Exercise Addiction

Szabó, Attila and Griffiths, Mark D. and Demetrovics, Zsolt (2015) Exercise Addiction. In: Neuropathology of Drug Addictions and Substance Misuse. Elsevier, pp. 984-992.

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Abstract

The addictive aspect of exercise behaviour is well known. The issue is controversial, because exercise, unlike tobacco smoking, drinking alcohol or gambling, is viewed as a healthy behaviour. Therefore, it is not surprising that high levels of commitment to exercise were connotated as "positive addiction". In fact, exercise addiction is a morbid pattern of uncontrolled exercise behaviour resulting in harm to the affected individual. It is driven by strong urges and cravings for the behaviour, that are also accompanied by severe withdrawal symptoms. Research into exercise addiction is based on self-reports yielding risk scores rather than diagnosis. The prevalence of exercise addiction is rare, ranging between 0.3-0.5% in the general population and 3.0-6.0% in the exercising population. There are several models for the morbidity, but many of them are incomplete. A more recent interactional model is presented to emphasize the subjective nature of the morbidity. It is stressed that a better understanding of the behaviour may result from the inductive examination of idiographic clinical case studies rather than nomothetic research.

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