ORTOREXIA, Obsession for healthy food

Eating healthy is positive, the obsession with eating healthy until you reach orthorexia not so much. Alicia and Esteban are an athlete couple and take care of their diet until the last detail. One night they go to dinner at some friends who have known recently. The table is full of plates with ham, cheese and canapés. Main dish, a hamburger with bacon and double cheese. The couple, little accustomed to these banquets, access and eat, but they feel worse and worse. When they get home, they are huge guilt. They feel that they have broken a rule and that they have cast all the effort they have made.

The messages that society launches on our body and on health are usually very marked. We must eat healthy, exercise and have a body "ten". Thus, Some people can lead their behavior to eat healthy and turn it into an obsession. An obsession that can even become an eating disorder and negatively affect health. But how can the obsession with eating healthy be harmful? Let's deepen a little more in orthorexia!

Content

• ORTOREXIA
• Characteristics
• Symptoms and diagnosis
• Treatment
• Discussion
  • References

ORTOREXIA

As described Bonet and Garrote (2016) the orthorexia It is the Pathological and irrational obsession for eating healthy and for food quality, thus becoming the main concern of the person who suffers from it or even, in the objective of his life.

The orthorexia, although not collected in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5), is described as an obsessive-compulsive behavior that produces in which food restrictions suffer by being questioning the amount of food every time, The type, the origin, the form of culture, the materials, the techniques used in its preparation, etc.

Dr. Steven Bratman described this phenomenon in 1997 for the first time in 1997. The term orthorexia derives from the Greek word "ortho", whose meaning is fair or straight and "orexia", which means appetite, so would mean something like correct appetite, just appetite. This eating disorder, as Bonet and Garrote (2016) describe It is an emerging disorder in developed countries, for its characteristics, and without presence In poor countries or in population sectors with low purchasing power and a low cultural level.

Characteristics

Those who suffer from orthorexia only eat organic or ecological foods and cultivated without herbicides or pesticides. You can also reject food with additives or processed. They can reach the point that if a food does not match their preferences, they reject eating.

Ortorexic usually expects this type of diet to bring you physical benefit as well as a better moral and psychic level, so this belief can cause an increase in dependence on this diet.

At first, this type of behavior appears as a concern towards a healthy lifestyle. However, This attitude, little by little, becomes an obsession that begins to occupy much of the thoughts and of vital objectives. In this way, contrary to improving health, situations such as social isolation, feeling of guilt and dissatisfaction and even malnutrition comparable with patients suffering from anorexia.

Symptoms and diagnosis

According to Bonet and Garrote (2016), the diagnosis of orthorexia is governed by the following points:

• Dedicate more than three hours a day to think about the diet, Planning and preparation of the next meals. Important displacements can be presented only with the aim of achieving certain foods.
• Feeling of guilt if diet guidelines jumps. On the other hand, feeling of satisfaction if expectations are met.
• It can occur Social isolation due to the high requirements required to feed.
• There is one greater concern for food quality that for the pleasure of eating them.
• You don't try to hide the lifestyle, on the contrary, It is proud of it.
• Can reach belittle those who do not have similar views.
• The diet can become the center of your life.

All these points can point to the diagnosis if all this goes reinforced by physiological symptoms as a result of this diet such as: anemia, remarkable weight loss, hypervitaminosis or hypovitaminosis, hypotension, osteoporosis, etc. In more advanced phases, depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders may appear.

Treatment

Depending on the point where you are Ortorexico may need multidisciplinary treatment. If the diet has led you to suffer some kind of malnutrition or disease, first of all a medical treatment will have to be carried out. In this way, it seeks to recover physical health. On the other hand, nutritional and psychological treatment acquires an important relevance.

It is important to know that you can eat healthy without getting to obsession, Therefore, the psychology professional will intervene to help the patient to be more flexible in their dietary requirements and try to work with the feeling of guilt. Finally, the nutritionist will propose a healthy and balanced diet so that the patient does not suffer any food lack.

Discussion

Eating healthy is a relatively easy behavior since it is enough to acquire healthy foods. However, the large number of food offers rich in sugar and fat is everywhere and represents an important temptation. Thus, It is important to know how to choose well to carry out a healthy diet, but without falling into obsession nor in the feelings of guilt if we eat a sweet. The central issue of this eating disorder is not the healthy diet itself, but the obsession relationship that we acquire with it and the negative effects that our behavior can have.

References

• BONET, R. And club, to. (2016). ORTOREXIA. Nutrition, 30 (1), 23-25.