A study published in the journal Environmental Research and Public Health showed that women, younger people, consumers of fitness supplements or pharmacological substances to change body shape are the people most prone to developing mental disorders associated with body image and eating. The set of characteristics that can lead to this also includes supporters of restrictive diets, sedentary people, people diagnosed with obesity or overweight and who make a poor assessment of their own food.
The objective of the study is to know the profile of the most vulnerable individuals to this type of body disorder to support preventive strategies and health promotion.
“These characteristics do not necessarily accumulate forming a profile, but they can be found in a single subject. Furthermore, the study also identified that the negative physical assessment was positively correlated with the percentage of body fat and negatively correlated with the amount of muscle mass; that is, a person with a greater amount of fat and less lean mass may have a greater feeling that their body will be negatively evaluated by other people”, said professor at the Federal University of Alfenas (Unifal) and co-author of the article Wanderson Roberto da Silva .
The study was developed by Brazilian researchers from Unifal and the São Paulo State University (Unesp) and the University Institute of Psychological, Social and Life Sciences (Ispa), from Portugal and received funding from the São Paulo State Research Foundation ( FAPESP), who applied two questionnaires to 1,750 volunteers. The relationship between “attention to body shape”, “social physical anxiety” and “participants’ personal characteristics” was evaluated, and what was found was that the more individuals pay attention to body shape, the more likely they are to expect an evaluation negative about their physical shape and tend to be less comfortable with their physical appearance.
The research also identified that those who are more comfortable with their own bodies are the oldest, male, without overweight or obesity, who do not use pharmacological substances to modify their body shape, do not follow restrictive diets and practice physical activity, in addition to self-assessment of positive food quality.
“We identified that the more the participants paid attention to their body shape, the greater their expectations of negative physical evaluation and the lesser the feeling of comfort when presenting their body. In practical terms, this suggests that, when people give a lot of importance to the image they have of their own body, they may interpret the asymmetric shapes, which are normal for the human body, as inappropriate and, consequently, experience negative sensations, such as feelings of anguish and suffering in the face of a public occasion, such as an event, beach, gym, due to the fear of someone noticing the then considered imperfections”, explained Silva.
According to the professor, the results of the study are an opportunity to warn about the importance of disorders related to body image and eating, such as body dysmorphic disorder, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, which is very important, as such disorders are usually neglected, perhaps because the diagnosis rates are not high compared to other diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension and dyslipidemia.
“Despite that, the work developed by me together with my colleagues aimed to warn that there are individual characteristics that suggest greater vulnerability to negative body image and disordered eating leading to unhealthy behaviors”, he added.
According to Silva, in view of this, one suggestion would be to use these characteristics to promote assertive actions for disease prevention and health promotion in the population, whether in a collective or individual context. “Such actions can be promoted both by the public sector with campaigns aimed at the most vulnerable groups, and by health professionals who provide nutritional or psychological care to help manage healthy human behavior”, he concluded.