Episodes of binge eating are linked to an individual’s inability to adapt to stressful situations. This conclusion was reached by a team from the Mirror Laboratory of Eating Behavior at the Institute of Health Psychology of HSE University – St. Petersburg and Tyumen State Medical University. The study’s findings were published in the American Journal of Health Behavior.
Researchers analyzed the reactions of 64 adults with a body mass index above the normal range. This group included individuals prone to overeating as well as those with healthy eating habits. During the experiment, participants were shown unpleasant images and photographs of food and asked to apply different strategies: freely express their emotions, outwardly suppress them, or attempt to rationally reframe the stimulus to calm down.
The results of the study showed that the autonomic nervous system in people with eating disorders is almost always in a state of heightened arousal and anxiety. Regarding the response to food, the experiment revealed that in healthy individuals, seeing food triggers a natural attention-focus mechanism that involves a slight slowing of the heart rate. In contrast, the study group showed almost no such changes: their overloaded nervous system, it is argued, prevents the body from responding adequately to stimuli.
“In healthy individuals, cognitive reappraisal—the ability to look at a problem differently—usually promotes a genuine reduction in emotional response at the physiological level. That is, a person finds a way to view the problem from a new perspective, and their body physically relaxes. Conversely, if emotions are simply suppressed, bodily tension only increases. However, in participants prone to binge eating, these standard techniques did not work—their bodies showed no reaction to them. This means that the body is physically unable to adapt to stress,” explained Vladimir Kosonogov, director of the Institute of Health Psychology at HSE University – St. Petersburg.
The scientists noted that these findings explain why behavioral protocols and cognitive restructuring (working with thoughts) are often insufficient in treating binge eating.
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