Health

Homosexuals Are More Prone to Eating Disorders

Gay women, too, are at risk

By Stefan Anitei, Science Editor

14th of April 2007, 09:50 GMT

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Sex and food are connected.

And if gay and bisexual men do not follow the norm, neither do they follow it when it comes to food: a first population-based study found that these categories are more prone to eating disorders.

A team at Columbia

University made of Dr. Ilan H. Meyer, associate professor of clinical Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health and Dr. Matthew Feldman, of the National Development and Research Institutes applied its approach on a pool of 516 New York City subjects; 126 were straight men and the others were bisexual men and women.

Over 15 % of gay or bisexual men experienced at a certain moment anorexia, bulimia or binge-eating disorder, in a severe or partial form (subclinical eating disorder), while less than 5 % of heterosexual men did this.

This affected less the women: around 10 % of lesbian and bisexual women and 8 % of heterosexual women had experienced these symptoms. "It is not clear why gay men have high rates of eating disorders. One theory is that the values and norms in the gay men's community promote a body-centered focus and high expectations about physical appearance, so that, similar to what has been theorized about heterosexual women, they may feel pressure to maintain an ideal body image", said Meyer.

To check this, the researchers investigated if gay and bisexual men that were better integrated in the gay community are more likely to display eating disorders than the others.

The team did not find any difference. "Even gay and bisexual men who participate in gay gyms, where body-focus and community values regarding attractiveness would be heightened, did not have higher rates of eating disorders than those gay and bisexual men who participated in non-gay gyms or who did not participate in a gym at all. This suggests that factors other than values and norms in the gay community are related to the higher rates of eating disorder among these men", said Meyer.

As the values for eating disorders were similar between lesbian/bisexual women and heterosexual women, the lesbian/bisexual women are thus not protected from eating disorders as other researches discovered. Moreover, the levels of the eating disorders of lesbian/bisexual women were close to those of gay/bisexual men. "This shows that there needs to be greater awareness of these problems among gay and bisexual men and women alike, as well as specific interventions to address the issues in this population."

TAGS:

homosexual | bisexual | eating

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