Wednesday 29/05/2024
Text: Lucía Zapata and Lina Camacho
Binge Eating Disorder (BED) is a condition that significantly affects the world’s population, being one of the most common eating disorders. This disorder is characterized by recurrent episodes of excessive food intake in a short period of time, without subsequent compensatory behaviors, such as those seen in bulimia nervosa. This condition affects women significantly more than men and is particularly common in overweight or obese individuals. Which underlines the importance of addressing and fully understanding this complex and multifaceted disorder.
What is Binge Eating Disorder and how does it affect the emotional regulation dynamics of people who suffer from it?
A central element of BED is emotional regulation, including how they feel, experience, and express their emotions. These dysfunctions in emotional regulation play a crucial role in the manifestation and persistence of the disorder. BED binging episodes are usually triggered by an increase in negative emotions such as anxiety, anger or sadness. Research indicates that these episodes of excessive eating may be attempts to alleviate these negative emotions through food, functioning as a form of self-comfort, even if temporary. This negative emotional regulation precedes binge eating.
Research with neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has revealed that individuals with BED show alterations in areas of the brain associated with reward and impulse control, similar to those observed in impulsive and compulsive disorders, including addictions. For example, there is evidence of hyperactivity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex in response to images of highly caloric foods, suggesting heightened sensitivity to food reward.
Characteristics of binge eating disorder: What are the most common emotional regulation strategies for people with BED?
People with BED frequently employ maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, such as rumination and suppression of negative emotions. These strategies may aggravate the disorder by intensifying negative emotions and encouraging binge eating episodes as a compensatory mechanism to temporarily relieve emotional distress. In contrast, adaptive strategies such as cognitive reinterpretation, which involves changing the meaning of a situation to alter the emotional response to it, are less used.
Binge eating disorder: treatment to improve emotional regulation skills
Treatment of BED often includes psychotherapeutic approaches that focus on improving emotional regulation skills. These therapies help patients develop skills to better manage their emotions and reduce the frequency of binge eating episodes.
Understanding emotional regulation processes in BED is not only crucial for the development of more effective treatments, but also for the prevention of this disorder. Future research should further explore how interventions targeting emotion regulation can be tailored to address the specific needs of different subgroups of patients with BED. Furthermore, longitudinal studies could help better understand the causality between emotion regulation and binge eating episodes.
Binge Eating Disorder is a complex condition influenced by a variety of biological, psychological and social factors. Emotion regulation plays a critical role in the etiology and maintenance of BED, highlighting the need for treatment approaches that specifically address this aspect. Through better understanding and management of emotional regulation, we can significantly improve treatment outcomes for individuals affected by this disruptive disorder.
References
- Walenda, A., Bogusz, K., Kopera, M., Jakubczyk, A., Wojnar, M., & Kucharska, K. (2021). Emotion regulation in binge eating disorder. Psychiatria Polska, 55(6), 1433-1448.