Eating healthily and paying attention to the food you eat is great – it makes you feel and look fantastic and gives you pride in looking after your body. But take it too far, and the results can be sinister – and have the opposite effect.

Orthorexia Facts: What is Orthorexia?

Think about it – fixating on the quality of our diets, and those of the people around us, has become a modern-day obsession. But for some, that obsession can become a disease, the new eating disorder, orthorexia nervosa. Coined relatively recently by US doctor Steven Bratman, orthorexia means "fixation on righteous eating," and like other eating disorders orthorexia causes massive emotional distress and becomes such a strong factor that it can impact badly on all aspects of your life, including your relationships, social life, work and of course, your physical health.

Can You Eat Too Healthily? Orthorexia Information

People with orthorexia are unable to eat anything without first calculating its health properties – Is it organic? Is it raw? Is it fat free? Is it vegan? Is it free of artificial colourants? The list, of course, depends on your own definition of healthy food. For someone with orthorexia, which some experts say is also an obsessive compulsive disorder, that list can be endless, and can become so stringent that eventually, nothing is pure enough to meet the sufferer’s specific restrictions.

Health Food Dangers: Health Risks of Orthorexia

Orthorexia has nothing to do with wanting to be slim. And unlike other eating disorders, it affects men and women equally. People with orthorexia don’t think they are fat, they just want to feel natural, “pure,” perfect and in control by eating healthily. Extremely healthily. It seems so harmless, but orthorexia is nothing to scoff at, and there’s nothing healthy about becoming so obsessed with the quality of the food you put in your mouth that often you put nothing in at all. Orthorexia can lead to starvation, malnutrition and wasting away to extremes similar to anorexia, and in turn the same scary health risks.

Orthorexia Could Cause these Dangerous Health Effects

• Orthorexia Health Risks: Tiredness, inability to sleep well or cope with normal activities or think about anything but food
• Orthorexia Health Risks: Feeling weak and cold due to slow metabolism
• Orthorexia Health Risks: Constipation
• Orthorexia Health Risks: Thin, brittle bones, stunted growth, eventual osteoporosis
• Orthorexia Health Risks: Damage to internal organs, liver damage
• Orthorexia Health Risks: Loss of periods, possible infertility
• Orthorexia Health Risks: Anxiety and depression
• Orthorexia Health Risks: Obsessive behaviour or perfectionism
• Orthorexia Health Risks: Unhealthy over-dependency on parents
• Orthorexia Health Risks: In severe cases, death

As for your social and work life, all the obsessing caused by orthorexia can also isolate you, as you forget that there are more important things than food, such as eating a meal your mother cooked for you, going out for dinner with friends or taking a client for a business lunch.

Orthorexia Danger Signs: Symptoms of Orthorexia

• Orthorexia Symptoms: Becoming very thin
• Orthorexia Symptoms: Constant worry about the quality of food, and feeling virtuous for what you eat
• Orthorexia Symptoms: Seeing the majority of foods as dangerous, but only extremely pure, natural foods as “proper” food
• Orthorexia Symptoms: Feeling extreme guilt after eating “bad” foods that you consider to be unhealthy
• Orthorexia Symptoms: Feeling very competitive about food and being strongly critical about others’ eating habits
• Orthorexia Symptoms: Feeling in control by limiting your diet

Getting Help: Orthorexia Treatment

Once you’ve admitted there is a problem and you have orthorexia, you’ll need to find an eating disorder specialist who understands orthorexia – if they try to fit you into the anorexic mould and don’t believe that the underlying problem is not about weight, you won’t see eye to eye.

Do you think you may have orthorexia? Or are you worried someone you know may have orthorexia? Share your thoughts, views and experiences on orthorexia with other users using the Comment on this Article box below. Plus, to keep up to date with all the latest orthorexia and eating disorder health news and lots more health tips on diet, healthy eating and more, sign-up for the monthly KeeptheDoctorAway Newsletter below.

To read more on eating disorders, click here: Eating Disorder Information

For more on anorexia, click here: Understanding Anorexia.