Sugar? Chocolate? Frozen food? For people with orthorexia is. You are so fixated on your supposedly healthy food that everything that could be unhealthy will be removed from the dining plan.
What is healthy? What is not healthy? What is perhaps even dangerous? What can I eat anyway? “Not much,” is probably the response of people with orthorexia. “At the beginning of the desire to eat more and healthier is often is,” says Thomas Huber, one of the Klinik am Korso in Bad Oeynhausen. The facility specializing in eating disorders.
“The rules of what is healthy and what is not, to killing people with orthorexia self. These regulations are in the course of time becoming more and more strict, more and more is removed from the food plan,” explains Huber. “More and more food to get the stamp of unhealthy”.
A slow process
Friederike Barthels research on the topic of orthorektisches eating
Orthorexia develops insidiously. “Usually, it starts with that people who are more concerned with their diet,” says Friederike Barthels, of the University of Düsseldorf. “One reason may be that, for example, someone wants to lose weight and that is why the diet surrounded. One or the other Person may come by food scandals to focus on food,” says Barthels. She has been conducting research since 2011 on the topic of orthorektisches nutrition behavior. With time this behavior could then accept obsessive trains and the concentration on healthy eating become a burden to everything, so the scientist more.
Obsessive Behavior
The research to eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia is quite advanced. It is different in the case of orthorexia. Here, the research is still at the beginning. It is not even clear whether orthorexia should be classified as a disease, or whether it is merely an excessive preoccupation with healthy eating. “The idea of the Affected by what healthy eating actually is, a do not always agree with the popular notions, which were installed by the German society for nutrition,” says Barthels.
The Klinik am Korso in Bad Oeynhausen specializes in eating disorders
Criteria for orthorexia
To detect the excessive fixation on a healthy diet, and classified, is not subject to any clear criteria. The official term “Orthorexia nervosa” has been coined by the American physician Steven Bratman in 1997. “Bratman has diagnosed the disorder in themselves and wrote down what he could observe in himself. He was of the opinion that his employment with the theme of ‘Healthy eating’ has the Normal left,” explains Huber. The records also serve partially as a basis for the evaluation of orthorexia.
The diet of people with orthorexia is usually reduced very
In professional circles it is discussed whether orthorexia is one of the eating disorders such as Anorexia nervosa – anorexia or bulimia – bulimia-Addiction or if the Addiction to healthy food is more likely to be classified under the obsessive-Compulsive disorder. “As is so often the truth lies somewhere in the middle,” says Huber. “It has forced, in any case, something like, and there are also many Parallels to the classic eating disorders.”
In addition, however, there are also differences. Because Friederike Barthels researches. “Many of you will see that it is also quite a weight, figure and Slimming. Originally it was thought that orthorexia has nothing to do with it. In all my studies, but I see correlations between perceived weight problems and Worried about their own character and the desire to lose weight.”
Healthy is not always healthy
The focus on supposedly Healthy can also turn into the opposite. It can lead to an unhealthy diet, because it is too one-sided. Deficiency symptoms to a few trace elements or vitamin deficiency can be the result.
“It can happen that someone slips in under the weight, explains Huber. “A consequence of complications can be that fat mass is reduced, and even muscle mass. The lack of nutrition can lead to hair loss. If the Person is severely underweight, it can even lead to organ damage.”
Orthorexia can lead to significant weight
Too little of the Good
Huber remembers a young woman who came to him in the hospital: “you don’t want to eat more healthily, was not overweight, and your body is actually satisfied. But motivated by a friend she has deleted candy for themselves. She has worked in the Internet with a healthy diet, has a lot of read half-truths, and more and more afraid of different foods developed,” explains Huber of the Situation.
“Then you started to avoid preservatives, then fat-rich and carbohydrate-rich foods, and eventually had extreme under weight. When she came to us, she weighed about 40 pounds,” concludes Huber.
Food in society
People who restrict their food range, as well as persons with orthorektischem diet, often get problems with their environment. Eating together has a strong social and societal importance. People with orthorexia but invitations from beat often, might not want to sit with others at a table. Behind it is the fear of being with unhealthy food faced lies.
Thomas Huber is the chief physician at the Klinik am Korso, Bad Oeynhausen
An almost missionary zeal in addition, often when diet, try and fanatics to convince people in your environment that you should not eat as more as you do it so far. “They make you feel guilty and tell you something about the effects of different ingredients on the body,” says Huber.
The Affected have nowhere to go for dinner, or about an invitation of friends to accept, because the have to cook it specially.
A Luxury Problem
Orthorektisches diet is a relatively new phenomenon, it is above all things in rich countries and regions is behavior. “If in a society of food abundance reigns, you basically have a choice of what you eat, it can lead to such anomalies, such as orthorexia,” says Barthels.
In developing countries there are hardly any cases of eating disorder. There, food is often scarce and necessary for survival. “Because nobody comes on the idea to reduce food Emergency”, there Barthels to bear in mind.
From the tree in the mouth
Some people take long distances into account, in order to get food you think is healthy. Bratman had it easier. “As a Farmer, he could just walk into his garden, and the fruits and vegetables there to eat once or more to process,” says Huber. “He has set the rule that you had to vegetables within 15 minutes after the harvest to eat.”
About food fanatics Bratman said later: “Instead of a life you have a dining plan.”
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