Orthorexia

What is an Eating Disorder?

An eating disorder is a complex psychological condition in which a person’s relationship with food becomes a primary mechanism for managing emotional pain. The behaviour is not the problem. It is the solution the person found.

Types of eating disorder

Anorexia nervosa — A refusal to take in: food, nourishment, sometimes intimacy. As BMI falls, neurochemistry deteriorates and the brain becomes rigid, locked onto weight loss. The disorder creates the neurological conditions for its own continuation.

What is Orthorexia?

Orthorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterised by an obsessive focus on the purity or quality of food rather than its quantity. The restriction is just as absolute as anorexia — but because it is dressed in the language of health, it is rarely named as a disorder.