Or­thorex­ia is a term coined by Steven Brat­man, MD, a physi­cian in Fort Collins, Col­orado, to de­scribe a con­di­tion he had been see­ing: a fix­a­tion on healthy eat­ing that may be a cross be­tween an eat­ing dis­or­der and ob­ses­sive com­pul­sive dis­or­der (OCD). Or­tho is de­rived from a Greek words mean­ing "right" or "cor­rect" and rex­ia means "ap­petite." Brat­man al­so iden­ti­fied what he called or­thorex­ia ner­vosa, which may turn out to be a not-so-dis­tant cousin of anorex­ia ner­vosa, the scari­est of eat­ing dis­or­ders be­cause it can be fa­tal.

What are the symp­toms?

Un­like those who suf­fer from anorex­ia ner­vosa or bu­lim­ia, or­thorex­i­cs aren't yearn­ing to be slim. Body im­age isn't their thing. They're fo­cused on healthy food, and ruth­less­ly re­move from their di­ets what­ev­er they per­ceive to be un­healthy. This can be­gin with a per­fect­ly un­der­stand­able avoid­ance of foods con­tain­ing ar­ti­fi­cial colour­ings or flavour­ings, meats with hor­mones, non-or­gan­ic fruits and veg­eta­bles, and ar­ti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers, and then veer off in­to the ul­ti­mate elim­i­na­tion di­et.

What trig­gers or­thorex­ia and who's at risk?

Some eat­ing-dis­or­der spe­cial­ists have sug­gest­ed that or­thorex­ia may be­gin with health prob­lems, pri­mar­i­ly di­ges­tive trou­bles that lead to a fo­cus on food and, per­haps for bet­ter or worse, med­ical ad­vice to avoid cer­tain types of food. Ex­perts al­so say that women may be more at risk. Oth­er spe­cial­ists ar­gue that an ex­treme ob­ses­sion with healthy eat­ing may be a symp­tom of oth­er dis­or­ders, such as OCD, anx­i­ety dis­or­der, or anorex­ia, and doesn't need a sep­a­rate di­ag­no­sis.

How dan­ger­ous is or­thorex­ia?

Dr Brat­man re­ports Kate Finn died in 2003 af­ter her weight dropped dan­ger­ous­ly low while she was eat­ing a lim­it­ed num­ber of healthy foods. The of­fi­cial cause was heart fail­ure brought on by star­va­tion. Pri­or to her death, she wrote about her or­deal. Finn, like oth­ers with or­thorex­ia, main­tained that her goal was healthy eat­ing-not weight loss.

What's the treat­ment?

No spe­cif­ic treat­ment ex­ists for or­thorex­ia, but what seems to work best is cog­ni­tive be­hav­ior ther­a­py (CBT), which has been suc­cess­ful­ly used to treat oth­er eat­ing dis­or­ders as well as de­pres­sion, anx­i­ety, and sub­stance abuse. When used to treat eat­ing dis­or­ders, the goal of CBT is to change ob­ses­sive thought pat­terns re­lat­ing to food. With the obe­si­ty epi­dem­ic sur­round­ing us, we all should be fo­cused on healthy eat­ing, bear­ing in mind that too much of a good thing can back­fire.

(Ya­hoo Health)