Episode 41 - Anna Lembke

Food Junkies Podcast

Anna Lembke is medical director of Stanford Addiction Medicine, program director for the Stanford Addiction Medicine Fellowship, and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. A clinician scholar, she is a professor of psychiatry at Stanford and has published more than a hundred peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and commentaries. She sits on the board of several state and national addiction-focused organizations, has testified before various committees in the United States House of Representatives and Senate, keeps an active speaking calendar, and maintains a thriving clinical practice.

She is a well sought after speaker on the subject of addiction. In 2016, she published Drug Dealer, MD – How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It’s So Hard to Stop which was highlighted in the New York Times as one of the top five books to read to understand the opioid epidemic. Dr. Lembke recently appeared on the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, an unvarnished look at the impact of social media on our lives. Her book Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence was released last month and it explores how to moderate compulsive overconsumption in a world where feeling good is the highest good.

Today we talk to Anna about Food Addiction. She not only believes in Food Addiciton she feels that in our modern day scientifically hijacked, excessively accessible food world that it is likely EVERYONE has a disordered relationship with eating and food. How could we not?? She believes these foods are drugs and she validated the withdrawal and detox that comes with removing these foods and choosing to abstain from them when we start to seek Food Addiction recovery.

She speaks to the pleasure/pain balance and how this plays a role in understanding our compulsive, addictive behaviours around food. She shares her experiences of working with individuals with food addiction and why food can be one of the most challenging addicitons to overcome We discuss the importance of getting through those first 30days and some strategies for staying safe in the initial period of removing the substances from our lives Why it’s so important to act in a way that’s opposite to what you are feeling. How social media drufigys human connection. The importance of practicing radical honesty and how it rewires our brain to stimulate connections between the prefrontal cortex and our reward pathway And whether she believes that food addiction should and will be recognized in the near future in the DSM.

This episode is filled with helpful insights into the disease of addiction and tools you can use to help you recover. We hope that YOU enjoy it as much as we were honoured to sit in on it!

Follow Anna:

https://www.annalembke.com

The content of our show is educational only. It does not supplement or supersede the professional relationship and direction of your healthcare provider. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified mental health providers with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, substance use disorder, or mental health concern.