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What is bigorexia?

Bigorexia is an alternative name for muscle dysmorphia, a mental disorder in which a person perceives that their body is not muscular enough, leading to obsessive and unhealthy behaviors, such as compulsive exercising, use of anabolic steroids, and disordered eating. Bigorexia primarily affects men and teenage boys.Muscle dysmorphia is widely considered a subtype of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), a mental disorder characterized by distorted body image and obsessions about perceived physical shortcomings.People with bigorexia tend to view their bodies as insufficiently lean or small, despite the fact that bigorexia is most common among people with average or even muscular body types. While bigorexia is more common among men, it has also been diagnosed in women.In general, a person with bigorexia obsessively desires a large, muscular body (even if they already have one) and will go to unhealthy lengths to build body mass. While the specifics of bigorexia vary from person to person, common signs of bigorexia include an obsession with exercise, abnormal eating patterns and diets, and substance abuse (especially of anabolic steroids).Health experts have noted a recent increase in diagnosed cases of bigorexia, especially among young males, that they attribute in part to the influence of social media content and other media that glorifies muscular physiques.The adjective bigorexic is sometimes used (patterned on anorexic, the adjective form of anorexia).