Orthorexia

Found this on another message board just wanted to know what you guys thought.



WKYC
Published: May 24, 2010
Updated: May 24, 2010
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A few months ago, Peggy Moe would never consider fast food, like Mexican take out. She’s orthorexic ... a person so consumed by healthy eating, it actually makes them sick.

“It is a twist of an eating disorder that where a patient is so fixated on eating pure or eating clean,“ Jill Brown, a registered dietician, said.

“It kind of snowballed into everything that I ate had to be organic and pure and non processed,“ Moe said.

Orthorexia is not an official medical diagnosis. The word, literally means correct appetite. However, due to organic and health food trends, eating disorder specialists are seeing more patients like Peggy who take it to the extreme.

“It takes over and it interferes with relationships and they obsess about it. There’s a certain righteousness that goes along with it. Judgmental. They judge how others eat,“ Brown said.
It isolated Peggy and broke up some relationships.

Moe said, “I would always say, ‘You shouldn’t feed your kids any of this. You should eat organic.“

Her food rules and restrictions caused her to drop 20 pounds off an already thin frame.

Despite seemingly healthy diets, orthorexics are often malnourished. The habit also cost the single mom 120 dollars a week in groceries.

“I had to drive forty minutes to the nearest grocery store that had all organic foods and I had to keep it on supply so whenever I was at someone else’s house I brought my own food,“ Moe said.

Orthorexia borders on obsessive compulsive disorder and often the person has a history of eating disorders.

Moe said, “I was originally anorexic, and then it turned into exercise bulimia and every time I thought I was free of the eating disorder, it just morphed into something else.“




Published on Psychology Today (http://www.psychologytoday.com)

Orthorexia: Too Healthy?
by Erik Strand
Created Dec 2 2004 - 1:00am
What is orthorexia?

The term orthorexia is used by some eating-disorder specialists to describe an unhealthy fixation with healthy eating. While not an officially recognized disorder, it is similar to several serious diagnoses. Like anorexia, it often involves severe weight loss, but so-called orthorexics are obsessed with food quality, rather than quantity, and strive for personal purity in their eating habits rather than for a thin physique.

The word orthorexia was coined in 1997 by Colorado alternative medicine specialist Steven Bratman. Implicit in the description are traits that resemble obsessive-compulsive disorder, since sufferers devote excessive attention to their own strict rules and often spend hours each day worrying about tomorrow's meals. Such a person may find himself socially isolated because he doesn't indulge in everyday dishes. "If your focus on healthy eating is interfering with your happiness and social life," says Bratman, "you might have a problem."

Although many experts believe orthorexia may be a genuine concern, some think it's not a clinically useful diagnosis. "I've had many patients who are bent on absolute purity, down to the last little vitamin," says Joel Jahraus, medical director of Remuda Life Programs in Phoenix, Arizona. "But there's already a name for it: anorexia." Douglas Bunnell, president of the National Eating Disorders Association, agrees that while orthorexia may be important as a lay concept, in terms of treatment it differs from anorexia only in the finer points.

With almost 65 percent of Americans overweight, the hazards of eating too healthfully may seem like nit-picking. But Bunnell sees a hidden danger in the public focus on obesity: undue anxiety. Whether or not you label them orthorexic, certain people are psychologically vulnerable to becoming too rigid in their eating, he says.