Updated 06/15/2010 01:56 PM
Smart Living: A new kind of eating disorder
By: Ivanhoe Broadcast News
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According to Medterms.com, Orthorexia nervosa is a term designating a disorder in which there is an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating, an extreme dedication to extreme diets that can starve the body of basic nutrition. The emphasis (or overemphasis) is on the quality, not the quantity, of food in the diet. Orthorexia nervosa is not yet recognized (as of March, 2002) as an accepted medical entity.
Can healthy eating be labeled a disorder? That was the question
Time magazine asked in February of this year, spending several pages on a disorder with a confounding set of boundaries. As of right now, the biggest is the bible of psychiatric illness.
The Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders doesn't even list orthorexia as a separate entity. What's more is enough people have come forward with the illness to force the hand of the Washington-based Eating Disorders Coalition. The group is now lobbying the psychiatric community to officially recognize orthorexia as a dangerous and damaging condition (source: time.com).
The real problem in all this is that orthorexia can at once be the precursor to a separate eating disorder, a side effect of an eating disorder, or an eating disorder all in itself. Miami-based Clinical Social Worker Maria Henao says that ambiguity is what makes orthorexia so hard to define.
• Click here to read the TIME article on Orthorexia.
• Click here for a 10-question quiz to see if you have Orthorexia.
• This story sheds light on some international studies done on Orthorexia.
"There are several types of eating disorders," she says. "[But] there are ones called NOS - Not Otherwise Specified - meaning they don't fit a specified criteria."
Henao speaks from experience: her own daughter began a struggle with orthorexia at age 10.
For the psychiatric community to officially recognize a disease, there has to be ample physical data, and currently, that simply doesn't exist. Still, there's no doubt among the eating disorder community that the problem is very palpable.
Click here to find a support group or therapist in the Austin area.
To that end, experts implore parents and family members to keep an eye out for at-risk behavior: severe food phobias, multiple questions about food, and flat-out refusal to eat.
As of right now, therapy and counseling remain the only reliable methods to combat orthorexia.
Every Monday and Thursday YNN's Jennifer Borget offers lifestyle reports that help families make decisions about careers, finances, nutrition, fitness and parenting with our
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