Mark S. Gold

Mark S. Gold is the University of Florida Distinguished Alumni Professor for 2011-2013. He is a Donald Dizney Eminent Scholar and distinguished professor of psychiatry, neuroscience, community health and family medicine. He is also the current chairman of the department of psychiatry in the University of Florida College of Medicine. Dr. Gold is a researcher and inventor who has worked for over 40 years to develop models for understanding the effects of tobacco, cocaine, other drugs and food on the brain and behavior. He created the Division of Addiction Medicine at UF and its treatment program, the Florida Recovery Center. With Drs. Bob Dupont and Tom McLellan, he has studied physician and health professionals who have become addicted and their outcomes after treatment.

Dr. Gold has been working on new, addiction-based models for understanding hedonic overeating, food addiction and the development of new therapies. He has done similar work for opiate addiction which led to the discovery of clonidine’s efficacy in opiate withdrawal and cocaine addiction which led to the dopamine hypothesis (Patent #4/312,878). He is currently working on a report about second and third hand opium exposure in Kabul for the United States State Department. He has worked on smoking, second and third hand tobacco smoke previously with support from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and FAMRI. He has worked with a variety of government agencies concerned with drug use and youth. Among those organizations are the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, Media Partnership for a Drug Free America, the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, and the Betty Ford Center Foundation.

Along with tobacco, alcohol and other neurobiology of drug addiction studies, Dr. Gold has worked for over 30 years to evaluate the hypothesis that hedonic overeating is a pathological attachment to food like any other addiction. Dr. Gold is a co-editor of the 2012 food addiction textbook published by Oxford Press. He is also the author of general audience books and has written over 900 scientific articles, chapters, and abstracts published in journals for neuroscientists and health professionals.

Education

• Washington University in St. Louis
• Medical degree from the University of Florida College of Medicine
• Residency and fellowship at Yale School of Medicine

External links

• Mark S. Gold named 2011-2013 UF Distinguished Alumni Professor
• Mark S. Gold named 2008 Yale Distinguished Alumni
• Yale Hosts Historic Conference on Food and Addiction
• Wall Street Journal food addiction article
• Bloomberg article on food addiction
• Explaining the Disease of Addiction
• Mark S. Gold named 1989 Washington University Distinguished Alumni