Has anyone had an experience with orthorexia?!
Question:
Has anyone had an experience with orthorexia?
Answers:
According to a few websites that seem to be 'selling books'. This appears to be a coined disorder to explain obsessiveness of health food junkies who eat only 'pure' food and run the risk of malnutrition. They often do not recognize their behavior as obsessive since the believe that what they're eating is healthy for them. The concept appears to be modeled after aneroxia nervosa which is a behavior where people starve themselves because they think they are fat. With orthorexia people obsessively eat 'health foods' with herbal remedies and supplements, no sugar, all vegetables . . they believe that how they eat is a spiritual process and that if they eat anything other than health food than they feel it is wrong.
They are also driven by the belief that medicines are wrong and work to totally eliminate them by using only health foods or supplements. That process is okay except with orthorexia a person will end up with only being able to eat a few foods which can lead to malnutrition and death.
I'm not sure if this is a medically recognized disorder or just a theory by someone trying to sell a book about the topic.
Here's a news article written about the 'disorder':
http://www.webmd.com/news/20001117/ortho...