First ever medication approved for binge eating

For the first time, there’s a medicine to help those with a serious eating disorder.

Shire Pharma Canada ULC has announced the government approval of its ADHD drug Vyvanse for treatment of binge eating.

Dr. Rick Ward with the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary says the disorder is a serious mental illness with devastating impacts.

“This is not just a ‘oh I felt really bad and I overate’, this is a pattern of coping which obviously is harmful to the patient’s health and very distressing to them emotionally,” he said.

He says patients typically conceal what they’re doing and feel major stress, shame and guilt afterward.

“It’s a disordered way of dealing with stress and emotions.”

“Binge eating disorder has been officially recognized over the last year as being the most common eating disorder in the population. Although it’s been around forever and was first described about fifty years ago, it’s the first time we’ve really recognized that there’s a diagnostic entity. Along with that has been more research around treatments,” says Ward.

“Binge eating is really probably a disorder of the reward pathway that patients who suffer from this essentially overeat and use food as a way of stimulating the pleasure pathway, the dopamine pathway in our brain.”

Dr. Ward says Vyvanse works by normalizing the neuro-chemistry affecting that pathway.