Primary care providers urged to assist patients who engage in emotional eating

Primary care providers are well positioned to address emotional eating because of their long-term relationships with patients, note Jana DeSimone Wozniak, Ph.D. and Hsiang Huang, MD, MPH, of Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance in Cambridge, Massachusetts. According to their article published in Harvard Review of Psychiatry, emotional eating is associated with myriad health problems, including the experience of overweight or obesity, increased difficulty losing weight and sustaining weight loss, diabetes, and heart disease. “Emotional eating is characterized by increased motivation for food consumption in response to stress and/or emotion and mood states,” Dr. Wozniak and Dr. Huang explain. Read More