What is Orthorexia Nervosa?

Orthorexia Nervosa is one eating disorder affecting people, just like anorexia and manorexia.Orthorexia is a disease, caused by people that create an unhealthy obssesion in eating an extreme healthy food.

This disease may be confused with anorexia. however, the anorexic people are obsessed in losing weight, while orthorexics have the need to eat food extremely healthy.

Basically, orthorexia can be considered as a mental disease, an eating disorder, or the combination of them. 
But what is it? 
Is the obssesion that people create with foods, to the point they stop eating if they view the food is unhealthy or impure. So people that are orthorexics, are concerned in the quality of their food and it is related with other eating disorders such as anorexia.
The orthorexics people can get so obsessed of the food they eat, that it can lead them to become anorexics and bulimics people. 
The Orthorexia is linked to ideas that people have about healthy foods, however many of these ideas are not proven or are the marketing products.

Orthorexia is not recognized by the DSM IV and in general will not be diagnosed, but it is seeing a greater stronghold across the US. (1)

However, there are some symtoms related to orthorexia. 
The symtoms that are present in orthorexics are: 


- Spending a lot of time thinking about healthy food, more than 3 hours 
- Thinking about diets for the next days.
- Have a good feeling of what they eat, but not happy about it.
- Limitations of portions of food they eat.
- Experiencing a reduced quality of life or social isolation.(2)
- A bad feeling they have when they look others not eating as healthy like them.
- They maintain straight with their diets. 

Many people think that this obssesion is not a big deal, even some doctors feel that this eating disorder is not an important health disease. Orthorexia starts out as an innocent attempt to eat more healthfully, but orthorexics become fixated on food quality and purity. 

Here I pick up a little bit of the story of an american that has suffered of this eating disorder

Her name is: Kate Finn 

During the winter of 1991, I began experiencing chronic digestion problems. The main symptoms I experience when this occurs are that I get very bloated after meals and sometimes feel like I have a rock in my stomach. 

I become very lethargic, low-energy, and depressed. I am not sure whether, when this occurs, there is some sort of obstruction to the food's passage, but digestion is obviously very disturbed and seriously slowed if not virtually halted at times. When it first began, I would sometimes get these awful-tasting burps like food was rotting in my gut.

I experienced this off and on for about a year prior to it becoming chronic. There were a few times where it literally made me sick to my stomach and I'd have to spend a day in bed.

I believe the two major causes of this problem were the diet I had been following during the preceding 

years, and stress.

When these problems began, I lost my desire to eat. I didn't have much of an appetite and I generally felt so sick after eating that I preferred not to make myself feel this way. Consequently I began losing weight.

In the meantime, I went home to Rhode Island for the month of August to spend time with my family. I was still quite thin, and when my family saw me they thought I had anorexia. They wanted me to go into the psychiatric unit of Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, which had an eating disorders unit. 

One of the basic principles I've learned from this experience that has helped my digestion is to only eat when I'm hungry, instead of eating whenever attracted by cravings for specific foods as I did previously when eating "what I wanted." At the same time, I also try to listen to my body and "tune in" to get a sense as to what it needs at that time. Getting back into my yoga practice has helped me develop this connection or "sixth sense" about my body. While I'm eating I try to be mindful of a "taste change" (when the food begins no longer to be so appetizing as it was when I first started), which tells me I've had enough and it's time to stop eating. If I eat past this point I generally experience a lot of bloating and low energy afterwards. This isn't an easy thing to develop and it takes practice. Sometimes I'm not as "in tune" with my body as others. (3)

The text before, only represent one of the cases of orthorexia in the united States, but it clearly shows how we have to be aware in what we do with our body, get informed and do not get obsessed with what you are eating. 

Footnotes:
http://listverse.com/2009/03/14/10-terrible-eating-related-disorders/
http://www.pamf.org/teen/life/bodyimage/orthorexia.html
http://www.beyondveg.com/finn-k/bio/finn-k-bio-1a.shtml

Bibliography:
http://www.beyondveg.com/finn-k/bio/finn-k-bio-1a.shtml
http://listverse.com/2009/03/14/10-terrible-eating-related-disorders/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthorexia_nervosa
http://www.pamf.org/teen/life/bodyimage/orthorexia.html
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-orthorexia-nervosa.htm
http://www.eatingdisorderhope.com/information/statistics-studies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MxN0sD4pXs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4mZG_7gaHQ