Previous studies have found that people with PTSD are at increased risk for obesity, and the new study provides one explanation for that link: People with PTSD may use eating to cope with psychological distress, the researchers said.Ummm. No. CDNIC. (correlation does not imply causation.) Neither one of these causes the other.
"Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that observed links between PTSD and obesity might be partly explained by a tendency to use food to self-medicate traumatic stress symptoms," the researchers, from the University of Minnesota, wrote in the Sept. 17 issue of the journal JAMA Psychiatry.
This is the expected behavior of someone with chronic infectious illness. Infection causes hyperinsulinemia and an increased stress response. This manifests as anxiety and weight gain.
