Orthorexia nervosa: Tempt for healthy Eating turns to disorder

Human health is endangered in technically driven global society. People are blessed with progressive technical devices and augment their lifestyle. Parallelly technical outgrowth had a degenerative impact on human wellbeing. It triggers stress and compels humans to regulate their diet to stay healthy. Health counselors, medical practitioners guide people to change their lifestyle and carefully select a nourishing and balanced diet to avert from deadly disease. There is a boom of genetically modified fruits, vegetables, grain and other eatables to cater the needs of a growing world population that puts human life at high risk. In the zeal of living healthy, people are extra conscious about diet and overreact to check the quantity of nutrients in meals to become physically fit.

A Balanced diet offers wonderful results in maintaining physical as well as mental health but excessive efforts to decide about nutrients such as protein, vitamin, calories in diet may lead to mental mayhem, named as Orthorexia nervosa.  Though it is not listed as an established disorder under the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) or The International Classification of Diseases (ICD), a growing number of people at global scale display symptoms of mental syndrome. Orthorexia may deteriorate physical strength and result in weak immunity.

People suffer from orthorexia may show following symptoms:

-Penetrating fear of unhealthy foods and avoiding those foods

-Passion of eating with healthy foods.

-Have specific eating style

-Habit of checking ingredient lists and nutrition labels before eating food.

-Avoid several foods without any reason such as gluten, sugar, all carbs, fats

-People with orthorexia disorder spend more time planning, purchasing and preparing food to become healthy.

-habit of criticizing others for eating unhealthily.

-Avoid social events and foods prepared by other people.

People who are diagnosed with orthorexia can be treated with trained health counselors, and psychotherapy. Sometimes patients with severe symptoms are prescribed psychiatric medication. In simple terms, orthorexia is a distorted fixation with healthy food intake.

Dropping a final note:

In an unhealthy and polluted environment, a person's craving an obsession to eat healthy food may lead to Orthorexia nervosa. A person who focuses on the exact quantity of nutritive values in food may grip in Orthorexia which adversely impacts on his/her persona. 

Important note:  Above article is based on the writer's analysis with environmental inputs.  Any resemblance is coincidence. Writer is not responsible for any disagreement.