Exercise Addiction: Article Analysis

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People can be addicted to anything, even activities that are often perceived as being healthy. Exercise is seen as one of the most positive actions that a person can do in their lifetime, but there is also the often not acknowledged issue that a person might become addicted to the activity. Exercise addiction is a real thing that is often ignored or seen as a non-issue in the United States. Individuals that work out constantly without regard to their body, life, and health are in danger of working themselves to a broken body and early grave. In my experience with this issue I know that sometimes I overdo my workout constantly, either by working out too long or too frequently because I have the need mentally to workout, with no fear of destroying…show more content…
This Article “Exercise Addiction: Symptoms, Diagnosis, Epidemiology, and Etiology,” deals with what is Exercise addiction and how it qualifies as an addiction and the attributes that come with it. In the introduction to the article states how regular exercise is good for an individual’s when taking into account, age, health, and the quantity of the exercise. The term positive addiction also popped up in the article describing how early on in psychology placed both exercise and meditation as positive repetitive practices that when doing them frequency is actually a positive for the body and mind. Modern psychological studies as this article points out paints a different picture on exercise addiction as something that can be exaggerated as a behavioral dysfunction. There are also statements on the obsessive nature of exercise addiction and how individuals gain short term satisfaction and long term repeated urge to do the exercise repeatedly by the individual. The problem in defining exercise addiction as an issue is that there is no consistent base on how to test, no specific way to test if an individual happens to work out a lot or is addicted by the tools used now. There are also a number of inadequacies on how many people have exercise addiction, but now there seems to be a shared consensus that it is an issue in the exercise community. There also seems to be a shared connection between those who suffer exercise addiction with bulimia, and body issues in general. A reason stated for people that are dealing with the addiction of exercise was a means to cope with stressful events, and mood connected to the feeling of relief after exercising. Similar to any other drug exercise is only a temporary solution which means individuals will work out repeatedly to catch the next

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