Eating addiction

Addictive diseases are defined according to five criteria. In particular eating addiction is one of the most important of the so called “new addictions” or “social addictions”. Eating addiction is divided into three significant modalities: bulimic episodes, addictive hiperphagia and monoalimentary addiction. The most central features of pure bulimia are described: overall risk factors, symptoms and therapy, and special attention is paid to the differential diagnosis with bulimia nervosa, that is, bulimia associated with anorexia. The punctual prevalence of addictive bulimia is 1% among female people. The addictive excessive eating is associated almost always with overweight and characterized by “binge eating”, distributed in three patterns: the infantile neurotic type, the depressive type and the psychosomatic anxious type. Its therapy includes certain medicaments used also against the bulimic episodes, behaviour modifications in relation to food and specific treatment in order each type. Finally, the chocolate addiction is underlined as the best known monoalimentary addiction, being chocolate craving often associated with the premenstrual period.