CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 38Opioid Use Disorder TreatmentSubstance Abuse Treatment and OutcomesNutrition, Health and Food Behavior

Nutritional implications of opioid use disorder: A guide for drug treatment providers

Chavez, Melody N., Rigg, Khary K.·2020·Psychology of Addictive Behaviors
DOI 10.1037/adb0000575
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

The number of Americans seeking treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD) continues to increase. However, there are important nutritional implications of having OUD that often get overlooked by drug treatment providers. OUDs can cause metabolic changes, constipation, and weight loss, or lead to a lifestyle that results in inadequate food intake and unhealthy eating patterns. Nutritional factors associated with OUD can also hinder treatment outcomes and recovery. Addiction providers tend to give little attention to the nutritional implications of OUD, and this knowledge is rarely incorporated into treatment plans. The goal of this article, therefore, is to summarize the existing literature on the connection between OUD and nutrition to help guide treatment programs. This article (a) describes the nutritional consequences associated with misusing opioids, (b) discusses the role that nutrition can play in OUD treatment and recovery, (c) summarizes the nutritional implications of medication treatment for OUD, and (d) recommends nutritional interventions that might aid in the treatment of OUD. This article directly fills a gap in the OUD literature and has the potential to serve as a guide for drug treatment providers to make more informed nutritional recommendations to their clients. Treatment programs may wish to consider the issues raised in this paper before launching nutritional programs at their facility. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1037/adb0000575

Cites

85 of 85 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Poor nutritional habits, malnutrition, and social consequences of opioid use disorder such as homelessness and food insecurity are significant barriers to oral health and other positive behavioral routines.

    “Poor nutritional habits, malnutrition, and OUD-associated social consequences such as homelessness and food insecurity pose significant barriers to oral health and other positive behavioral routines11 that may be mitigated by buprenorphine treatment.”

    From Oral Health Risks of Transmucosal Buprenorphine: Commentary on Tuan et al. and Zheng et al. (2025) · cites this paper as [11]

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

1 of the 86 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Chavez, M. N., & Rigg, K. K.
ORCID
Venue
Psychology of Addictive Behaviors
Publisher
American Psychological Association (APA)
Published
2020-09
Volume
34
Issue
6
Pages
699-707
ISSN
  • 0893-164X (ISSN-L)
  • 1939-1501
DOI
10.1037/adb0000575
OpenAlex
W3012840863
Cited by
38
References
86
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 1
FWCI
3.94
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • Psychology of Addictive Behaviors (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Opioid Use Disorder Treatment
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Substance Abuse Treatment and Outcomes
  • Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Nutrition, Health and Food Behavior
Keywords
opioid use disorder, nutrition, dietary intervention, metabolic changes, constipation, weight loss, inadequate food intake, unhealthy eating patterns, medication-assisted treatment, addiction treatment, recovery, treatment planning
MeSH terms
Analgesics, Opioid, Humans, Opioid-Related Disorders, Nutrition Disorders, Nutritional Status, Malnutrition, Opiate Substitution Treatment

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review