Food Addiction: - Addictions are of many types. All of us are addicted to something without even knowing why & how we are addicted. Generally tobacco, alcohol, drugs like opium & heroin are thought to be the things which a person gets addicted to. But most of us are unaware of an equally serious addiction that is addiction to food. Different people are addicted to some food items. Some are addicted to carbohydrates in the form of rice or even wheat, some to spicy food, some to sweets, some to fast food & other commercial food. There are persons who get addicted even to bread & milk. Individually those foods as an addiction, to any one of these, may be harmless without visible discomfort. If abstained from, or lesser quantity of particular type of food is taken, one may feel some sort of all gone sensation in the stomach or suffer other withdrawal symptoms. But once they are introduced again, the withdrawals may disappear. As in any other addiction, the more one eats, the more the food is relished. The craving for eating keeps increasing day by day.

Withdrawal fears: - Addiction to overeating is a serious problem, because it causes obesity. Overeating unwittingly begins at a very young age when it can be easily controlled or got rid of. But on being ignored or even encouraged, it reaches a stage when withdrawing or controlling it becomes extremely difficult. We often see persons overeating the type of food they are fond of addiction to isolated food items can be considered quite harmless compared to addiction to overeating. Bur if that isolated food happens to contain more calories than the isolated food happens to contain more calories than the food requires, addiction to that particular type of food will definitely be difficult to control. In case that particular food is not available, something else will be sought which gives the satisfaction of eating the missing one. On some cases there are no such cravings for high calorie food like sweets and other processed food. A person simply eats anything that is available till his stomach is uncomfortably full. Less quantity of food makes the individual restless until her eats again after a few minutes interval.

The underlying cause for such overeating lies basically with the abnormal functions of the endocrine glands and the amount of hormones they produce. Availability of food in abundance is another reasons why addiction overeating is difficult to handle.