While binge eating disorder and anorexia has been known for a long time, the ortorexie reached its apogee in the XXI century. Ortorexia nervosa means unhealthy obsessive focus on eating healthy food. American physician Steve Bratman first coined the term “orthorexia”.
Ortorexie is mental believe, that a person who is obsessively fixed on healthy eating, eats better than other people. An ortorexic person resigns from social meetings, when there is any suspicion of inappropriate
dishes on the table. The ortorexic person feels guilty, each time they eat a piece of chocolate or meat, which are harmful products according to them.
The key behavior for ortorexie is elimination of certain products from the diet, which is needed to stay healthy. Those with the symptoms of ortrexia nervosa eliminate products contenting preservatives, pesticides, fat, sugar, salt, genetically modified food from their diets, which according to them is manifestation of health. Meals are prepared with the utmost care and attention and any variation from the norms leads to the feeling of fear, guilt, shame and further diet restrictions. Fat, carbohydrates, meat, diary products are excluded and also related areas of life.
Where in human life would the behavior that excludes successive products from the diet apply?
Denying oneself food, or prolonged fasting, was something greatly rewarded in Christian, Buddhist and Orthodox monasteries as a sign of self-sacrifice and a manifestation of self-discipline. The effects of exclusion successive products from the diet are: deficiency of micro-elements and vitamins as well as neurological changes in the brain. As result of elimination some nutrition products from the diet are: concentration disorder, dizziness, weakness, anemia, mood disorder. As a next effect of ortorexie are hormone disorder, mainly production of estrogen and testosterone and tendency to depression and its manifestation.
Ortorexie it is disorder, which occurs mainly in women, sportsmen, actors and actresses. The phenomenon occurs wherever the cult of a perfect body is developed. Hormones disorder causes depression. Similarly
to binge eating syndrome and anorexia nervosa, in ortorexie, eating only proper healthy food is subject to a system of punishments and rewards.
Each compatibility with food regime is supported/rewarded, each deviation from following food regime is being punished and cause feeling of guilty.
Maintaining diet, fasting in the monasteries was kind of lifestyle and philosophy but it could became a daily ritual and leads to disability. Ortorexic people have a feeling of eating healthier than others and that
they can control their life through amount of food eaten. In fact, such people are on the way to hormonal disorders, unbalanced health and mood disorders. In fact controlling food helps: regulates aggression,
guilt, remove difficult memories from the childhood.
There is a possibility to work on this topic in the addiction group “Find your own strength”
