A new study in the journal JAMA Psychiatry posits that women with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are more than twice as likely to be addicted to food than women without PTSD symptoms. The study doesn’t necessarily find a causal link between PTSD and food addiction, but it may help explain the link between PTSD and obesity, as suggested by the authors. PTSD is also posited to be linked to other obesity-related disorders including heart disease and metabolic syndrome.

PTSD affects approximately 7% of the American population, with women being more commonly affected. Individuals with PTSD respond to a potentially traumatic event by experiencing reliving, arousal, avoidance or numbing. Prior research has found that victims of childhood abuse are more likely to experience food addiction at later points in their life.

“I’d really like the message to come across that people bring a whole lot of history to their eating behaviors,” said the study’s lead author Susan Mason, from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. “If clinicians providing mental health care are aware that PTSD is sometimes accompanied by problematic eating behaviours, then they may be able to offer better and more tailored care to their patients,” she added.

Researchers studied data from 49 408 female nurses who were asked about PTSD symptoms in 2008 and food addiction in 2009. The data found that four of five participants reported exposure to a traumatic event in their lifetime, with two thirds reporting at least one lifelong PTSD symptom. Eight percent of participants met the research-set criteria for being addicted to food.

The study reported an increasing likelihood of having food addiction with the number of PTSD symptoms reported in the participants. They found that the participants with six to seven PTSD symptoms (the highest number of the data set), were more than twice as likely to be at risk for food addiction when compared to participants with no symptoms or no exposure to traumatic experiences.

A stronger link between PTSD and food addiction in participants whose PTSD symptoms had early onset was also reported. Type of traumatic experience did not yield significant differences in the study.

Researchers cautioned, however, that it is not possible to theorize whether PTSD causes food addiction or vice versa, as it is unknown which occurred first chronologically in the study cohort. “These two things appeared to happen a lot in the same women,” commented Mason. “We don’t know it’s causal. It’s an interesting relationship and probably worth following up.”

She further added that it would be of interest for future studies to expand the participant cohort from female nurses to other groups of women and men. “I just want this to add to a lot of research that people’s weight status is not just a symptom of willpower and education,” said Mason. “There may be psychological factors in play too.”