What is orthorexia, the obsession with eating healthy?

The specialist in Endocrinology and Nutrition at the HM Modelo Hospital, Iria Rodríguez, has warned of the danger of suffering from orthorexia, an eating disorder characterized by an obsessive fixation on food that the patient considers healthywith recurrent and persistent preoccupation with food.

“Sometimes this obsession begins with a diet that is proposed to deal with some type of pathology that requires a certain nutritional management and others simply because of the desire to have a healthier diet”, he said.

In addition, according to the HM Hospitales specialist, it is accompanied by a stiffness and inflexibility in the diet that ends up leading to psychological deteriorationgenerating anxiety or stress, and that can affect social behaviour, avoiding, for example, eating out.

Also, this restriction of certain foods can reach trigger other endocrine diseases such as vitamin and mineral deficiencies, menstrual disorders, osteoporosis and even malnutrition and low weight. The criteria followed by a person with orthorexia can be very different.

Sometimes the obsession focuses only on the quality of the food or the way it is grown or manufactured, and on other occasions it consists of restriction of some food group due to the mistaken belief that they contain toxic substances or because they think they are unhealthy.

“In any case, they always tend to be very rigid self-imposed rules for alleged health reasons, but they are often wrong”, Rodríguez emphasized, to report that orthorexia “is fundamentally combated with prevention, with nutritional education for the population from reliable sources, avoiding less rigorous information that is currently disseminated through the social networks”.

What is appropriate and recommended on a day-to-day basis, as indicated, is to wear aa healthy, complete, balanced and varied diet, such as the Mediterranean, which includes all the foods necessary to cover our needs for micro and macronutrients and which helps prevent cardiovascular diseases, obesity, diabetes and even some types of cancer.

“But if we occasionally skip it It will not significantly affect our health. We must not become obsessed or have feelings of guilt or anxiety”, has settled the specialist in Endocrinology and Nutrition at the HM Modelo Hospital.

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