Sports Addiction: Causes, Symptoms & Therapy
Regular exercise keeps the body on its toes and is the best protection against lifestyle diseases such as obesity , diabetes , high blood pressure  and elevated blood lipid levels. “Endurance sport two to three times a week for 30 to 60 minutes is recommended,” says Dr. Robert Gugutzer from the Chair of Sport Psychology at the Technical University of Munich. But some athletes gradually lose any sense of the amount of exercise that is good for the body and not harmful. What are the causes of sports addiction? What are the symptoms and consequences and how can the therapy be carried out?
Symptoms and definition of a sports addiction
Run 20 kilometers through the park before breakfast, lift weights in the lunch break and go skating with friends in the evening – if they can keep up at all. “Recreational athletes who train for more than an hour a day have to listen carefully to their bodies,” says Gugutzer. “Pain that indicate overload and signs of wear and tear must be taken seriously,” advises the sports scientist.
Even if sports addiction does not (yet) exist as an independent diagnosis, physicians define it as follows: an addictive desire for physical activity without competitive ambitions. This manifests itself in uncontrolled, excessive training behavior and leads to physical and mental problems.
Overall, sports addiction is quite rare. According to estimates, about one percent of recreational athletes are addicted to exercise. Sports that are popular with fitness maniacs are running, cycling, triathlon, but also bodybuilding and strength training.
Causes: why is exercise addictive?
In contrast to some other addictions, drugs are not involved in sports addiction unless the athlete is doping. For a long time, experts believed that the body’s own happiness hormones (endorphins) could be responsible for sports addiction. Because under extreme stress, the organism releases endogenous drugs in order to control pain and endure extreme stress.
US scientists from the University of Richmond found that the concentration of the body’s own beta-endorphin increased after 45 minutes of aerobic exercise, but no connection between the amount of endorphin in the blood and dependence on constant physical activity. Sports psychologist Professor Oliver Stoll from the Institute for Sports Science at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg demonstrated that even relaxation training leads to an increase in endorphin levels in the blood. The happiness hormones are therefore not demonstrably responsible for the addiction.
Stoll and his colleagues rather suspected that distraction from everyday problems played a role in the development of sports addiction. During heavy physical exertion, athletes only concentrate on the here and now. This switches off the thoughts and sweeps everyday problems aside for the time of the training. A state that athletes want to have again and again. A drug works no differently. Athletes run the risk of living only through physical activity.
Escapism as a cause of exercise addiction
Experts suspect other factors than the flight from reality. The physical exertion could reduce anxiety. Supporting this theory is that sports addicts tend to be insecure people. “With good sporting performance, they raise their self-confidence and compensate for frustrations that they experience elsewhere,” says sports scientist Gugutzer.
In addition, after the great drudgery, a relaxation effect sets in. It acts like a drug on the inner life. “We researchers are completely unclear which effect contributes most to exercise addiction,” says Professor Tom Hildebrandt of the Institute for Eating and Weight Disorders at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. All of the answers could be correct, but there is no concrete data on this.
Disturbed body image as a reason for fitness addiction
For some people, training can turn into a constant struggle for the ideal body. This includes bodybuilders and those with eating disorders. Experts even speak of sports bulimia (bulimia athletica) and sports anorexia (anorexia athletica). Those affected do not vomit or starve, but simply work off the annoying calories. Gugutzer knows: “Young women in particular transfer their high demands on themselves to the training and want to achieve recognition for their performance.”
While the desire for the ideal weight and the dream figure is often the driving force for women, for men it’s all about the muscles. What both have in common is that their body perception is disturbed. Anorexic  women find themselves  too fat , even if they are underweight , which is a health hazard . Despite their thick biceps, men feel weak and untrained. Among bodybuilders, this phenomenon is known as “muscle dysmorphia”. Without the training, they fear, the body will immediately lose muscle.
Consequences of sports addiction
Excessive exercise can have serious consequences for the body. Anyone who ignores signs of fatigue in the body accepts premature wear and tear on bones, ligaments and tendons. Women who also suffer from anorexia or bulimia  lose vital body fat . Possible consequences are hormonal imbalances with no menstrual bleeding or osteoporosis  with a decrease in bone density .
From a certain calorie consumption  without sufficient food intake, the desired effect no longer sets in, but the opposite: the body does not build up muscles, but rather breaks them down – this significantly reduces physical performance. Social contacts, concentration at work and career also suffer.
Anyone who goes through a multi-hour fitness program alongside work gradually becomes lonely. As muscles grow stronger, contact with friends and family dwindles. Even romantic relationships can break up when the partner loses understanding for the long-term sport because he feels too little attention. Some people literally run away from a relationship.
Sports addiction: therapy by psychotherapists
There is a great danger for sports addicts that they do not perceive the addictive behavior as such, but simply dismiss it as a passionate hobby. Anyone who notices the first signs of a sports addiction will usually realize that they cannot reduce the amount of sports they do on their own. “Then he should contact a psychotherapist,” advises Gugutzer.
The causes and manifestations of fitness addiction vary greatly from person to person, “you have to decide each time which therapy is suitable for the person affected”. The focus is on cognitive therapy approaches. Through discussions, the therapist and the person affected try to decipher the causes of the addictive behavior and ultimately solve the addiction.
Patients can go to a psychological counseling center or consult a practicing sports psychologist. If there are already serious physical consequences, an inpatient stay in a psychosomatic clinic is sometimes necessary.
