Orthorexia, healthy obsession that kills.

– 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 foods healthy ”, i.e. those of organic type, without colourings, preservatives, etc.

This pathology can interfere negatively in the life of those people who suffer from. Patients generally prefer not eating food (even for long periods of time), to eat those who (in his view) are unclean ”, i.e., those with high contents of additives, fat, etc., affecting their interpersonal relationships, avoiding going to restaurants and even House of family and friends by 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 type where people who suffer from this condition begin to isolate themselves from social groupsthey have a tendency to perfection and introduced changes in personality becoming embittered and irritable.

-devote more than 3 hours a day to think about their diet healthy ”.

-show a clear obsession by what you eat.

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

-the quality of the food exceeds the pleasure that It feels like to eat them.

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

-feelings of guilt when it does not meet their convictions dietary.

-planning excessive for what you will eat the next day or during the whole week.

-social isolation caused by its type 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 consultation to professionals in nutrition, medicine, psychiatry and psychology in this regard or causes that have to do with eating disorders. Some indications given by the health professionals are: moderate exercise, balanced food and rely on the advice of professionals in each specialty according to the particularity of each person.