Today, obesity, the reliability of food sources, genetically modified products, hormonal products, industrial products, etc., many people, primarily people with psychological predisposition, have started to worry about their obsessive diet and change their diet. Orthorexia Nervosa ; It is defined as an eating behavior disorder that develops as an obsession with healthy eating. The majority of people with orthorexia nervosa are among those who have a previous diet history, who diet many times, and who quit. People who have had Anorexia Nervosa before are also prone to Orthorexia Nervosa, or conversely, a person with Orthorexia Nervosa can get Anorexia Nervosa in the late stages of their illness.
People with Orthorexia Nervosa; They have become obsessed with unprocessed-pure, additive-free, organic foods with severe dietary restrictions. Eating healthy foods and rejecting unhealthy foods. However, it should not be forgotten that the healthy-unhealthy perceptions of these people will vary according to the person himself. So much so that these people can only eat 1-2 foods that they can eat according to the degree of obsession, that is, that they qualify as healthy. Thus, in some cases, excessive weight loss problems can be experienced, and inadequacies occur due to the decrease in the type of food consumed.
People with Orthorexia Nervosa are usually from the vegetarian group. However, significant differences between men and women such as Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa were not found in orthorexic people, and they can occur at similar rates in both groups. People with orthorexia nervosa despise and criticize people who do not eat healthy according to them, they keep thinking about what they ate yesterday, what they ate the day before, and what they will eat tomorrow. They are constantly planning about food, shopping, worrying about healthy resources, having problems with trust. They experience an extreme interest in pure-unprocessed foods, or even a fear that can be described as a phobia. They are extremely loyal to the foods they eat, and they can even build their lives on that food, which is a very serious danger in terms of nutrition. As it is known, it is impossible to meet all the needs of the body from a single food, so serious losses and deficiencies can occur in the body. Protein-energy deficiencies, vitamin mineral imbalances can reach serious dimensions. In addition, since these people are obsessed with pure-natural, they can also resist the use of drugs. They may not accept the intake of vitamins and minerals from outside and the use of drugs for therapeutic purposes. However, since the degree of obsession differs from person to person, expert help is required.
People with Orthorexia Nervosa spend most of their daily lives thinking about food. In fact, obsessions about food are at such points that people go into details about the colors of the food and consuming foods of the same color. These people are also very sensitive about the cooking methods of food. They also have an obsession with never using aluminum cookware. In their conversations around them, the topics they talk about are nutrition and foods, healthy foods are always on their agenda. People with orthorexia nervosa often use the terms processed-hazardous for canned goods, artificial-GMO for industrial products, fresh vegetables and fruits, especially those that meet their own standards, and healthy.
The most important example in this regard is the case of parents feeding their babies only fresh fruit and vegetable juices due to obsessions and resulting in the death of their babies due to malnutrition. Orthorexia Nervosa can have dangerous consequences depending on the degree of obsession and the extent to which it spreads to himself and those around him.
In Orthorexia Nervosa, like other eating disorder diseases, the only way of treatment cannot be nutritional therapy, nutritional therapy should replace the losses, while ensuring that the body’s needs are met, the underlying psychological problems should also be treated.
Even if there are people with this type of eating disorder in families, they should never be allowed to put pressure on people who have not completed their growth, such as babies and children, and to impose their own diet on them. It is a fact that the incidence of eating disorders is decreasing day by day. Eating like children can actually be considered as a treatment method in the treatment of all these eating disorders and even as an important awareness in the prevention of eating disorders. Children eat with joy, consume what they love without worry and according to their needs. Basically, a healthy person can consume the food he wants as long as the amounts are not exaggerated. However, today, when social pressures are defined as the only proof of beauty, eating disorders occur due to social pressures. Many diseases such as anemia, osteoporosis due to calcium deficiency, depression, thyroid disorders, cardiovascular diseases, hypoglycemic attacks, blood pressure, and kidney stones may occur due to eating disorders. Eating adequate and balanced nutrition, feeding our children adequately and in a balanced way, not being obsessive, including evasive foods in our lives from time to time, removing weight-obesity-weakness-weakness-weight loss-diet issues from the center of our lives, not putting pressure on those around us about nutrition can help to solve, at least, our children. We can prevent him from being obsessed with food-food-food.
