Exercise Addiction and Its Relationship with Health Outcomes in Indoor Cycling Practitioners in Fitness Centers.

Javier Bueno-Antequera,Joaquin Reverter-Masià,Miguel Ángel Oviedo-Caro,Isaac López-Laval,Diego Munguía-Izquierdo,Carmen Mayolas-Pi,Mercedes Ruidíaz-Peña,Alejandro Legaz-Arrese

doi:10.3390/ijerph17114159

Abstract

We studied the prevalence and possible association between exercise addiction and health in indoor cycling practitioners. In 1014 (492 women) adult indoor cyclists and 926 (597 women) controls with low levels of physical activity according to the short form of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire, we examined the risk of exercise addiction according to the Exercise Addiction Inventory and several health outcomes through a web-based experiment. The prevalence of a high risk of exercise addiction in cyclists was 13.3%, and it was higher in men than in women (16.5% vs. 10.0%, p = 0.002). Women cyclists with a high risk of exercise addiction had higher levels of physical activity (p < 0.001; effect size = −0.62, 95% CI: (−0.91, −0.32)) and anxiety symptom severity (p = 0.001; Effect Size (ES) = −0.59 (−0.89, −0.30)) than those with a low risk. For both sexes, cyclists with a low risk of exercise addiction had better social function, emotional role, and anxiety symptom severity compared with the controls (all p < 0.002; ES ranged from 0.25 to 0.47). Higher anxiety symptom severity and cardiorespiratory fitness were the main determinants of exercise addiction in cyclists (both p < 0.001). Our data suggest the importance of considering exercise addiction in indoor cyclists.

Highlights

Exercise addiction, defined as “an abnormal reliance on exercise behavior to cope with chronic stress or the hassles and challenges of the everyday life and featuring the core components of addiction found in more traditional addictions” [1], is a popular but relatively new research topic.Many researchers claim that exercise addiction should be accepted as a mental disorder in diagnostic manuals; the accumulated literature is still scarce and limited by a lack of conceptual and methodological consistency [1].Two key factors to consider in improving the understanding of exercise addiction are its prevalence and health consequences
The prevalence of exercise addiction for the overall sample of indoor cycling practitioners is similar to the mean reported in systematic reviews of studies that used the Exercise Addiction Inventory in habitual exercisers (13.2%) [6] and in endurance athletes (14.2%) [2], including one study in amateur endurance outdoor cyclists (17%) [8], but it was slightly higher than that reported in studies in gym users (8.2%) [2], which ranged from 3.6% [31] to 42.5% [32]
The study of Lichtenstein and Jensen [7] showed that the prevalence of exercise addiction in people engaging in a specific fitness discipline such as CrossFit according to the Exercise Addiction Inventory was 5%, suggesting that the problem is less prevalent than among those who engage in indoor cycling

Summary

Introduction

Exercise addiction, defined as “an abnormal reliance on exercise behavior to cope with chronic stress or the hassles and challenges of the everyday life and featuring the core components of addiction found in more traditional addictions” [1], is a popular but relatively new research topic.Many researchers claim that exercise addiction should be accepted as a mental disorder in diagnostic manuals; the accumulated literature is still scarce and limited by a lack of conceptual and methodological consistency [1].Two key factors to consider in improving the understanding of exercise addiction are its prevalence and health consequences. Exercise addiction, defined as “an abnormal reliance on exercise behavior to cope with chronic stress or the hassles and challenges of the everyday life and featuring the core components of addiction found in more traditional addictions” [1], is a popular but relatively new research topic. Many researchers claim that exercise addiction should be accepted as a mental disorder in diagnostic manuals; the accumulated literature is still scarce and limited by a lack of conceptual and methodological consistency [1]. Two key factors to consider in improving the understanding of exercise addiction are its prevalence and health consequences. The sports discipline and the screening scale employed affect the results. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 4159; doi:10.3390/ijerph17114159 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph

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