Orthorexia nervosa  (also known as orthorexia) (ON) is a proposed eating disorder characterized by an excessive preoccupation with eating healthy food. The term was introduced in 1997 by American physician Steven Bratman, M.D. He suggested that some peoples dietary restrictions intended to promote health may paradoxically lead to unhealthy consequences, such as social isolation, anxiety, loss of ability to eat in a natural, intuitive manner, reduced interest in the full range of other healthy human activities, and, in rare cases, severe malnutrition or even death.In 2009, Ursula Philpot, chair of the British Dietetic Association and senior lecturer at Leeds Metropolitan University, described people with orthorexia nervosa as being "solely concerned with the quality of the food they put in their bodies, refining and restricting their diets according to their personal understanding of which foods are truly pure." This differs from other eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, where those affected focus on the quantity of food eaten.Orthorexia nervosa also differs from anorexia nervosa in that it does not disproportionally affect one gender. Studies have found that orthorexia nervosa is equally found in both men and women with no significant gender differences at all. Furthermore, research has found significant positive correlations between ON and both narcissism and perfectionism, but no significant correlation between ON and self esteem. This shows that high-ON individuals likely take pride over their healthy eating habits over others and that is the driving force behind their orthorexia as opposed to body image like anorexia.
"Although orthorexia is not recognized as a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association, and it is not listed in the DSM-5, as of January 2016, four case reports and more than 40 other articles on the subject have been published in a variety of peer-reviewed journals internationally. According to a study published in 2011, two-thirds of a sample of 111 Dutch-speaking eating disorder specialists felt they had observed the syndrome in their clinical practice.According to the Macmillan English Dictionary, the word is entering the English lexicon. The concept of orthorexia as a newly developing eating disorder has attracted significant media attention in the 21st century. Orthorexia and other disorders
Orthorexia differs from anorexia and bulimia in its relationship to food. Instead of focusing on food intake in an attempt to lose weight and eat less, orthorexia is an "obsession about the quality of food intake" and is fueled by a feeling of achieving perfection and purity by only consuming "healthy" foods.Orthorexic behaviors can often lead to malnutrition and weight loss, and it is often associated with anorexia nervosa. Studies have also shown that obsessive-compulsive tendencies are linked to the development of orthorexia, and some researchers suggest that orthorexia should be diagnosed as OCD because it is driven by an obsession for attaining a perfect diet. See also
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