EXPLORE THE WORLD OF THE FEMALE PHYSIQUE WEBZINE/GALLERY

PSYCHOLOGISTS STUDY FEMALE BODYBUILDERS:

HOW TO GET A PH.D. AND STILL MANAGE TO MISS THE POINT!

BY BILL DOBBINS

RECENT NEWS RELEASE

Many Women Bodybuilders Abuse Steroids, Use Other Performance-enhancing
Drugs and Suffer From Body Image Disorders, New Study Reports

BELMONT, Mass.--(BW HealthWire)--Jan. 27, 2000 via NewsEdge Corporation -

A new study by McLean Hospital researchers has found widespread abuse of
steroids and the use of other performance-enhancing drugs in many women
bodybuilders. In addition, the study found that many women bodybuilders also suffer from eating disorders and other body image disorders.

The study, believed to be the first in-depth look at anabolic-androgenic
steroid (AAS) use in women bodybuilders, is published in the current issue
of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.

The study involved 75 women athletes who had competed in at least one
bodybuilding or fitness contest, or who had lifted weights in the gym five
days or more per week for at least two years. Study participants, mostly all
from the Boston area, received psychiatric and medical evaluations as part
of the investigation.

Of the 75 subjects, 25 reported current or past steroid use. Women in both
the steroid-using and nonsteroid-using groups reported use of other
performance-enhancing drugs such as ephedrine, which were used by 20 of the 25 steroid users and 21 of the 50 non-users.

"Bodybuilding can be a dangerous activity for women who have or are at risk
for developing eating or body image disorders because the bodybuilding
community accepts as normal the compulsive dieting, self-preoccupation and
concomitant substance abuse that are associated with these disorders," said
study author Amanda Gruber, MD, a researcher at McLean Hospital's Biological Psychiatry Laboratory. Gruber collaborated on the study with Harrison Pope, MD, PhD, chief of McLean's Biological Psychiatry Laboratory, the paper's second author.

Sixteen of the 25 users reported at least one psychological effect due to
AAS, including moodiness, irritability and aggressiveness. Fourteen of these
women reported hypomanic symptoms during steroid use and 10 reported
depressive symptoms during steroid withdrawal. Only one of these 16 women
reported engaging in violent acts while taking steroids.

Nineteen of the steroid users reported at least one adverse medical effect,
the most serious being acute renal failure, which was reported by three
women.

According to the researchers, one of the most interesting findings of the
study was the high prevalence of eating disorders and other psychiatric
disorders in women bodybuilders in general.

The first syndrome, dubbed by the researchers as "eating disorder,
bodybuilder type (ED, BT)," is characterized by rigid adherence to a
high-calorie, high-protein, low-fat diet eaten at regularly scheduled
intervals. ED, BT was found in 55 of the 75 study subjects.

"Nontraditional gender role," the second syndrome identified in 55 of 75
study subjects, is characterized by a strong preference for stereotypical
masculine clothing, occupations and games or pastimes, and a strong
preference for male friends.

Sixty-five out of the 75 study subjects reported extreme dissatisfaction
with their bodies, a newly described syndrome called "muscle dysmorphia" in
which bodybuilders in top physical condition feel small and weak.

"These patterns of eating behavior, gender role behavior and body image
disorder caused profound effects on the social and occupational functioning
of women bodybuilders. We encountered women who held degrees in law,
medicine or business, yet had abandoned these careers to pursue an
all-consuming lifestyle of rigorous dieting and spending many hours at the
gym," said Gruber.

The study was funded in part by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

McLean Hospital is the largest psychiatric teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School, an affiliate of Massachusetts General Hospital and a member
of Partners HealthCare System. McLean maintains the largest research program of any private psychiatric hospital in the nation.
IT AIN'T A STUDY - IT'S PROPAGANDA!

If anyone needed confirmation that psychology is not a hard science, or that many in our culture seem bent on justifying their anti-woman bodybuilding prejudices no matter what, the study referred to in the accompanying report should provide it.

For example, simply look at the opening sentence. Researchers, it says, have found widespread "abuse" of steroids among female bodybuilders. Okay, it is no secret that many bodybuilders, male and female, use various anabolic substances to one degree or another. Of course, so do athletes in many other sports, which is why drug testing is so widespread in athletic competition. But how exactly do this study differentiate between "use" and "abuse"? Is their definition of abuse a medical one? A psychological one? Or have they made a non-medical, non-scientific assumption that ANY use of anabolics by bodybuilders in general and women in particular constitutes abuse because it is illegal and/or against the rules? And since when do medical/scientific researchers base their standards and judgements on what a group of non-scientists/doctors in various law-making bodies have decided is right and wrong?

I'll answer this question below - keep reading.

Next the report reveals this study was not just of women bodybuilders, but of fitness competitors as well. And that to qualify the women had to have competed in at least one contest or trained five days a week for two years. The question is what kind of "typical" subject these criteria provided. On this basis, you could have a group containing a fitness competitor who trained for 3 weeks and entered one show and a pro female bodybuilder who'd been in the sport for 10 years. The report goes on to state that only 25 of the 75 women involved admitted to using steroids. The fact that they would go by what the women "reported," which is unreliable, is one red flag. The relatively HIGH percentage of women who said they had NEVER used steroids is also an indicator that the researchers were not dealing with elite bodybuilding competitors or were being lied to.

It gets worse. The report goes on to suggest that the methods bodybuilders use to train and diet for contests are themselves pathological - "compulsive" dieting, self-proccupation (whatever that is) and substance "abuse" (again no criteria for differentiating between use and abuse - the researchers have just decided its bad and that's that). Later we are informed that female bodybuilders have a high instance of eating disorders, although no statistics are given as to the prevalance of eating disorders in young women bodybuilders compared to young women in general, much less other young women athletes.

Here is another news flash: Bodybuilders training for contests and dieting strictly (compulsively?) tend to get irritable and occasionally engage in aggressive acts. Wow, no kidding! Also that "steroid withdrawl" leaves some depressed, although the fact that after a contest competitors are suddenly faced with a major lifestyle change, no longer focused on a specific goal, no longer living a daily discipline of training and diet is apparently not taken into account as a psychological factor. While some subjects apparently got aggressive, how agressive, how often and how different this behavior was from their "normal" behavior is not indicated.

Apparently this study just abounds in newly recognized "syndromes" - which seem to involve any kind of behavior the researchers judge to be inappropriate. The bodybuilder diet is an "eating disorder syndrome." A second, called "nontraditional gender role" is characterized by a wearing "masculine" (that is, non-feminine) clothing,, engaging in traditionally non-feminine games and hanging out with guys. This is a syndrome? It sound to me like most serious women athletes, from basketball and rugby players to Olympic runners, high jumpers and shot-puters. Wasn't anybody involved in this research at all familiar with what women athletes in general are like. Maybe they should all go and rent "Personal Best" from their local video store.

Keep reading the report and it continues to be bizzare. Female bodybuilders also suffer from a "newly described syndrome" called "muscle dysmorphia," in which bodybuilders in "top physical condition" feel small and weak. Hey, you mean bodybuilders who have dieted hard for 12 weeks, lost a lot of body weight and strength feel small and weak? THEY ARE SMALL AND WEAK! At least in comparison to their off-season size and strength. Talk about missing the point!

Women who focus on bodybuilding competition, the report goes on to tell us, tend to ignore other interests in life in favor of concentrating on their training and dieting. In bodybuilding, we call this being motivated and disciplined. Whether you're trying to become a great bodybuilder, Olympic runner or PGA champon, the competition is so intense nowadays you have to give 100% to your sport. However, according to this study that kind of dedication represents some kind of psychological disorder. I wonder what they make of the years of dedication, stress and economic deprivation that goes into obtaining a medical or psychiatric degree? What kind of syndrome would this be?

This study SMELLS of misspent grant money. No effort was made to confine the study to elite, successful amateur or professional female bodybuilders. Nor to differentiate between bodybuilders and fitness competitors or between those who simply worked out regularly and those who entered contests. The specific methods of bodybuilding - the disciplined training and dieting, the kind of motivation it takes to succeed which tends to preclude much involvement in outside activities - are all characterized as syndromes, and therefore viewed as pathological, as psychological problems. ANY use of steroids is described as abuse, with no distinction made between the ability to use drugs without serious or long-term side-effects and use of these substances in ways that lead to medical problems. And this final point is the key to the whole study....

Read the bottom of the report and all is made clear: The study was funded in part by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. How about that ? Because money is provided by people in the U.S. government whose job it is to fight "drug abuse," any use of anabolic drugs by female bodybuilders is therefore deemed to be "abuse" with no medical criteria used to differentiate between use and abuse. In other words, this study is a government-funded, anti-drug propaganda effort. It was conducted, at least in part, by psychiatrists, whose own discipline is under increasing attack as being based on non-scientific "fantasies" about how the human mind works as conceived by a 19th century doctor from Vienna. Nonetheless, it seems anything these shrinks decide is abnormal or pathological can be construed as a "syndrome," with no other basis than their own opinions. Any behavior on the part of women that isn't considered to be traditionally "feminine" (wearing sweats and no make up?) is also a syndrome. And ANY use of illegal or proscribed drugs is to be considered "abuse" because that use breaks the "rules" and not because this use necessarily creates any serious medical problems (although, of course, the use of steroids or any other powerful drugs can certainly result in negative side-effects of various degrees of seriousness, depending on the individual and the pattern of use).

In other words, this report is propaganda, pure and simple, masquerading as a research study. It is also just one more example of the lengths this culture seems willing to go to stifle the development of female bodybuilding, an activity and sport which is in some ways the most extreme example of the feminist revolution - a discipline in which women take control of their own bodies and develop them without regard to traditional and accepted stereotypes of femininity.