Are You a Health Food Junkie?

You must have heard about obesity and about the different ways to overcome it by eating healthier. However, when the urge for eating healthy becomes a mental obsession, you might develop Orthorexia Nervosa - a fixation on righteous eating.

Orthorexia nervosa is a term discovered by Dr. Steven Bratman, an American physician in 1996 to define a few of his patients who took healthy eating to an extreme. Orthorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by excessive obsession with eating food believed to be healthy. It restricts food that is not healthy, clean, or wholesome to the level of rigidity. Food items with artificial flavors, colors, or additives, animal or dairy products, added sugar or salt, unhealthy fats, and genetic modifications are obsessively avoided. People suffering from orthorexia ate fixated on the healthy diet rather than an ideal weight. They only eat foods that give them a feeling of being healthy and well.

Orthorexia nervosa symptoms are serious, long-lasting, and go beyond a lifestyle choice. The symptoms of Orthorexia nervosa may include:

• Possessed concern over the relationship between food selections and health issues.

• Extreme avoidance of foods because of health concerns and food allergies.

• Obsessive worry over how food is prepared, specifically the washing of food or utensils.

• Avoiding people who have different opinions about eating healthy food.

• High consumption of supplements, herbal remedies or probiotics.

• Serious thinking about people who do not maintain a healthy diet, etc.

Orthorexia nervosa can result in strictly reduced interest in all other interests and activities until relationships become weakened because the person suffering from orthorexia believes he/she is superior to others. Developing an obsession with healthy food may cause a limit of calories because available food isn’t considered to be good enough. Orthorexia nervosa can lead to malnutrition, weight loss, and restrictive caloric intake. This may cause cardiac complications.

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