Intended for healthcare professionals

Rapid response to:

Practice Practice Pointer

Addiction to exercise

BMJ 2017; 357 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j1745 (Published 26 April 2017) Cite this as: BMJ 2017;357:j1745

Rapid Response:

Re: Addiction to exercise. Does the Emperor have some new gym kit?

The "disease" is unselfconsciously described as not being officially recognised and without validated diagnostic criteria. Notwithstanding the admission of being dead in the water, the article comprehensively tells us how to screen and treat "exercise addiction".
I welcome attention to under-recognised health issues but making up diseases, spurious scoring systems and treatment programmes in an ad-hoc manner is probably not the way forward.

Competing interests: No competing interests

16 May 2017
Jason A Wilson
Consultant anaesthetist, medical statistician
Dept of Anaesthesia, Charing Cross Hospital, London