues, but imagines that other men struggle as well, particularly in light of the consternation he faced when telling people about his disorder.

“I want to say, ‘Well, what should a recovered anorexic look like? Should I be female? Should I be emaciated?'” he said. “If you saw me around town I’d probably be wearing a band shirt and some shorts cut off at the knee. You’d probably see a few tattoos. I guess no one’s expecting someone by that description to have a story about being anorexic.”

Which could be a reason why men are less likely to seek treatment: The people around them, including their practitioners, may not recognize the symptoms and encourage them to get help.

“It often doesn’t cross parents’ or doctors’ minds, because the public is so schooled to think that eating disorders are a female thing only,” said Le Grange of the University of Chicago. He estimates that generally, for every 10 cases they see in his program, one or two is a boy. Last week, however, he saw four cases alone.

What is needed next, according to Le Grange, are further studies looking at the prevalence and impact of eating disorders in boys and men to better understand any differences in treatment strategies, as well as to assess what happens to boys with eating disorders in the long term.

In the meantime, people like Wetsel — who was eventually welcomed into the group meetings at his university and said they were integral to his recovery — are speaking up.

“This is serious stuff. There isn’t any room for people to treat eating disorders as anything less than a life-threatening illness,” he said. “It’s bad enough and hard enough for women to get help and be taken seriously, and men have to deal with an additional layer of stigma that supposedly challenges the way people see their masculinity and sexuality.”

Extra Info: http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/nedaDir/files/documents/handouts/MalesRes.pdf