Addiction Recovery Research Center, Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, 2 Riverside Circle, Roanoke, VA, USA; Center for Transformative Research on Health Behaviors, Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, 1 Riverside Circle, Roanoke, VA, USA; Department of Human Nutrition, Foods and Exercise, Virginia Tech, 1981, Kraft Dr., Blacksburg, VA, USA.
Graduate Program in Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health, Virginia Tech, 1981, Kraft Dr., Blacksburg, VA, USA.
Appetite. 2022 Feb 1;169:105834. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2021.105834. Epub 2021 Dec 3.
Substance use disorders (SUDs) and obesity are both chronic, relapsing, remitting disorders that arise from a heightened preference for immediate-focused rewards (i.e., steep temporal discounting). During recovery from SUDs, overweight and obese outcomes are common as individuals may replace drug rewards for food rewards. However, little has been done to investigate the neuropsychological processes underlying food reward and addiction in individuals recovering from SUDs. Using data collected from the International Quit and Recovery Registry and Amazon Mechanical Turk, we aimed to elucidate the factors that influence the attraction to palatable foods in a population in recovery from substance misuse (n = 114) as well as a population with no history of substance misuse (n = 97). We hypothesized that individuals in recovery from substance misuse would have steeper temporal discounting, an increased drive for palatable foods (i.e., hedonic hunger), and greater food addiction symptoms than non-substance users. Contrary to our hypotheses, we found that individuals in recovery from SUDs show improved outcomes in temporal discounting, hedonic hunger, and food addiction symptoms. Moreover, recovery status and temporal discounting significantly predicted these outcomes. Our findings suggest that the enhanced executive control processes needed for successful SUD recovery may transfer to other reward-related processes such as food reward and consumption. Interventions targeted at improving executive function including episodic future thinking, meditation, or exercise, may be excellent ways to support a successful recovery and improve other reward-related processes, including food consumption, to decrease the risk of overweight or obese outcomes during recovery.
物质使用障碍（SUDs）和肥胖都是慢性、复发性、缓解性疾病，源于对即时聚焦奖励的偏好增强（即陡峭的时间折扣）。在 SUDs 的康复过程中，超重和肥胖的结果很常见，因为个体可能会用药物奖励代替食物奖励。然而，在研究 SUDs 康复个体的食物奖励和成瘾的神经心理学过程方面，几乎没有做任何工作。使用从国际戒烟和康复登记处和亚马逊机械土耳其收集的数据，我们旨在阐明影响物质滥用康复人群（n=114）和无物质滥用史人群（n=97）对美味食物吸引力的因素。我们假设，与非物质使用者相比，物质滥用康复者的时间折扣会更陡峭，对美味食物的驱动力（即享乐性饥饿）会增加，食物成瘾症状会更严重。与我们的假设相反，我们发现 SUDs 康复者在时间折扣、享乐性饥饿和食物成瘾症状方面表现出更好的结果。此外，康复状态和时间折扣显著预测了这些结果。我们的研究结果表明，成功康复 SUDs 所需的增强型执行控制过程可能会转移到其他与奖励相关的过程，如食物奖励和消耗。旨在改善执行功能的干预措施，包括情景性未来思维、冥想或锻炼，可能是支持成功康复和改善其他奖励相关过程（包括食物消耗）的极好方法，以减少康复期间超重或肥胖结果的风险。
