Eating disorders occur throughout life in both sexes, being more frequent in women during adolescence. Athletes are the population most at risk for developing these disorders due to the environment that surrounds them, which not only precipitates these types of disorders, but even justifies them, “says Nieves Palacios, head of the Medicine, Endocrinology and Nutrition Service of the Sports Medicine Center of the Spanish Agency for Health Protection in Sports (Aepsad-CSD), based on his presentation at the XII Congress of the Spanish Society of Community Nutrition (SENC) , held last weekend week in Madrid.
An example of this is the female athlete triad , which includes the existence of menstruation disorders, amenorrhea and osteoporosis . It can have serious consequences and some of its manifestations may not be completely reversible. Palacios explains it in more detail: “There is a decrease in the amount of energy they eat, with altered eating behavior, which can lead to anorexia in extreme cases. This results in disorders of the period, which can lead to an absence of menstruation or amenorrhea. There may also be alterations of the bone, which in extreme cases causes osteoporosis ”.
Also in men
Male athletes “can also have a decrease in energy intake because they have to give weight to compete. Although, logically, men are not going to suffer amenorrhea, they can have some sexual dysfunction due to an alteration in their testosterone cycle, “adds the expert.
Specifically, recently, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has introduced the concept of ” relative energy deficiency in sport “, referring to low energy availability, with insufficient dietary intake to meet the necessary requirements for health and daily activities once the necessary demands for sports activities have been taken into account.
This term refers to studies that indicate that men can experience health problems analogous to the athlete woman’s triad , including low energy availability, hypogonadotropic hypogonadism and loss of bone mineral density .
Sports with more risk
“While in team sports (such as basketball, soccer, handball, hockey) weight is important, but not so important, in sports where low weight is always the norm or for aesthetics (rhythmic gymnastics, trampoline jumping or synchronized swimming) or for performance (cross-country sports and cycling) there are many errors in diet, ”according to Palacios. “In synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics you will always move better with less weight and you will also be more streamlined. They have to present a low weight constantly because they are competing all year round, ”he specifies.
Also, in combat sports in which there is a weight category (judo, taekwondo, karate, boxing, wrestling, Greco-Roman wrestling) mistakes are made such as not eating for days, going into saunas, training with plastics … “Some of these Athletes do it because they have to lose, for example, 4 kilograms in two days in order to give weight for combat. They say they train better by weighing more. Before fighting they become dehydrated and after weighing, they eat a lot of food and drink plenty of fluids. One of the consequences of acting in this way is gastrointestinal discomfort ” , warns the specialist in Endocrinology, Nutrition and Medicine of Physical Education and Sport.
Eating disorders present in sports
Among the most frequent conduct or eating disorders in athletes are anorexia , bulimia , bulimarexia (which combines anorexic manifestations with bulimic phenomena), vigorexia (which occurs more in men) and orthorexia .
Strenuous sport and certain types of sport can also cause anorexia because they take away the appetite. For example, it happens in sports like high altitude mountaineers.
How to avoid these cases
Palacios concludes that to avoid eating disorders “the best thing is to eat in a balanced way in quantity, quality and regularity. All the people who compete are quite closely watched by doctors from a physical point of view , but we have to think from a psychic point of view what it means to have to be on a diet because you are going to compete ”
