Orthorexia, healthy obsession to kill.

– usually begins innocently, as a desire to overcome disease, lose weight or improve health, i.e. anyone can fall in this disorder, but it mainly affects people with low self-esteem, psicorigidos, perfectionists and lovers of diets

Bogotá, January 2012- orthorexia is a disease associated with an obsession with eating healthy together with bulimia and anorexia can lead to death. This situation occurs in those people concerned about their physical image they adopt a thought fixed and recurring by eating food healthy ”, i.e. those of organic type, without colourings, preservatives, etc.

This pathology can interfere negatively in the lives of those people who suffer from it. Patients generally prefer to not eat (even for long periods of time), to eat those who (in his view) are unclean ”, i.e., those with high content of additives, fats, etc., affecting their interpersonal relationships, avoiding going to restaurants and even House of family and friends by the simple fear of what they can eat. Likewise, these patients, imposing strong restrictions on food, which impacts directly on his health, leaving consequences of medico-nutritional type as: deficiency of vitamins, proteins, decrease in weight and anaemia, among others, and those of psychological kind where people who suffer from this disease begin to isolate themselves from social groupsthey have a tendency to perfection and are changes in personality becoming embittered and irritable.

-spend more than 3 hours a day to think about your diet healthy ”.

-show a clear obsession by what you eat.

-more concerned about the quality of food than the pleasure of consuming them.

-the food quality surpasses the pleasure to feels like to eat them.

-decline in their quality of life as increases the pseudocalidad of your food.

-feelings of guilt when not met their convictions dietary.

-planning excessive for what he will eat the following day or during the whole week.

-social isolation caused by its kind of food.

This disease has similarities with anorexia or bulimia nervosa, however, the anorectics and bulimic are concerned about the amount of food they consume, while the orthorexics are obsessed with the quality of it.

Although there are no data about this disease, every day become more consultations to professionals in nutrition, medicine, psychiatry and psychology in this regard or for reasons which have to do with eating disorders. Some indications that give health professionals are: moderate exercise, balanced diet, and rely on the advice of professionals in each field according to the particularity of each person.