Eating Disorders In Athletes

Athletes are more prone to having disordered eating and exercise habits because of the potential connection between their training programme and sports performance.Understanding the hazards that athletes experience is essential for offering coaching and preventative support. This can increase the likelihood of early intervention and, hence, long-term recovery while also lowering the risk of eating disorders developing.

Mental problems like eating disorders are severe and difficult to treat. Regardless of age, gender, colour, sexual orientation, background, or occupation, they can have an impact on everyone. Although many contend that eating disorder behaviors are actually encouraged in sport, there is evidence to show that athletes are disproportionately affected.

According to studies, eating problems are more common among athletes than in the general population. The percentage of a group’s members who are now afflicted with an ailment is referred to as prevalence. 1.8% of the population in the UK, or roughly 1.25 million people, suffer from an eating disorder. The prevalence of eating disorders was found to be 13.5% overall in a study of elite athletes. Twenty.1% of female athletes struggle with eating disorders, compared to 7.7% of men athletes. However, male athletes have an eating disorder prevalence that is almost 16 times higher than male non-athletes.

Signs of Eating Disorders in Athletes

Regardless of the activity in which an athlete competes, eating disorder behaviors are frequently praised, making it difficult to recognise the warning indications of these behaviors. While behaviors like stressing about food intake, training long and hard hours outside of practise, and feeding the body with “healthy” foods are all praised, these are just a few warning signals that an athlete may be in trouble.

All people who have eating disorders experience dangerous side effects, but athletes may experience these differently. Athletes who struggle with eating disorders, for instance, are more likely to experience RED-S, or relative energy deficiency in sport, which “occurs when energy expenditure exceeds energy intake, creating  a lack of energy that compromises one or more of the following physiological systems: metabolism, menstrual function, bone health, immunity, protein synthesis, cardiovascular health, and psychological health.”

Issue of Eating Disorders in Athletes

Eating disorders are “serious and typically deadly illnesses that are accompanied by fundamental changes in people’s eating practises and related attitudes and behaviors,” according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Regarding assessment and available treatments, it focused on anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder.

Binge-Eating Disorder

A symptom of overeat disorder, which makes people who suffer lose control over how much food they eat, is stress eating. People with the syndrome are often overweight or obese as a result.

Anorexia Nervosa

Anorexics frequently confuse the disorder with body dysmorphia because they perceive their bodies as being overweight despite being dangerously underweight. People with this illness deprive their bodies of essential nutrition in an effort to lose weight, and it has the greatest fatality rate of all eating disorders.

Genetic propensity

The genetic make-up of athletes with eating disorders may be an unexpected risk factor. An athlete may be considerably more prone to get an eating disorder due to a genetic predisposition than someone who struggles with substance misuse or other mental diseases.

Pressures particular to sports

Pressures associated with a particular sport: Eating disorders have become more prevalent in athletes, partly as a result of the high demands that competition imposes. According to the NCAA, depending on the sport, players are frequently required to lose weight or reach a certain weight barrier in order to compete. Athletes are consequently under far more pressure to deal with their weight in undesirable, perhaps risky ways.

Does sport encourage eating disorders?

According to some, eating disorders are “normalized” and encouraged by trainers and coaches in sports. We do know that athletes have a higher risk of getting an eating problem, despite the fact that eating disorders are complex mental illnesses with a number of reasons. Several sporting activities can be harmful to those who have eating disorders or are at risk for developing them, “the eating disorder charity Beat claims.

Daily weigh-ins or weight monitoring are examples of these procedures. These can lead to an obsession with weight and motivate sick people to participate in eating disorder behaviors like overtraining or calorie restriction.

Female athletes with eating problems

Disordered eating, amenorrhea, and osteoporosis make up the Female Athlete Triad. Having a disturbed eating pattern can result in a lack of nourishment that can result in missing many or more consecutive periods. Athletes are significantly more likely to experience stress fractures of the bones as a result of calcium and bone loss that follows. These ailments are all causes for medical worry. Together, they produce significant health hazards that could be fatal. While any female athlete has the potential to acquire the triad, teenage females are most vulnerable because of the active biological changes, growth spurts, peer and social pressures, and constantly shifting life circumstances that come with adolescence.

Why is it so frequent for athletes to have eating disorders?

The majority of individuals, even mental health professionals, had only a rudimentary understanding of bulimia nervosa until the early 1980s, despite the fact that anorexia nervosa had been recognised since the 1800s, according to UK Sport.However, it was uncommon to find reports of eating disorders in athletes. Little was done despite the fact that people were aware that some athletes were “too skinny to win” or “fit but vulnerable.”

Some athletes and coaches held the view that losing weight would always improve performance during the time when the notion that you needed to be a certain body type to thrive in sport was prevalent. Then, the most effective methods for losing weight were passed down from generation to generation in specific sports.

Eating disorders in disabled athletes

The frequency of eating problems in athletes with disabilities has, however, received scant attention. Because there are no established “norms” regarding good weight-to-height ratios or what weight could promote optimum performance in athletes with disabilities, coaches are not always able to recognise the symptoms of eating disorders in these athletes.