“Have you ever eaten because you feel bad, sad, bored or of any other mood?”.
Our food behavior can be influenced by the emotions that we experience daily: be in anxietyor be disbursement from work, stress, sadness can increase appetite and lead to seeking more foods rich in fats and sweets, stimulating the so -called “nervous hunger“.
There nervous hunger It is a common term to indicate what food behavior experts call “Emotional Eating“, And it can be defined as the tendency to use food as a strategy to deal with stressful events. It therefore corresponds to a change in food behavior in response to negative emotional stimuli and can lead to both an increase in the intake of food and to an avoidance of the same.
It happens so that in the grip of nervous hunger See eating as the only way to defeat the sadness of a moment, or to quiet the symptoms of restlessness and agitation of anxiety. Food is also seen as the only legitimate reason to take a break, for example, from work, from study or from any other boring activity, or even a way to download and vent the anger. In all these cases, eating is used not to satisfy a physiological need, but to satisfy a desire for food unleashed by emotional signals.
Some studies have confirmed that food behavior is influenced by stress conditions through some biological mechanisms. Chronic stress, in fact, causes a change in the adjustment of the hypothalamic-pituitary-legal axis (HPA). In animal studies, it has been shown that the activation of the HPA axis influences food behavior (and therefore inducing nervous hunger) through the release of CRH (release hormone of the corticotropin) and the urocortin that suppresses Ghrelin’s secretion (known as “hunger hormone”) and acts on some pituitary receptors that together, reduce food intake.
In humans, the release of cortisol increases appetite and modifies nutritional behavior by guiding the person to choose foods rich in fat or sweets that reduce in short time the perception of stress and stress biomarkers. It is assumed that prolonged exposure to stress could cause “nervous hunger“, Not related to the responses of hunger or satiety, but triggered by emotional signals. However there are still few studies that investigated the relationship between emotional eating and the hypothalamic-pituitary-length-length axis.
A recent study has tried to establish whether the use of Aeming Eating as an emotional regulation strategy could be associated with an increase in positive emotions and a consequent decrease in negative emotional states. Starting from the assumption that negative emotions can trigger the nervous hungerthe authors try to understand if Emotional Eating is able to successfully regulate some emotions or if on the contrary, it produces a worsening of mood.
Theoretically, after taking food, the release of dopamine activates a positive feeling of pleasure and therefore food could represent a valid attempt to regulate emotional; However, the results of the study affirm the opposite.
Negative emotional states activate the nervous hunger which in turn causes a worsening of the mood that contributes again to stimulating the nervous hungerthus determining a vortex that could explain the development and maintenance of binges or uncontrolled feeding episodes.
Emotional eating has been shown to be a risk factor for the development of eating disorders like the Bulimia nervosa and the Binge Eating (or uncontrolled nutrition). Some authors hypothesize that the establishment of dysfunctional food behaviors develops from the very first childhood. Let’s think for example, when the anguish of a child is improperly sedated with food: the little one will learn that the food is a substitute for consolating words or reassuring hugs.
The type of response he gets from the person who takes care of him is not tuned with his real needs and can have as a consequence the inability to distinguish hunger from other sensations and a limited emotional awareness.
Even in adults, when emotional awareness is scarce, some physical sensations such as satiety and hunger can be confused with some feelings eliced by significant interpersonal relationships. For example, the sense of emptiness deriving from an experience of emotional and relational detachment can be confused for a feeling of hunger.
How to deal with nervous hunger?
First of all, it is important to be able to distinguish biological hunger, that is, dictated by a biological appetite, by nervous hunger. To do this, it can be useful to record by noting for example on a card, food ingested daily and physical sensations and emotional states at the very moment you eat. Differentiate the nervous hunger From the biological one it allows us to learn to satisfy only the natural one. The other fundamental step is to observe without judgment the emotions that precede emotional eating, in order to welcome them, accept them and increase awareness of their emotional states.
Recent studies show that interventions based on Mindfulness can be effective in reducing the nervous hunger. When there are recurring episodes of binges (accompanied by the feeling of loss of control) unleashed by some emotional events, it is necessary to intervene with a specific behavioral therapy specific evidence-based (CBT-E) in order to effectively treat the present eating disorder.
