Obsessive healthy eating can negatively impact mental health

Healthy eating can have a debilitating effect on your life, as excessive preoccupation over it can actually make you sick

According to psychologists, “clean diets” can have numerous side-effects, as consuming raw healthy foods free of gluten, sugar, dairy and meat can become an obsession triggering further mental conditions.

Orthorexia nervosa is the name of the mental disorder having a debilitating effect on a person’s life, when that person is obsessed with healthy eating.

The illness was discovered by physician Steven Bratman in 1990. On the other hand, nowadays, its incidence is on the rise, due to the fact that people are more and more cautious about the food on their plates.

Considered to be a debilitating disease, as orthorexics are “imprisoned by a range of rules which they impose on themselves and others,” orthorexia nervosa leads to social isolation, nutritional deficiencies and impaired behavior.

Despite orthorexia stil needs medical recognition, just as anorexia and bulimia got, experts claim that the disease is closer to a phobia than to a food disorder.

The good news is that it can that way be treated with cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), anxiety medication and relaxation techniques, under the direct supervision of a medical psychologist.