A study of U.S. high school students provides additional evidence that eating disorders may be contagious.
In a study, researchers found that binging, fasting, diet pill use and other eating disorder symptoms clustered within counties, particularly among female students.
“These findings confirm the strong social influences on female adolescents in the U.S. to be thin, sometimes using unhealthy behaviors to achieve this goal,” the researchers write in the current issue of the International Journal of Eating Disorders.
Based on their results, the researchers think it may be more effective to target eating disorder prevention efforts to counties or schools where they are more common, rather than individual students.
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WASHINGTON, DC—Science has found one likely contributor to the way that some folks eat to live and others live to eat. Researchers at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, have found that people with genetically lower dopamine, a neurotransmitter that helps make behaviors and substances more rewarding, find food to be more reinforcing than people without that genotype. In short, they are more motivated to eat and they eat more.
Both obesity and the genotype associated with fewer dopamine D2 receptors predicted a significantly stronger response to food’s reinforcing power. Perhaps not surprisingly, participants with that high level of food reinforcement consumed more calories.
The reinforcing value of food, which may be influenced by dopamine genotypes, appeared to be a significantly stronger predictor of consumption than self-reported liking of the favorite food. Researchers still view reinforcement as one of several factors that motivate eating behavior, but the present study highlights the genetic contribution and role of reinforcement. More findings available here.
