How do eating disorders mirror addictions?
The relationship between eating disorders and addiction is complex and multifaceted. While they are distinct conditions, they can co-occur and share some similarities regarding underlying physiological and psychological processes and behaviors.
Whether it is restricting, bingeing, purging, dieting, or any means to lose weight (compulsive exercise, weight loss medications), similar patterns of neural activation in someone with an eating disorder are also implicated in addictive-like behavior and substance dependence:
- Elevated activation in reward circuitry in response to food cues and behaviors such as restricting, bingeing, and purging.
- Reduced activation of inhibitory regions (hippocampus and insula) in response to food intake and other eating disorder behaviors
- Dopamine and endogenous opiates released.
- The individual may continue to crave the “high” from flooding the nucleus accumbens with behaviors.
Binge-eating and using addictive substances, such as alcohol and drugs, are working through the same neurotransmitter systems and regions in the brain. Sugar and dopamine-enhancing stimulant drugs (e.g., cocaine or amphetamine) show strong similarities in their motivational mechanisms. Attempts to treat binge eating using pharmacological interventions have demonstrated further similarities and relationships in the addictive process.
