People who act impulsively in response to negative emotions are at greater risk of binge eating, according to new research.
“It’s human nature to want to turn to something for comfort after a bad day, but what our research found is that the tendency to act rashly when faced with negative emotions is a personality trait that can lead to binge eating,” said senior author Kelly Klump, professor of psychology at Michigan State University.
Klump and her team interviewed 612 female twins, of whom 14 percent had binge eating, overeating (consumption of a large amount of food without a loss of control), or loss of control over eating (difficulty controlling one’s consumption of even a small amount of food).
Binge eating is the uncontrollable consumption of a large amount of food in a short period of time.
