Binge eating disorder (BED) is a feeding and eating disorder. Now recognized as an official diagnosis, the prevalence of binge eating disorder is believed to affect nearly 2% of people globally. Along with the mental health elements of an eating disorder, BED can also lead to diabetes, high cholesterol, and other diet-related chronic health conditions.
When someone has a feeding and eating disorder, it’s not just about food. These are psychiatric disorders. According to the National Eating Disorders Association, they’re often a way for people to deal with trauma, deeper issues, or other mental health disorders.
Understanding Eating Disorders
An eating disorder is a behavioral and mental health condition. The condition is defined by persistent, severe disturbances in eating behaviors and distressing thoughts and emotions that come along with them. Eating disorders can be very serious and affect social, physical, and psychological functions.
- All eating disorders combined affect around 5% of the population, most often people who are teens and young adults.
- In women, anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are more common.
- Common symptoms of eating disorder behavior are preoccupations with food, weight and weight gain, shape, and body dissatisfaction.
- Someone may have anxiety about eating or the consequences of eating.
- General behaviors associated with eating disorders include binge eating, purging by vomiting or using laxatives, avoiding certain foods, and restrictive eating. The behaviors are sometimes driven in a way that’s similar to substance abuse and addiction.
- It’s common for eating disorders to occur along with other mental health disorders, like anxiety and mood disorders, alcohol and substance use problems, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
Anorexia nervosa is one of the most common eating disorders that leads to self-starvation and extreme weight loss.
- Of any psychiatric diagnosis aside from opioid use disorder, anorexia has the highest death rate.
- Someone with anorexia has an intense fear of gaining weight.
- Health consequences and symptoms of anorexia nervosa include dehydration, muscle wasting, weakness, severe constipation, a loss of menstruation, and stress fractures.
- Medical complications that can be deadly include heart rhythm abnormalities.
Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder where someone will alternate periods of food restriction with binge eating foods they review as forbidden.
- Following binging behaviors, someone with bulimia nervosa will engage in compensatory behaviors.
- Compensatory behaviors are meant as a way to avoid gaining weight.
- These behaviors include vomiting, abusing laxatives, fasting, or compulsive exercise.
What is Binge Eating Disorder?
People with binge eating disorders might consume large amounts of food in short windows of time, despite not being hungry. Someone who’s binging might feel release at the moment. Then, afterward, they could feel shame and a lack of control.
Three or more of the following symptoms must be present as the diagnostic criteria for BED, based on DSM-5 criteria:
- Eating a lot more and doing so faster than normal during episodes of binge eating with a loss of control
- Recurrent episodes of eating to the point of being uncomfortably full
- Having large amounts of food without being hungry in a short period of time
- Eating while alone because of shame or embarrassment
- Feelings of shame or feelings of guilt after a binge episode
Someone with BED commonly experiences extreme distress and a sense of unhappiness about their weight and eating.
Diagnosing Binge Eating Disorder
People may occasionally overeat from time to time in their daily lives, but that’s not BED, even if they have some of the symptoms. BED usually appears when people are in their late teens to early twenties, but it can happen at any age. People need mental health support to begin developing healthier relationships with food when diagnosed as binge eaters.
For a diagnosis of Bed to be made, someone must have had at least one episode of binge eating per week for at least three months. The severity can be mild, one to three episodes a week, to severe, 14 or more episodes in a week.
Unlike bulimia, a person with BED doesn’t engage in behaviors to undo their binge. For example, they don’t throw up, excessively exercise or take laxatives after binging.
While BED is more common in women than men, BED is more common in men than other eating disorders. Co-occurring disorders accompanying BED include substance use disorders, bipolar disorder, PTSD from a history of physical abuse or sexual abuse, and other psychological conditions.
The Health Risks of Binge Eating Disorder
If someone has BED, it can put them at serious risk regarding their emotional, physical and social health.
As much as 50% of people with BED have obesity. There is an overall greater risk of increased body weight or obesity with BED because of the increase in calories someone takes in during episodes of binging. Obesity independently increases the risk of cancer, type 2 diabetes, stroke, and heart disease.
Chronic pain, asthma, sleep problems, and irritable bowel are potential medical complications of binge eating disorder. In women, the development of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), complications in pregnancy, and fertility problems are greater in BED patients than in someone with a normal weight.
Binge Eating Disorder Treatment
The treatment plan for binge eating disorder depends on how severe the disorder is, the underlying causes, and what a person’s goals are. The treatment for BED might target mental health issues, binge eating behaviors, excess weight, or issues with body image. Treatment often includes a combination.
Types of therapy are usually the primary approach to treating eating disorders like BED.
- Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for BED is focused on understanding the relationship between negative feelings, thoughts, and behaviors related to food, eating, weight, and body shape. After someone works with a therapist to identify the causes of their negative patterns and emotions, they can start working on strategies to change them.
- CBT might include goal-setting, changing your thoughts about yourself and your weight, and learning healthy habits to control your weight.
- Therapist-led CBT is more effective for patients with binge eating disorders than self-help CBT.
Interpersonal psychotherapy is another potential approach.
- With interpersonal psychotherapy, the basis is that binge eating is a way of coping with personal problems that aren’t resolved, like social problems, grief, conflicts in relationships, or major life changes.
- In this eating disorder treatment, a therapist works with the patient to help identify the particular problem linked to negative eating behaviors. Then, they can acknowledge it and start working toward positive changes.
- This type of therapy can also be used along with CBT and on its own.
Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) looks at binge eating as an emotional reaction to negative experiences in your life that you don’t have another way to cope with. During DBT, you can learn to regulate your emotional responses, and then you’ll be able to cope with stress or challenges without turning to binge behaviors.
Sometimes, medications and pharmacological treatments might be combined with therapy, but they’re not likely to be used on their own for BED.
Behavioral therapy is considered the most effective evidence-based treatment option. This might go along with medical treatments, nutritional counseling, education, and treatment focused on physical health and maintaining a healthy weight on the road to recovery.
Eating Disorder Treatment in Orange County, CA
In more difficult situations, higher levels of care might be needed to treat eating disorder symptoms and other co-occurring mental disorders. Suppose there is a family history of trauma or something playing a role in an eating disorder. In that case, family therapy might be included as part of a treatment plan for symptoms of binge eating or other eating disorders.
Contact a mental health professional on the Story Wellness team today by calling (866) 476-2823 if you’d like to learn more about effective treatments for binge eating disorders or disordered eating and how we can help you regain control of your life.
