Is there such thing as “Food Addiction?”

There is definitely such a thing as food addiction. People who struggle with addiction to heroin, or alcohol, or cocaine may be offended by applying the term "addiction" to food, but it involves the same psychological and physical brain processes, and even many of the same causes. And, like substance addiction, it has caused a major health epidemic. Many people are emotional eaters, meaning that they eat as a coping mechanism to deal with stress, sadness, anxiety, or depression. Eating sugary foods results in the release of “feel-good” brain chemicals (called neurotransmitters) very similar to those produced by using opiate drugs, such as heroin or morphine. This release provides the mind with a quick relief – albeit a brief relief – from the painful emotions and stress, so the mind craves more sugary foods. The cravings become powerful, and the person will continue to binge-eat even though the negative effects are felt. Therefore, emotional eaters can be considered to be food addicts. The psychology of emotional eating is similar to substance addiction, in that it is a dysfunctional coping mechanism for life stressors, or for relieving symptoms of depression. The guilt that occurs after binge- eating - especially as the person's health is deteriorating - causes psychological distress that causes more cravings for sugary foods. The brain becomes trapped by cognitive dissonance (Click Here). Many people are compulsive eaters, meaning that they eat food just because it is there. This is a form of obsession-compulsion, whereby just knowing that a sugary snack nearby will become an obsessive thought, which dominates a person's thoughts and creates anxiety that can only be relieved by eating the food. The action of eating the food is the compulsion, and it’s the only way the person can make the obsessive thoughts go away. Compulsive eaters typically don’t think much about a sugary snack, but once it’s in the house it’s all they can think about… because it’s there. Often, they will wait until no one is around before they eat the food, out of shame. Thoughts of that half-eaten cake in the fridge will keep them awake until they finally sneak out and eat the cake. Still others are habitual eaters, which are the people who are so accustomed to having their hands busied with food in certain situations that they seek out food every time they are in that situation. An example would be people who snack while watching TV. Habitual eaters will get a snack every time they watch TV, even if they are not hungry. They need to keep their fingers busy, and they mentally associate TV watching with eating. Addiction to opiate drugs – such as morphine or heroin – produce an effect on the brain very similar to the effect produced by sugary and fatty foods. The psychology of the addictive behaviour is similar, the risk factors are similar, and the obsessive-compulsive cycle involved are all similar. The end result of substances of addiction – including food – is release of the feel-good chemicals in the brain. This is known as the reward system. Although they all have differing pathways to get there, the feel-good brain chemicals –neurotransmitters - are the common end-point for drugs of addiction, as well as for sugary foods. (If anyone is interested, the neurotransmitters involved in the feel-good rush from sugary foods are dopamine, endogenous opioids, GABA, glutamate, and endocannabinoids; all in the limbic system of the brain.) They are responsible for the euphoria that is brought on by these foods, which provides positive reinforcement for continued eating. Conversely, removal of the drug causes reduced production and release of dopamine in the brain, which causes a low mood, and low feelings, which contribute to seeking more sugary foods. Thus, there is positive and negative reinforcement involved in the excessive eating behavior. This reinforcement, positive and negative, is a form of learning, and snacking and binge-eating become a learned behaviour that becomes positively reinforced time and time again. As it goes on for years, this behaviour becomes firmly entrenched in people’s lifestyle. The amount of the reward chemical dopamine that is released by binge-eating is about 1/10th the amount released by drugs of addiction. That's still enough to create a very powerful effect and to trap a person into repeating the eating behavior. During normal brain functions, the dopamine system rewards our natural behaviors: the elation we feel when we accomplish something important, for example. This reward system is meant to ensure that we will seek out and perform activities that we need to do to live, thrive, and reproduce, by rewarding us with feelings of pleasure when we accomplish these activities. Whenever this reward occurs, the brain remembers the activity that produced the reward and we are driven to perform this activity again. The perfect example is the pleasure we feel from a good meal when we are legitimately hungry. The memory of the pleasure and relief we felt drives us to seek out food again when we become hungry again. In this way we are driven to carry out a behavior necessary for our survival: finding food and eating. In normal life, rewards usually come only with time and effort. Grabbing sugary snacks give us a much bigger and faster burst of reward without all the work involved, providing a shortcut, flooding the brain with dopamine and other neurotransmitters. After the reward effects of a sugary binge are over, we rebound, and our baseline dopamine levels drop back down again, and we feel depressed, lifeless, lacking energy. We are now the opposite of rewarded. We crave another sugary snack just to feel good again. It is not the desire for the experience of pleasure from a delicious sugary snack that makes people binge-eat. Otherwise, we would all be binge-eaters: everybody wants to experience something pleasurable. Medical studies have demonstrated that people who are obese have less dopamine availability in their brain than do non-obese people. For reasons we don’t understand, having excess body fat cuts down on our reward chemical processing, and the heavier we get the less we can process these reward chemicals. The higher a person’s BMI, the less reward system operates. Therefore, they are driven to eat more to produce the reward chemicals in order to compensate for their reduced levels. This is known as the Reward-Deficiency Hypothesis. Because of the reward-deficiency, the more obese that people get the more they have to binge-eat to compensate, and the obesity develops a snowball effect. Halting this process is critical for someone to lose weight. This reward deficiency occurs in some people who are not yet obese. Some people are born with a low capacity for processing the reward chemicals. Our genes – our DNA that we inherit and which affect who and what we are – play a major role in deciding which of us is susceptible to this process and possess the correct brain wiring for it to occur to such a degree that it tips the scales over to the point where addiction occurs. That is part of the reason why a family history of obesity is a risk factor for obesity. Some of these people have about a 30% reduction in their brain’s capacity to process reward chemicals. However, the explosion in obesity can't be explained by genetics alone. Our genes are about the same as 100 years ago, but obesity is far more prevalent now than it was then. The difference is that we now live in an "obesogenic" environment - where increased life stressors, a more rushed lifestyle, reduced average sleep, a lower need for physical activity, and huge availability of Calorie-dense foods make obesity very likely. However, our life experiences and environment play a major role in tipping the scales. Many people use the reward system rush as a coping mechanism for stress. When they are feeling stressed, angry, sad, anxious, or lonely their brain wants to feel good again so it craves sugary snacks in order to obtain the feel-good reward chemicals. The effect of the feel-good from eating doesn’t last long, unfortunately, and they crave sugary snacks again and again to compensate for feeling low. We can see, then, that we can’t just isolate brain function alone as being responsible for our disease. It's our brain function, together with our genetic make-up, our environment and experiences, our memory and learning, our mind processes (our psychology) that all come together in the process of developing food addiction. In addition to my work in addictions, I also run a weight loss service. I identify and help people with "food addiction" issues using the same principles as we use in helping people with substance addiction to get better.This has proven very effective, because dieting or taking pills doesn't address the issues behind the dysfunctional eating. In fact, the huge U.S. National Weight Control Registry has shown that this kind of intervention for changing people's dysfunctional coping is a major predictor of success. As such, anyone with food issues can use much of the advice and principles discussed on this website. There is also Over-eaters Anonymous, which takes the same approach to helping people overcome the root cause of their eating issues. Like substance addiction, people with obsessive or emotional eating patterns can beat their problem and get the results they desire. Millions of people have done it.