Men use appearance-enhancing and workout-enhancing supplements to such an excessive extent that new research has proposed that the behavior is a new eating disorder. The fault lies in the marketing strategies used by the manufacturers of the legal supplements and the perception of self that the men that overuse the supplements have of themselves according to Dr. Richard Achiro with the California School of Professional Psychology at Alliant International University in Los Angeles.
The conclusions were based on the response of 195 men between the ages of 18 and 65. The men had to work out for appearance or fitness at least twice a week. The men were required to have consumed at least one performance-enhancing or appearance-enhancing supplement in the 30 days prior to the study. The supplements studied included whey protein, creatine, and L-cartinine.
Forty percent of the men reported their supplement use had increased over time. While the supplements are not marketed to be meal replacements, 22 percent of the men in the study regularly used the supplements as meal replacements. The abusive qualities of using the supplements was identified by 29 percent of the men expressing concern about the frequency and amount of the supplements that they used, eight percent of the men being counseled by their physicians to stop using the supplements, and three percent having been hospitalized as a result of abuse of the supplements.
The majority of the men used supplements to excess as a result of body consciousness that attained to some ideal of masculine perfection. Low self-esteem was a major factor in the abuse of supplements. The researchers state that the overuse of supplements has become so prevalent that it has attained the level of an eating disorder.
