Background Fitness exercise is popular and associated with improved health and social status. Taken to extremes, however, exercise can become an addiction. One suggested symptom of exercise addiction is "conflicts" with family and friends. However, it may be difficult to recognize excessive exercise patterns if they are accepted and encouraged by relatives. The aim of this study was to explore ...

We present a brief overview of the incentive sensitization theory of addiction. This posits that addiction is caused primarily by drug-induced sensitization in the brain mesocorticolimbic systems that attribute incentive salience to reward-associated stimuli. If rendered hypersensitive, these systems cause pathological incentive motivation ('wanting') for drugs. We address some current question...

This study explored Internet addiction among university students in China and the United States to develop a better understanding of Internet addiction in a cross-national setting. Three hundred fourteen respondents were evaluated on 10 Internet addiction symptoms and five Internet addiction dimensions: negative outcomes, social escape, secretive behavior, virtual intimacy, and obsessive-compul...

Opioids have proven very useful for treatment of acute pain and cancer pain, and in the developed countries opioids are increasingly used for treatment of chronic non-malignant pain patients as well. This literature review aims at giving an overview of definitions, mechanisms, diagnostic criteria, incidence and prevalence of addiction in opioid treated pain patients, screening tools for assessi...

BACKGROUND This study aimed to evaluate the roles of pathological disorders in Internet addiction disorder and identify the pathological problems in IAD, as well as explore the mental status of Internet addicts prior to addiction, including the pathological traits that may trigger Internet addiction disorder. METHODS AND FINDINGS 59 students were measured by Symptom CheckList-90 before and af...

Food addiction and emotional eating both influence eating and weight, but little is known of how negative mood affects the attentional processes that may contribute to food addiction. The purpose of this study was to compare attention to food images in adult women (N = 66) with versus without food addiction, before and after a sad mood induction (MI). Participants' eye fixations were tracked an...

Current Opinion in Gastroenterology 2010, 26:165–169 Purpose of review Food addiction has been implicated as a putative causal factor in chronic overeating, binge eating, and obesity. The concept of food addiction has been controversial historically due to definitional and conceptual difficulties and to a lack of rigorous scientific data. Recent findings Support for the food addiction hypothesi...

Vadlin, S. 2016. Problematic Gaming and Gambling among Adolescents. Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Medicine 1268. 91 pp. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. ISBN 978-91-554-9730-9. The overall aims of this thesis were to develop and evaluate a screening instrument designed to detect gaming addiction symptoms in adolescents, to study association...