Vigorexia is an eating disorder, caused by a mental disorder, where the person becomes obsessed with their bodily appearance, and begins to perform a series of exercises, in order to gain muscle mass. It is a kind of inverted anorexia. This disorder is not yet considered by doctors as a disease, however, today there are many people who suffer from it.
This disorder generally occurs more in men than in women. Those affected perceive a twisted image of their body, noting it very thin and with little musculature; so every day they make an effort to practice sports or exercise excessively (one of them is lifting weights), in addition to attending the gym continuously and consuming all kinds of proteins and carbohydrates, as well as abuse in the steroid intake to increase physical performance.
There are certain factors considered as the cause of the emergence of this disorder, many of them are emotional in nature, related to perfectionism, or the influence of the environment that pays greater interest in the aesthetic aspect of people, causing strong anxiety in subjects, feeling out of all that. All these factors incite the appearance of this type of mental disorder, especially in people with low self-esteem or who have suffered some kind of contempt or jokes because of their physical appearance.
Some of the common symptoms of this condition are: exercising in an extreme way, eating in a compulsive way to gain muscle, looking and feeling slim, even when the opposite is true. Low self-esteem, predilection for self-medication, continuous modification of diet, tendency to withdraw from friends and social life, they weigh themselves continuously.
Vigorexia can have negative consequences for those who suffer from it, the vigorexic person does not understand that with their attitude and bad eating habits, it can cause serious problems for their body, some of them are: kidney or liver diseases, cardiovascular injuries, prostate cancer, erectile dysfunction, decrease in fertility, disorder in the menstrual cycle in the case of ladies.
It is essential that the affected person recognize that they are sick and try to seek psychological help, however this can be somewhat difficult, since like any addict, the vigorexic will never recognize that they are sick until the consequences are serious.
