Tennis legend Billie Jean King says she’s utilizing weight reduction medicine to assist deal with her binge consuming dysfunction. Consultants clarify the way it works.

Billie Jean King is attempting weight reduction medicine to handle her binge eating disorder (BED), revealing on the April 24 episode of actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Wiser Than Me podcast that it was just lately beneficial by her physician. The 80-year-old tennis icon advised Louis-Dreyfus she’s had a couple of injections to start out and is ready to see the way it impacts her ideas about meals. (Whereas King referred to Ozempic as a catch-all time period for weight reduction medicine, she didn’t specify which medicine she is taking.)

What has King stated about her battle with binge consuming, and the way would possibly weight reduction medicine have an effect? Right here’s what to know.

What King has revealed about her consuming dysfunction

King wrote about her expertise with eating disorders in her 2021 memoir, All In, saying that she was formally identified with BED — which entails a lack of management over consuming conduct, consuming giant quantities of meals in a particular time frame after which feeling depressed, disgusted, ashamed, responsible or upset — at age 51. Talking to Louis-Dreyfus, King offered extra particulars about what she was going by way of on the time, together with coming to phrases along with her sexuality after being publicly outed in 1981. “I believe that triggered quite a lot of my consuming dysfunction,” she stated, together with the eye paid to her weight-reduction plan as an elite athlete. Round 1995, King sought out inpatient remedy at The Renfrew Center in Philadelphia.

“I went to remedy and I lived there for six weeks,” she advised Louis-Dreyfus. It led her into restoration on the time, though she continues to take care of her consuming dysfunction to this present day. “I nonetheless go to remedy, I nonetheless give it some thought.”

And he or she nonetheless typically struggles with obsessive ideas about meals. “I’ve, like, two voices in my head, typically that argue,” stated King. “Let’s say I desire a quart of ice cream — one aspect will say, ‘Yeah, child, I’m gonna have that ice cream it doesn’t matter what!’ And the opposite aspect says, ‘No, don’t do this, it’s not wholesome. You don’t want it, you’re not gonna miss it.’ The opposite aspect says, ‘Screw you! I’m having this ice cream.’ So I’ve this dialogue that goes on in my head and typically it’s very elevated. … [It] will get exhausting and tiring and I don’t need to struggle over these items.”

Though King didn’t use the time period herself, the ideas she describes having are generally known as “food noise” — one thing weight reduction medicines could possibly suppress.

“I don’t need to drop some pounds quick as a result of I believe it seems horrible. I don’t assume it’s wholesome,” she stated of beginning her drug routine. “I want to lose slowly. However the essential factor my therapist requested me, which I hadn’t thought of, is that she stated, ‘Has it quieted your thoughts? … ’ As a result of that will be actually nice.”

How would possibly that work? Right here’s what specialists say about meals noise and what specialists say about utilizing weight reduction medicine to handle it.

What’s ‘meals noise’?

It’s the expertise of getting frequent ideas about meals that an individual finds to be intrusive, based on Dr. Melanie Jay, director of NYU Langone’s Complete Program on Weight problems. “Individuals describe it as all the time occupied with the following factor they are going to eat, spending quite a lot of time attempting to resolve whether or not to eat one thing they’re craving, occupied with lunch whereas they’re consuming breakfast,” she tells Yahoo Life.

A 2023 review of the time period by dietary scientists decided that there’s little analysis obtainable on meals noise. Psychologist Samantha DeCaro, director of medical outreach and training at The Renfrew Center, the place King beforehand acquired remedy within the ’90s, tells Yahoo Life that “meals noise” isn’t an official medical or medical time period with a transparent definition.

“The expertise of meals noise is a subjective expertise that possible varies considerably between folks. These ideas will be cognitive signs of a medical consuming dysfunction, however they can be the mind’s try and struggle in opposition to a continual state of weight-reduction plan, extreme train, malnourishment or meals insecurity,” she says. “It’s not unusual for folks to expertise frequent ideas about meals once they limit their consumption, eat irregularly, battle to entry enough quantities of meals or constantly deny themselves the meals they get pleasure from. In sure instances, this may merely be a survival technique or a useful sign from our brains that we’d like extra meals or extra selection.”

Meals noise has additionally been related to the “harmful ideas about meals” Jay and different specialists have seen amongst these with binge consuming dysfunction.

“The time period meals noise could also be an try to explain the distressing expertise of getting obsessive, intrusive or just unwelcome ideas about meals. For folks with consuming issues, these obsessive and intrusive ideas are continuously a part of the medical image and gas disordered cycles and signs akin to proscribing, bingeing and purging,” says DeCaro. “Irregular consuming patterns can definitely contribute to an expertise of meals noise and might contribute to a binge consuming episode.”

However specialists additionally be aware that BED is a psychological well being analysis that requires intervention of signs and behaviors far past meals noise.

Are weight reduction medicines an applicable remedy plan for BED?

Dr. Jennifer Kraker, a psychiatrist with experience in metabolic well being and consuming issues, tells Yahoo Life that she’s discovered weight reduction medicines very efficient for treating BED sufferers. Because the New York Times has reported, many individuals who take Ozempic have credited it with serving to to silence meals noise.

Past the element of meals noise, nonetheless, Kraker says that “dopamine dysregulation and satiety signaling are underlying parts of binge consuming dysfunction.” Liraglutide and semaglutide (the lively substances in medicines like Victoza and Wegovy) have been proven to scale back the impact of dopamine launched whereas consuming, permitting for higher management round meals. The medicines’ appetite-suppressing results additionally contribute.

The research illustrating these results are restricted however promising, with one study suggesting that semaglutide could also be simpler at treating BED than lisdexamfetamine (Vyvanse), which is FDA-approved for the consuming dysfunction.

A rising variety of physicians, together with Kraker, are additionally reporting optimistic modifications with sufferers. Dr. Michael Lutter, a psychiatrist targeted on despair, nervousness and consuming issues, advised the Wall Street Journal that he’s been prescribing weight reduction medicines to BED sufferers since 2019 and has discovered that they “reply amazingly nicely.” He stated that their bingeing is introduced underneath management when utilizing the medicine along side remedy by therapists and dietitians.

Weight reduction, nonetheless, does happen, which is trigger for concern amongst specialists like Jay, who says, “Extra research are wanted to ensure that it doesn’t worsen consuming issues.”

DeCaro can also be cautious, and says that consuming issues are extra advanced and require extra complete remedy than weight reduction medicines alone would supply.

“Consuming issues are advanced psychiatric issues; they aren’t nearly meals or weight. Weight reduction medicines won’t ever handle the underlying emotional and psychosocial elements that contribute to the event of consuming issues,” says DeCaro. “These medicines can doubtlessly trigger, preserve or worsen binge consuming signs, particularly if somebody must cease the medicine attributable to an antagonistic aspect impact. There may be the likelihood that these medicines can intrude with consuming dysfunction remedy objectives, as they could allow restriction, intrude with establishing a constant consuming schedule, shift the consumer’s focus to look and scale back a consumer’s willingness to take part within the extremely efficient meals publicity work.”

Jay recommends that people work with a multidisciplinary workforce to find out the very best course of remedy.