Orthorexia, an obsession that starts out healthy and becomes a serious disorder

Good decisions such as quitting smoking, exercising more, or… Eat better, is not exclusive to the new year. For many, they are part of the goals to be achieved to improve their health after a vacation from the excesses.

It is a fact that the main and fundamental key to good health is eating a healthy, balanced and varied diet. However, this evidence can be taken to an extreme as it ends up going against those who care most about their diet.

To become an obsession far from it benefit your health I hurt her. Not only physically, but also mentally.

The need for pregnancy healthy diet And devoid of any type of nutrients that are harmful to the body, they can become an obsessive-compulsive disorder called orthorexia.

As dangerous as bulimia

A person suffering from this disorder is characterized by making a A very restrictive dietAvoid at all costs foods that contain not only fats or sugars, but also preservatives, dyes or other “unhealthy” ingredients.

Orthorexia is a disorder very similar to bulimia AnorexiaAnd just as dangerous.

Because this obsession with what is healthy can lead to the opposite: serious health problems due to a lack of essential nutrients, by cutting out healthy fats, for example, which provide essential vitamins such as vitamin D and which would weaken the immune system.

“This disorder usually leads to rapid and obvious weight loss, lack of energy and fatigue (even in terms of what determines the time needed to plan and regulate your diet) and greater ease of injury, as well as excessive exercise without getting good nutrition,” says the specialist. feed Veronica Velasco sanitas.

Even in severe and long-term cases, orthotics have led to health problems that require surgical intervention.

“There are cases where the subject ends up fainting and controlled hydration treatments to regulate ion levels, implantation of nasogastric feeding tubes, or percutaneous gastroscopy have to be performed,” explains the doctor. Cecilia Sanz GarciaGastroenterologist at Sanitas La Moralia University Hospital.

Symptoms of osteoporosis

This restrictive diet will be reflected in behaviors that obsessively seek to improve health. The most important of them:

• People who spend more than three hours thinking about their daily diet.

• People who plan their meals strictly need to control every food composition, portion, and combination among them.

• These types of patients experience very high feelings of guilt if they exceed any of their nutritional requirements.

psychological effect

“On a psychological level, it records a series of observed patterns of behavior that clearly influence their ability to have a balanced social coexistence,” he explains. Rachel Velasco del CastilloSanitas psychologist.

Meals with friends and family become unbearable for people with this disorder. This means that they tend to fall into social isolation due to their food inertia.

In short, orthorexia has very serious physical and psychological consequences and must be detected and addressed as soon as possible by physical and mental health professionals.

Solutions to this disorder are usually found in the field of psychology. Treatment will seek to discover the origin of this disorder, a large part of which is closely related to obsessive traits.

“Once the problem is discovered, the treatment, which must in any case be multidisciplinary, will be on the patient’s awareness of the risks he is managing at the nutritional and social level to maintain these strict habits and a therapeutic intervention will be carried out in order to provide the person with the ability to make his guidelines more flexible, and to achieve habits Really healthy, ”the psychologist explains in detail.

Although psychological work is necessary to be able to overcome orthorexia, it requires the support of the social and family environment.

“Their loved ones will be a very valuable resource to accompany and assist the patient, always guided by the advice of the health professionals who work with the patient,” he concludes.

In this way, you will little by little deal with the orthopedic problem and restore your quality of life and your social life.