Diet Woes Danger for Dancers : Disorders: Unhealthy thinness may be an occupational hazard for many in the profession. The good news is they are less likely to abuse drugs.

An unhealthy thinness may not simply be an occupational hazard for ballet dancers. Some researchers fear that it may also be an occupational disease.

One report finds many dancers have eating disorders.

But the study also indicates that dancers’ problems may not be as bad as those facing non-dancers who have eating disorders. It says non-dancers are more likely to also abuse drugs.

This may mean the dancers’ weight problems are driven more by the demands of their profession, the researchers believe.

The report in the American College of Sports Medicine’s journal, Exercise and Science in Sports and Medicine, compared 50 dancers with 56 non-dancers, all women.

The researchers used questionnaires and clinical interviews to check for eating disorders and substance abuse. They also looked for medical problems including weight loss.

The dancers were primarily drawn from national and regional ballet companies; the non-dancers, primarily from private high schools and colleges. Dancers averaged 21 years of age; non-dancers, 23 years.

Thirty-six percent of each group had missed periods for five months or more. Although this can result from high levels of exercise, it also can result from a sharply restricted diet.

The dancers averaged almost 11% below ideal weight, the study said.

“For a normal person to try to keep our weight down there, we would have to starve ourselves,” said Dr. Michelle P. Warren of Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York.

Non-dancers’ weight averaged about 5% low, the study said.

The non-dancers also “do not represent a normal population in terms of normal eating,” said Warren, an associate professor. “These people were struggling to stay thin.”

Thirty-one percent of dancers met clinical definitions of anorexia nervosa, which is characterized by a pathological fear of weight gain. Fifteen percent of non-dancers did, the study said.

But this greater tendency of dancers to have anorexia fell short of the statistical level needed to say that the two groups were clearly different.

The groups had no statistical difference in the prevalence of bulimia, which is characterized by compulsive eating followed by self-induced vomiting. Twelve percent of dancers and 15% of non-dancers had this condition.

Warren and her colleagues wanted to know about drug use in each group, thinking that a greater tendency to use drugs would indicate greater psychological problems.

Dancers who had anorexia or bulimia were no more likely than other dancers to use drugs, the study said.

Non-dancers who had anorexia were more likely to use amphetamines, while non-dancers who had bulimia were more likely to use amphetamines, barbiturates and hallucinogens, the study said.

Non-dancers also were more likely than dancers to develop other signs of emotional distress, such as anxiety and depression, the study said.

This indicates that at least part of dancers’ preoccupation with thinness “is imposed upon them by their profession,” Warren said.

A separate researcher who also had been studying the eating patterns of dancers agrees.

“I have found almost no substance abuse,” said Jane Bonbright, a board member of the National Dance Assn., an educators’ professional group in Reston, Va.

Warren and Bonbright are concerned that dancers are not getting enough calcium to build strong bones while they are relatively young. They say the dancers may suffer for this after menopause by developing osteoporosis, a thinning of bone, which can led to fractures.