Most women who participate in basketball, soccer, and other sports during their college years do not appear to be at greater risk of Eating disorders than their non-athletic peers, new study findings show.

The exception, however, is among swimmers and other athletes in sports that place a high value on being thin.

These athletes were not only more likely to have eating disorder symptoms than basketball and softball players, but also in comparison to women who did not play any collegiate sports.

“Women who participate in the ‘lean sports’ - those sports in which leanness is perceived as a competitive or an aesthetic advantage - appear to be at greater risk of disordered eating behaviors than athletes in non-lean sports or non-athletes,” study author Dr. Mark F. Reinking, of Saint Louis University, told Reuters Health.

Because of this, said Reinking, a certified athletic trainer, “Health care providers, coaches, athletes, and parents need to be educated about disordered eating issues in order to develop prevention strategies, and encourage early intervention when a problem exists.”

Within the past few decades, the number of female college athletes has ballooned, and sports medicine experts have recently identified unique health concerns among this group. The so-called female athlete triad consists of disordered eating, cessation of monthly periods, and Osteoporosis. Disordered eating is thought to be central to the development of the other two conditions, however.

In the current study, Reinking and co-author Laura E. Alexander looked at eating disorder symptoms among 84 athletes and 62 non-athletes from Saint Louis University. They also compared athletes from ‘lean’ sports, such as swimming and cross-country running, with those from non-lean sports - basketball, volleyball, soccer, field hockey and softball.

Overall, the athletes scored lower on a measure of their ineffectiveness, meaning that they felt less inadequate or insecure than did their peers who did not play sports competitively, Reinking and Alexander report in the Spring issue of the Journal of Athletic Training.

Still, 7 percent of athletes in general, and 25 percent of those from lean sports were identified as being at risk for eating disorders, based on their responses to questions about dieting, fear of weight gain and preoccupation with weight. The same was true of nearly 13 percent of nonathletes.

“Although the ‘be-thin-to-win’ mentality is pervasive among female athletes, particularly in lean sports, evidence also exists for the positive effects of athletic participation on female athletes,” according to the investigators. “Our study suggests that for women in the non-lean sports, the positive effects of athletic participation outweigh the pressures of competitive collegiate athletics with regard to eating behaviors,” they conclude.

SOURCE: Journal of Athletic Training, Spring 2005.