Compulsive Obsessions With Food Intake
When experiencing the escalating stress of personal, financial, and legal trouble, many have turned to food to satiate their fears and worries.
Not surprisingly, early child behavior studies have shown that infants tend to learn that eating makes pain and discomfort disappear quickly. A behavior we learned as infants when we cried out in pain or discomfort only to be relieved by a bottle or our mother’s milk.
Binge Eating Disorder
Emotional addiction to eating is a recognized psychological disorder that results in the constant and compulsive craving for food. This condition is evidenced by excessive food intake and the craving for unhealthy and highly processed foods.
Some observers have insisted that up to 15% of adults become addicted to fast food because of obsessive and compulsive behavior patterns.
The medical community acknowledges the dangers of obsessive eating
Eating to excess is a common feature and often results in an assortment of unhealthy consequences such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. Yet, the person addicted to eating will continue to obsess and overeat despite knowing the adverse consequences to their health.
While the medical community has acknowledged the addictive dangers associated with alcoholism and drug abuse, few studies have accepted the fact that people may be addicted to food in the same dangerous way.
For example, people with an emotional addiction to eating will eat when they are sad, worried, or depressed, irrespective of whether they are hungry.
Dangerous cycle
People with food addictions are often trapped in a dangerous cycle of binge eating and depression. The cycle is perpetuated and made worse by losing personal confidence and self-esteem. Some believe that addiction can be broken by bingeing and then purging.
Binge and Purge – Bulimia
Bulimia Nervosa is a medical term commonly referred to as bulimia. The condition is severe and sometimes can be a life-threatening disorder.
People with bulimia may secretly and obsessively eat large amounts of food and then purge what they have eaten in a vicious cycle of compulsive eating and purging.
Most medical experts believe this behavior is used to cover up painful emotional trauma, whether it be compulsive eating or purging.
Many compulsive overeaters speak of their food addiction as a way to suppress dark and deeply painful feelings about themselves.
Treatment Options
Many patients have found relief through group therapy, family, and individual counseling sessions, including behavioral therapy.
Traditional talk-therapy counseling explores many areas of the individual’s emotional life in a supportive context. Therapy is usually combined with nutritional guidance, exercise, and education.
Patients have reported success using a combination of behavioral therapy, psychotherapy, and nutritional guidance.
Surgical stomach clamping
Obese and compulsive eaters have also turned to surgical procedures that reduce the actual size of the stomach through a ringed clamp device. It is very similar to another method called gastric banding.
The surgery aims to create in the patient a profound and exaggerated sense of fullness when eating. The ring or band limits and controls the amount of food a person can eat. As a result, patients can experience the feeling of fullness and can be satisfied with much smaller amounts of food.
Drug therapies
Finally, those with eating disorders and addictions have turned to pharmaceutical options to control their food urges and compulsions. However, over-the-counter and medically prescribed diet pills represent the least desirable weight control alternative and cause severe blood pressure spikes.
Diet pills can increase anxiety
Diet pills increase anxiety levels, making bad situations worse for particular obsessive eaters. Anxiety can cause depression, and depression can lead to compulsive eating.
Therefore, many mental health professionals believe that certain types of anti-depressants can be much more helpful in reducing the types of depression and anxiety that are believed to be significant causes of compulsive eating.
