Attention to eating well and a healthy lifestyle is now an integral part of our society.
There is no day without the means of communication dispens advice and suggestions on what and how to eat. On how much the food affects our health and how much a particular diet allows you to lose weight in a short time. Or rather it allows you to significantly improve our well -being.
The result is perhaps to transform the pleasure of the table into a anxious relationship with everything concerning nutrition.
Although each of us can benefit from healthy changes to their diets and lifestyles, for some the commitment to healthy eating can degenerate into a real obsession that takes the name of Ortoressia.
What is Ortoressia Nervosa?
The term Ortoressia Nervosainitially coined by Bratman and Knight in 1997, describes a condition characterized by a food behavior that follows the pathological obsession with a biologically pure and healthy diet.
This condition is often associated with a restrictive diet which, in an attempt to reach an optimal state of health, can lead to serious medical conditions related to malnutritionin addition to an emotional instability and social isolation.
Symptoms of spelling
The Ortoressici They are worried about the quality of the food in their diet, rather than the quantity.
They take a considerable time to examine the origin (for example, if the vegetables have been exposed to pesticides). They verify its processing (if for example the nutritional content may have been lost during cooking). They study the packaging (for example, if the labels provide sufficient information to judge the quality of specific ingredients) of the foods that are then put on the market.
THE’Obsession on food qualityin terms of nutritional value of foods and their ‘purity’, was born from the desire to optimize one’s physical health and well -being.
Rules and beliefs
Such concern in the case ofOrtoressia It can trigger complex food behavior, for example:
- internal rules on which foods can be taken together with each meal or in specific moments of the day
- beliefs according to which the optimal digestion of a certain food must request a specific amount of time.
Outside meals, a considerable amount of time is spent in the planning and realization of daily meals. This is in order to be able to pay attention to thoughts compared to what will be eaten. But also to the collection of information against each ingredient, to the preparation of the ingredients, and finally to the intake of food.
What are the consequences of introtor?
Since attention is paid to pure and healthy foods, subjects with Ortoressia Nervosa tend to avoid foods that could contain genetically modified ingredients. As well as those that contain significant quantities of fats, sugars, salt or other unwanted components (dyes, preservatives, pesticides …).
These food restrictions usually involve the omission of essential nutrients in the daily energy needs, with the consequence of unbalanced and insufficient diets.
Repercussions on the quality of life
From a psychological point of view, i Ortoressic subjects They feel intense frustration when their food rituals are prevented or interrupted in some way.
They feel disgust when the purity of food seems to be violated, in addition to an emotion of guilt and a disgust towards themselves (sometimes a real hatred) depending on the degree of adherence to the system of internal rules that revolves around the subjective perception of what is right or wrong.
Social isolation
And it is precisely the rigidity of the rules and beliefs related to food that can produce another negative consequence on a psychological level: social isolation.
The sharing of a meal represents one of the key ways with which we socialize and build interpersonal relationships. But for people who suffer from Ortoressia The occasion of a meal can turn into a real mined field.
Eating food that is not considered pure, or food that someone else has prepared, generates a remarkable anxiety. Here the meal does not represent an opportunity for joy and serene conviviality. But becomes fertile ground for a whole series of negative thoughts and emotional states, such as not to allow to draw enjoyment from food.
Quality of food superior to the quality of life
THE Ortoressic subjects They firmly believe they can maintain a healthy diet that they live alone and in full control of everything around them.
They feel righteous to eat foods that they consider as healthy and this pushes them to take on an attitude of moral superiority. As a result they do not want to interact with others who have eating habits other than their own.
The quality of food prevails over one’s personal, moral values, on social, working and emotional relationships, reaching compromise global functioning and well -being of the individual.
The vicious circle of the orteroxia
Those who suffer from Ortoressia hyper-controlled their diet and carefully select each individual food by evaluating their quality.
Hyperinvesting on “healthy eating” and self -control generate a sense of superiority towards those who do not do it. At the same time whenever it fails, transgressing the rule, strong emotions of guilt, anger, sadness and anxiety are generated.
And it is precisely following these negative emotions that the behavior and the rule itself stiffen further, thus contributing to maintaining its vicious circle.
Disorder in its own right or a set of some well -known?
Although not inserted within the latest edition of the statistical diagnostic manual of mental disorders (DSM-5), recently theOrtoressia Nervosa It has been the subject of scientific research that stimulated the international debate about the opportunity or not to include this disorder within the official nosography of the psychiatric world.
In this regard, some researchers from the University of Colorado published an article in 2014 in the magazine Psychosomatics entitled “MicroThinking About Micronutrient: a Case of Transition from Obsessions about Healthy Eating to Near-Fatal ‘Orthorexia Nervosa’ and proposed diagnostic Criteria“, In which they proposed specific diagnostic criteria for this disorder.
Ortoressia and anorexia: what difference
Some of the characteristics described above recall symptoms of anorexia nervosa.
Ortoressia And anorexia in fact share perfectionist and hyper -control traits. They tend to evaluate adherence to their diet as a synonym for self-discipline and interpret transgression as a failure of their self-control.
Given the strong Overlapping between anorexia and Ortoressia The research showed how the latter can constitute a less serious variant of anorexia or a possible coping strategy for anorexic subjects (Kinzel et al., 2006; Segura-Marcia et al., 2015).
In particular, the Segura-Marcia and colleagues study (2015) indicates how Ortoressia is often associated, on a clinical level, with a passage towards less serious forms of eating disorders.
Differential diagnosis
However, there are also elements of differentiation.
The most significant difference between Ortoressia And anorexia concern the motivation underlying to the specific food behavior.
Unlike anorexia in which concern is on amount of ingested food and the purpose of the food patterns is to lose weight, individuals are constantly struggling for the quality of food.
A person with Ortoressia will be obsessed with defining and maintaining the perfect diet, rather than an ideal weight.
Obsessive personality and Ortoressia
Ortoressia also presents characteristics that overlap with other diagnostic categories, for example the obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, in terms of perfectionism, rigid thought, and hypermore.
Anxiety of disease and hypochondria
THE Symptoms of spelling They can also be found in disease anxiety disorder, in which the obsession with a healthy diet can represent a strategy aimed at making one’s body resistant to the risk of contracting diseases.
Psychotic disorders
Finally, the possibility remains that theOrtoressia It may be the sign of a more serious psychopathology in the field of psychotic spectrum.
At a theoretical level, the characteristic of the greater relevance for psychosis is magical thought related to food (such as eating fruit on an empty stomach 30-60 minutes before a meal prepares the stomach for the correct absorption of nutrients).
There are also erroneous beliefs based on intuitive laws (for example, the notion on the basis of which the objects that have been in real or imaginary contact continue to influence each other in time and space).
Even the search for healthy nutrition, therefore, can go towards a sort of food funding/food, based only on foods deemed pure and uncontaminated.
In these cases, the obsession with healthy food grows in intensity to the point of removing space and time to other activities and interests, going to compromise precisely that desired health, of which nothing remains. If not the neurosis of healthy eating.
- Other eating disorders
- Vigor
- Anorexia
- Bulimia
