PTSD May Increase The Risk of Food Addiction

Researchers have found that post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may increase the risk of food addiction.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, examined data from the Nurses' Health Study II to retrieve data on Trauma exposure and found a link between PTSD symptoms and food addiction. They defined food addiction as suffering from three or more symptoms that included eating when satiated four or more times a week, worrying about cutting down on food four or more times a week, feeling the need to eat increasing amounts of food or having physical withdrawal symptoms when not eating a certain amount of food or certain foods two or more times a week.

The current study involved 49,408 women, with 81 percent reporting at least one traumatic event involving the aforementioned symptoms.

"To our knowledge, this is the first study to look at the association between PTSD symptoms and food addiction. Our findings are relevant to ongoing questions regarding the mechanisms behind observed associations between PTSD and obesity, and they provide support for hypotheses suggesting that association between PTSD and obesity might partly originate in maladaptive coping and use of food to blunt trauma-associated distress. If replicated longitudinally, these results may have implications for both the etiology of obesity and for treatment of individuals with PTSD."

Researchers found that women with post traumatic stress reported higher rates of food addiction than those who did not deal with the health issue. For instance, the rate ranged at around 6 percent among women with no lifetime PTSD symptoms to almost 18 percent for those with the health problem.

However, researchers also noted that trauma from treating individuals' childhood physical abuse was also strongly related to food addiction, and not just traumatic injuries.

More information regarding the findings can be seen via the journal JAMA Psychiatry.