A BRIEF HISTORY OF BODYBUILDING
Bodybuilding is considered by many to be a fairly recent phenomenon, beginning in perhaps the twentieth century or so. However, in reality, the practice hails all the way back to the time of the Ancient Greeks, when athletes first trained to compete in the Olympics. Even in the early days of the Victorian era, it was a show of sport and entertainment.
THE BODYBUILDING PROBLEM
Today, bodybuilding is an entertaining means of exercise, but it’s also taken very seriously in certain social circles. Perhaps one of the most renowned bodybuilders is Arnold Schwarzenegger, the actor and former Californian governor. Many consider the Austrian-born actor to hold the “ideal” body image. However, rising concerns are developing around body building supplements as an emergent new eating disorder.
MOUNTING CONCERN ABOUT BODYBUILDING SUPPLEMENTS
The issue came up at the American Psychological Association (APA) Convention in Toronto, which was held from the 6th until the 8th. In an APA press release, a question was raised in regards to whether body building supplements can be used to replace actual meals in order to bulk up. In order to delve into the issue, a study was conducted which gathered around 200 participants.
A brief abstract on the study can be found here. From the gathered data, researchers discovered that forty percent of participants increased their use of body building supplements over time while another twenty-two percent stated that they ended up replacing entire meals with the supplements. Some of them had also been advised by doctors to cut back on the use of body building supplements because of serious health issues. The study proves that this problem is not caused by any one misconception of psychological transference or repression, but, is in fact, due to a variety of disparate factors which must be researched by their respective sciences.
