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Obsession with Health
I am keenly aware of the continual onslaught of medical studies that are written, supposedly to improve our health: studies that talk about eating disorders, obesity, helpful drugs, dangerous drugs, unhealthy foods, fiber-rich foods. And I stopped paying attention to them a while ago. No one is going to stop me from drinking my glass of zinfandel at dinner, my full-test coffee at breakfast, and my chocolate chip cookie after dinner. But I’m concerned about my fellow Americans, especially regarding their growing concerns about health. So I decided to do some research. I learned more than I wanted to know: we are obsessed with our health. I also came to the conclusion that these obsessions may say less about our health and more about our search for control, perfection and meaning.
Now I’ve been aware of this pre-occupation in our culture for many years. It’s important for me to state that I am not describing people who have serious, debilitating and painful health concerns; a number of Ricochettis bravely struggle with these kinds of issues. Instead I am speaking about the overload of information that we continually receive about what people should put into their bodies and how they respond to it. And we aren’t alone in this country; many articles I read were published in British newspapers. What does this obsession look like, and what is it telling us about ourselves?
Most of us know about the various eating disorders: anorexia nervosa, bulimia, and other conditions. Ironically we live in a time where obesity has become epidemic. Yet there are those who go in the opposite direction, focusing on everything they eat:
But there are signs that the modern wheat-free, dairy-free, gluten-free obsessiveness is taking a toll on people’s mental health, with the rise of the little-known condition called “orthorexia nervosa,” a fixation on eating healthily. The term was coined almost 20 years ago by an American doctor, Stephen Bratman, following his own obsessive illness. What starts as a healthy flirtation with kale juice can quickly spiral into something life-sappingly perfectionist.
Here is one medical opinion on this condition:
Orthorexia isn’t yet classified as an ‘official’ eating disorder but mental health professionals have seen a dramatic rise. Dr Bijal Chheda-Varma, a psychologist at the Nightingale Hospital in London describes a clear increase in patients who get anxious “if they eat anything ‘toxic’ like sugar”. Social media may have a big part to play. “My younger clients spend a lot of time on Instagram, looking at plates of ‘perfect’ lifestyles and their ‘perfect’ healthy food,” says Dr Chheda-Varma.
Some of the personal stories are difficult to fathom:
In a vegan cafe in New York City, Nisha Moodley pushes a glass crusted with the remnants of a berry-acai-almond milk smoothie across the table and begins listing the foods she excised from her diet six years ago.
‘Factory-farmed meats; hormone-laden dairy; conventional nonorganic fruits and vegetables; anything hydrogenated; anything microwaved,’ the slender 32-year-old health coach says. ‘I would not eat irradiated food; charred or blackened foods; artificial coloring, flavoring, or sweetener; MSG; white rice; sugar; table salt; or anything canned.’
It is worthwhile pointing out that some people may have an adverse reaction to a number of products and must avoid them in their diets. But it is the combination of arbitrary multiple restrictions that makes this lifestyle so insidious.
So how do you know if you, or someone in your life, is caught up in this behavior? One article suggested steps for recognizing that one’s obsession may have moved in a potentially life-threatening direction:
- When you do something “unhealthy,” you may get angry, have an anxiety attack or feel guilt or depression.
- Health is seen in moral terms. If you eat a piece of chocolate cake, you may see yourself as a bad person, questioning your sense of self-worth.
- You restrict your life to fit your health requirements. Your day centers around eating, exercise, and vacations or time away may threaten your need to control your activities.
- You’re missing your menstrual period. When you deprive your body of enough nutrients, your estrogen drops and you are at a higher risk of osteoporosis.
- You become paranoid about foods, fearing that certain foods are “poisonous.”
- You exercise even when you are injured or ill. This behavior can exacerbate injuries and delay recovery.
- You become defensive if someone tells you that you are going too far in “maintaining good health.”
If you or someone you care for is indulging in this behavior, it may be a time for self-reflection. You might also check out this piece by a nutritionist about this condition.
So why is this particular obsession manifesting at an increasing rate? Some medical authorities point to general anxiety and fear. People are terrified and feel their lives are threatened by outside forces that they cannot control. Even though these fears have always been around, we also now have to cope with super bugs, terrorism, unemployment, sexual confusion, and other cultural issues. So people are focusing on their bodies, those organisms over which they have some control with exercise and diet.
But I believe a key issue that is driving these obsessions is man’s lack of meaning in life, particularly the dominance of secularism in our society. When people believed they could rely on G-d for spiritual strength and sustenance, they may have been better prepared for facing life and its threats and challenges. As long as secularism continues to grow, however, people will become more isolated, more fearful, more self-destructive, and angrier, and their obsessions will grow in their desperate attempt to save themselves. This downward spiral will only deepen their sense of helplessness and desperation.
Orthoexic is just another step toward human self-destruction. And I see no way to counter it. What do you think of this assessment? If you think it has merit, do you see a healing path forward?
Published in Culture
It is all about trade-offs…Though folks whose physical activity is impacted by mobility-impairment do, at times, face ‘penalties’ from well-intentioned employment-based “wellness” programs, I have to say. (I find trying to eat sensibly and maintain weight is in my interest because it facilitates better, safer interactions with caregivers from a physical standpoint.)
Well, maybe. It would depend on how much extra I had to pay, where the breakpoint was(is) and how they checked this information. I wouldn’t be particularly eager to have to report my weight in to the insurance company every three months or so.
It doesn’t sound mean at all! In fact, it sounds very caring for all those who have to foot the bill. Of course, what you say makes sense. There are many who say that people need to actually see the cost of services, too, although I doubt that would influence them.
Just eliminate insurance, Medicaid, and Medicare and have people pay for their health care. Problem solved.
Most of these discussions on who costs the health care system more ignore the other end of the system. Who is more wrong, the fat guy who pays his own way or the thin guy on Medicaid?
Matt, minimal catastrophic coverage personally bought, out-of-pocket for everything else? How’s that?
I wonder if perhaps we aren’t interested enough in healthy eating and healthy, consistent moderate exercise.
I know of a man who was suffering from severe chest pain. Pain so bad he could not have sex with his wife. Even walking a mile was too much for him.
His cardiologist recommended coronary bypass surgery. But he was scared because his mom had coronary bypass surgery years ago. When she came out of that surgery, “She looked like death warmed over,” he said. A year after the surgery, her bypass grafts clogged up and she needed two stents. A few years later the stents clogged up and she needed more surgery.
He started frantically searching the internet for non-surgical means of treating coronary artery disease. He eventually found a very restrictive diet and he seems extremely happy that he avoided coronary bypass surgery.
That was 9 years ago.
Now he gets to enjoy his life and enjoy his wife.
So, I get it. I think it makes sense that people take their health seriously. It’s hard to enjoy life if you can’t do the tango with your wife or if you can’t play with your grandkids, if you can’t go on a kayaking trip or a hike.
But the information out there can be very confusing. The internet is 1,000 people recommending 1,000 different diet plans. Who’s telling the truth? This is very similar to how many feel about politics and religion? Who is telling the truth?
I think people should read as many books as possible from varied authors and sources. Try to figure out who is telling the truth. It’s like being on a jury. The prosecution has its list of witnesses and its evidence. The defense has its list of witnesses and its evidence. And there’s cross-examination. The job of the average Joe American is to figure out who has the stronger case.
If it’s just about living a few more months, who cares? I will eat whatever I want.
If it’s about living an enjoyable life instead of being confined to a wheelchair, I’ll eat cardboard if I have to in order to be healthy.
But how about sex with his mistress?
Insurance that’s actually insurance? That’ll be a tough sell.
I guess you don’t join up with the @fit” group, to earn a prize for losing the most weight.
I’ve noticed insurance companies doing promos and events that give them personal info (not aggregate data) about the insured.
I joyfully delete every invite sent disguised as a way to get me and my colleagues to reveal personal info to the insurance company via my employer.
None of their Beeswax.
We were poor growing up, and that is how it worked in our fam.
I met a woman a few years ago and she told me her story about her suffering from rheumatoid arthritis.
She had swollen and painful knees. She also suffered from ulcerative colitis. So, she had to take massive doses of prednisone. When she got older her hands throbbed with pain so bad, she could not hold hands with her husband. Her hips and shoulders hurt so much, she had trouble sleeping. She needed her husband to pull her out of her chair, unable to do this herself. She could barely walk her dog.
She started investigating “alternative medicine,” which ended up costing her thousands of dollars while her pain got worse, not better. At age 50 her bank account was empty while still suffering terribly.
Then during a google search she found a doctor who offered a diet that claimed to cure arthritis. Thos doctor had a free program available on his web site, complete with meal plans and free online newsletters.
She dived into the program. In ten days she was able to shake her husband’s hand. The problem was that she had already suffered so much knee damage during her search for the cure that she needed knee replacements. But at age 52 she was off all medications and free of pain.
What’s interesting is that her sister also suffers from Rheumatoid Arthritis but is unwilling to adopt an extreme diet. She just takes her meds, still suffers in pain and keeps on eating the foods she has eaten her entire life.
I think of it as like going to law school and studying for the bar exam or studying math and physics. Some people are willing to spend hours and hours studying to get a law degree or an engineering degree. Others say, “Why put yourself through all of that? Why not just enjoy life?”
Some people are willing to make what seem like large sacrifices in food choice in order to obtain something else that is very valuable to them.
Others just say, “Give me some more pain medication.” A co-worker of mine takes so much pain medication, it affects his memory. Would adopting a healthier diet be the better choice? That’s a question each individual must answer for themselves.
I think it is a combination of things:
-secular society without the support that comes in believing so they fear death and the secular tendency to make oneself the center of everything
-we have plenty to eat so eating isn’t a survival thing where we eat whatever we can get in far lesser quantities so eating has become just another pleasure activity
-since every day isn’t another day full of backbreaking work, hardship, and danger, people have turned their attention towards such things as health fads
Very thoughtful observations, E. I think, too, that the sanctity of eating has disappeared, as you say. It’s all about pleasure.
Completely right, Spiral. I actually admire people who seek alternatives when medication can be so debilitating. But those who treat non-existent conditions–there is something off there, I think. Thanks!
Our society is at the pinnacle of Mazlow’s hierarchy of needs.
We have accomplished the basics and now we can indulge in a lot of self centred activities.
I am about to attend the 50th year reunion of my College Fresher intake – so that sets my generational boundary. But growing up in rural Australia we never heard of all these allegies that are now apparently so commonplace . Everyone ate peanuts. No one died. Thats not to say that peanut allegy is not real – just that its so rare that we never heard of it let alone put warning labels everywhere.
we are now an introspective, self indulgent, navel gazing society that seeks personal victimhood/ sainthood with all these food fads. Worse still, we now have the ‘no vaccination movement’ – usually within the highly educated strata – who reject a hundred years of successful public policy on community health care.
When I mention tetanus, polio, whooping cough, rubella, measles, mumps, TB to my children I get a blank stare. As a child my parents lived in fear of that list.
Sigh….
Indeed. Also, they think so many children are having allergies to peanuts because they aren’t given peanuts and their systems aren’t exposed to them! Helicopter moms to the extreme. I’m with you, Biggles.
I think it is reasonable for someone to treat what might appear to be a non-existent condition. Of course, we’re dealing with generalities, so I will create a context.
During the Korean War and during the Vietnam War, autopsies were performed on killed in action American soldiers. They also performed autopsies on Korean and Vietnamese soldiers killed in action.
They noticed that a large majority of American soldiers, at age 18 to 25, had enough coronary artery disease (CAD) so that it could be seen without a microscope. But not with the Koreans and Vietnamese.
These US soldiers were too young to have had any clinical manifestations of CAD. But the development of this disease begins early in life.
So, in some sense, all of us Americans have coronary artery disease. It’s just a question of whether we have any symptoms of it.
My mom’s stepfather died of a sudden heart attack at age 54. He had not had prior symptoms of this disease.
I don’t think this means we should hide under our sheets in fear. But there’s nothing wrong with taking a pro-active attitude towards healthy nutrition. This isn’t to endorse a fad diet that has little to zero scientific basis.
But if someone is interested in nutrition because they want to give their body a good chance of avoiding a stroke that could paralyze their ability to speak or walk, that’s not obsessive compulsive disorder. It’s being responsible.
Now, when I was in college the guy who didn’t get drunk was an outcast. Getting drunk at college was normal behavior. But let’s not confuse normal with healthy. They college student who decided not to go to the beer party and decided instead to study for his final exam was doing the right thing. He appeared like he was obsessive and compulsive. He was just being responsible.
I think we might be seeing a similar thing with nutrition. That said, there are lots of different diet plans out there. They can’t all be right.
It is crazy having kids in school now. My grandkids have to worry about what they take to school for lunch in case their are allergies in the class. We always too peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.