Overeating can be a sign of a mental disorder

People overeat for a variety of reasons.Some eat a lot simply because they go hungry for a long time, others cannot stop when the food is delicious, while others eat for unknown reasons during times of stress or anxiety. Usually, if a person starts to eat a lot during times of stress, he continues to do so even when he begins to experience discomfort from eating. Scientists believe that such overeating is a form of compulsive behavior. This is quite logical, because a person is not at all because of a feeling of hunger or a desire to treat himself to goodies. Sometimes such people even try to clear their stomach of what they have eaten, if they didn’t manage to stop in time.

Overeating can sometimes be associated with mental disorders

Overeating is like an addiction

Overeating caused by factors other thanassociated with hunger or the desire to eat tasty food, has all the signs of addiction. Moreover, such overeating is also similar to obsessive-compulsive disorder, that is, a mental disorder in which a person is haunted by obsessive thoughts, images, ideas, or repetitive actions. For example, a person can wash the floor several times a day, although it is already clean, and no one has walked in the room since the last cleaning.

It has long been known that people who sufferfrom addictions, anomalies arise in the brain centers that are associated with planning, decision-making, emotions and goal-setting. As a result, brain centers can be used to visually determine what caused a particular behavior of a person - a banal habit or a serious mental disorder. True, sometimes a habit can develop into a conduct disorder.

Overeating is sometimes similar to obsessive-compulsive disorder, in which a person is haunted by obsessive actions

It should be noted that scientists have been studyingthe nature of overeating, but mostly on animals. As for human behavior, there is little data on this subject. Therefore, scientists at Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania decided to investigate the causes of unreasonable overeating in people. To do this, they used functional magnetic resonance imaging, with which they studied the brain centers of women with eating disorders, due to which they consumed a lot of food for no apparent reason.

As a result, it turned out that such womenthe connection between the area of ​​the brain that controls movement (motor cortex) and the area that is responsible for planning, executing movements, emotions and learning (shell) is strengthened. A similar feature is characteristic of the brain of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder or addiction to any substances. That is, the brain of such women had signs of a mental disorder.

Binge eating seems to be treatable with dopamine

Compulsive overeating can be treated with dopamine

The researchers also found that women who hadfrom an eating disorder, there were fewer dopamine receptors, meaning they are less receptive to the hormone. The researchers report this in Science Translational Medicine. Dopamine is known to be used by the reward system, which provides us with a sense of pleasure when we are looking forward to achieving a goal. In this way, dopamine controls motivation and learning. More recently, scientists have found that dopamine affects spontaneous actions.

The study also showed that the lessdopamine receptors in women, the more they overeat. It follows that by increasing the amount of dopamine, you can reduce the craving for overeating. I must say that the relationship between dopamine and overeating has long been known, so dopamine drugs are already being used in the treatment of eating disorders. However, the current study may help increase its effectiveness, as there is now even more clarity about the nature of overeating and the effect of dopamine on it.

Scientists have studied overeating only in women, it is possible that other mechanisms work in men

In general, it is now clear that obsessiveOvereating has the same neurobiological causes as other addictions. True, scientists have not yet answered the main question - what is the cause and what is the effect. It is possible that it is not changes in the brain that affect behavior, but, on the contrary, the brain adjusts to the behavior. In addition, only women participated in the study. It is quite possible that other processes are taking place in men's brains.

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Finally, we recall that to the release of dopamineleads to the consumption of sugary and fatty foods. The release of this hormone in this case can increase by 200%. But this becomes the cause of another addiction - from sweet foods, which we talked about not so long ago.