Exercise addiction and its related factors in amateur runners

Abstract

Background and aims This study examines exercise addiction (EA) in amateur runners from a multidimensional approach, including demographics (age, sex, educational attainment, and financial situation), training factors (duration of running activity, weekly time spent running, mean workout distance per session, other sports activities, and childhood physical activity), psychological features (perceived health, life satisfaction, loneliness, stress, anxiety, depression, body shape, and eating disorders), and anthropometrics (body mass index) that might predict EA. Methods The well-validated Exercise Dependence Scale (EDS) was applied to evaluate the prevalence of EA in amateur runners. A multinomial logistic regression was performed to find explanatory variables of risk of EA using the SPSS 24.0 statistical software. Results A total of 257 runners (48.9% females, Mage = 40.49, SD = 8.99 years) with at least 2 years running activity participated in an anonymous questionnaire survey. About 53.6% of respondents were characterized as non-dependent symptomatic and 37.8% as non-dependent asymptomatic. About 8.6% had prevalence of being at risk of EA. The logistic regression model displayed five variables that significantly predicted the risk of EA: (a) anxiety, (b) loneliness, (c) weekly time spent running, (d) childhood physical activity, and (e) education level. Discussion and conclusions Findings indicate that loneliness and anxiety may lead to withdrawal and uncontrolled behavior that in turn leads to increased amount of exercise in amateur runners. Lower level of education attainment is also a likely risk of EA development, and childhood sports activity is a predictor.

Understanding Addiction Using Animal Models

“…Several studies have proposed that criteria for EA be adapted from those used to diagnose substance use disorders per the DSM, including measures of tolerance, withdrawal, and decreased involvement in other activities (for review see Freimuth et al, 2011). Independent of diagnostic criteria, studies have identified behavioral traits associated with EA, such as obsessive-compulsive behavior, loneliness and anxiety (Macfarlane et al, 2016; Lukács et al, 2019). Several other disorders, including substance use disorders, eating disorder, and other behavior addictions such as shopping and sex addiction have been found to co-occur with EA (for review see Freimuth et al, 2011).…”

A Scoping Review of the Relationship between Running and Mental Health

“…Nineteen studies only included runners [30,31,34,35,39,44,48,49,51,55,58,[65][66][67]70,[74][75][76] and compared different levels and types of running. Some studies found a positive association with higher self-identity runners and low levels of depression and high self-efficacy [30,[65][66][67]74].…”

“…There were conflicting results from papers investigating negative addiction; one indicated that with more years spent running came a greater risk of negative addiction [34], while another found no relationship between years of running and addiction [58] and another found a sex difference in that commitment to running can occur without addiction in female runners but not in males [49]. Another paper found that five variables significantly predicted risk of exercise addiction in runners: weekly time spent running, childhood PA, lower educational attainment, anxiety and loneliness [75]. The remaining four cross-sectional studies of runners only found that, since participating in running, they had better emotional well-being, relief of tension, self-image and self-confidence, mood, depression, aggression and anger, anxiety and happiness, but not all reported significance or effect size [31,35,44,48,51].…”

The relationship between food addiction and patterns of disordered eating with exercise dependence: in amateur endurance athletes

“…Prevalence for EXD is 0.5-3.5% in the general population [22] and up to > 50% within triathletes [23]. Some research groups also describe pathological excessive exercise as 'exercise addiction' [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. Prevalence for exercise addiction is 0.3-42% in various samples [25,30].…”