Category: Food Addiction

Young people are fed up with nutrition information. What they cry out for is a way to cope with the desire to overeat.

Can inpatient rehab methods that treat childhood obesity be replicated in a way that makes them widely available at a lower cost?

Dr. Fernando Fernandez-Aranda spoke at the WPA symposium on the traits shared by patients with obesity and eating disorders.

Dr. Caroline Davis, who co-chaired a WPA symposium with Dr. Pretlow, believes compulsive overeating can be successfully treated with addiction-based methods.

At the WPA symposium Dr. Avena talked about physiological similarities between drug and food addictions and looking at overeating through the lens of addiction.

Dr. Pretlow would like to see more psychiatrists and psychologists regard disordered overeating and the consequent obesity as a psychological problem.

Is obesity a psychological or physical issue? It’s time to take a hard look and think about where, among the confusing plethora of terminology, it might belong.

Language matters. There is an obesity epidemic, and there is nothing wrong with calling it that.

How much of what we call motor activity, including eating as a tension-relieving BFRB, is a perverse response to touch deprivation?

Whether compulsive eating is a substance addiction or a behavioral addiction, the results are pretty much the same: obesity and assorted co-morbidities.

Once the parents grasp the fact that their child is obese, how does a primary care physician decide what advice to give them?

Is something is missing from the latest edition of the DSM-5? It’s strangely silent on the most prevalent eating disorder on the planet — food addiction.

Since disordered overeating so often leads to obesity — why isn’t obesity considered a psychological problem — and an eating disorder?

One of the problems with treating obesity is getting some medical professionals on board with compassion for the pain of obese patients and their challenges.

Trauma and epidemics are different from chronic illness because nothing is more subjective than chronic illness, and every case is rife with individual factors.

Who benefits from a sugar tax? If soda companies have to pay more tax for using sugar, they just might switch over to high fructose corn syrup instead.

We are looking at an obesity research paper from the McKinsey Institute, to see how it could tie back to the teaching of a sage called Osho.

The world is full of theories about how to quell obesity, but which ideas and interventions are doable and cost-effective?

To the dismay of some and the applause of others, prominent men are often willing to talk about their decision to have bariatric surgery.

The career of the beloved television personality Al Roker, known for decades of Today show appearances, was plagued by weight issues.

Dr. Pretlow’s takeaways on addiction its and treatment from the International Conference on Childhood Obesity he attended in July in Lisbon, Portugal.

Do you eat because you are depressed, or the other way around? High-fat foods can cause chemical reactions in the brain ultimately leading to depression.

Perhaps not all obesity is attributable to what Pr. Pretlow calls “the very powerful addiction of excessive food amounts,” but to whatever degree it holds sway.

Where do cravings come from and how can they be quelled? Among the overweight and obese, this knowledge is valued far above nutrition facts.

The illustration on this page is from “Treatment of Obesity Using the Addiction Model,” presented at the Global Conference on Obesity Treatment and Weight Management. Among other subjects, Dr. Pretlow discussed body hunger, which has a basis in physiol …

Dr. Pretlow’s most recent presentation touches upon the problems with the conventional model of childhood obesity, the addiction model, and obesity treatment.

Drinking, throughout the day, anything but water is a subset of grazing. Excessive eating or drinking is as much an addiction as snorting cocaine or gambling.

As it turns out, food addiction appears to be not so much a substance addiction as was previously thought. It’s more about sensation than chemistry. Or is it?

When a person’s coping mechanism is a body-focused repetitive behavior, like shoveling in spoonfuls of sugary cereal, this qualifies as self-sabotage.

Dr.Pretlow be conducting a workshop on Tuesday, April 18, on “Treatment of Obesity Using the Addiction Model” for a conference in the U.K.