Vuillier L, Robertson S, Greville-Harris M
Faculty of Science and Technology, Department of Psychology, Bournemouth University, Poole, UK.
J Eat Disord. 2020 Apr 23;8:15. doi: 10.1186/s40337-020-00291-7. eCollection 2020.
Orthorexia nervosa (ON) is characterised by an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating and while it is not recognised as an eating disorder (or any disorder), current research is exploring similarities and differences with such disorders. The literature has shown that individuals with eating disorders have difficulties identifying and describing emotions (known as alexithymia) as well as regulating them. However no research to date has looked at whether people with orthorexic tendencies also suffer from difficulties with emotions. In this paper, we refer to people with orthorexic tendencies but do not assume that their healthy eating is at a pathological level needing clinical attention.
The current study examined this by asking 196 healthy adults with an interest in healthy eating to complete four questionnaires to measure ON (ORTO-15 - reduced to ORTO-7CS), eating psychopathology (EAT-26), alexithymia (TAS-20) and emotion dysregulation (DERS-16).
We found that difficulties identifying and regulating emotions was associated with symptoms of ON, similar to what is found in other eating disorders. We suggest that ON behaviours may be used as a coping strategy in order to feel in control in these participants who have poor emotion regulation abilities.
Our results show that individuals with ON tendencies may share similar difficulties with emotions compared to other eating disorders. While important, our results are limited by the way we measured ON behaviours and we recommend that further research replicate our findings once a better and more specific tool is developed and validated to screen for ON characteristics more accurately.
正食癖（ON）的特征是对健康饮食存在不健康的痴迷，虽然它未被认定为一种饮食失调症（或任何其他失调症），但当前的研究正在探索它与这类失调症的异同。文献表明，患有饮食失调症的个体在识别和描述情绪（即述情障碍）以及调节情绪方面存在困难。然而，迄今为止尚无研究探讨有正食癖倾向的人在情绪方面是否也存在困难。在本文中，我们提及有正食癖倾向的人，但并不假定他们的健康饮食处于需要临床关注的病理水平。
本研究通过让196名对健康饮食感兴趣的健康成年人完成四份问卷来进行调查，这四份问卷分别用于测量正食癖（ORTO - 15简化为ORTO - 7CS）、饮食心理病理学（EAT - 26）、述情障碍（TAS - 20）和情绪失调（DERS - 16）。
我们发现，识别和调节情绪的困难与正食癖症状相关，这与在其他饮食失调症中发现的情况类似。我们认为，正食癖行为可能被用作一种应对策略，以便让这些情绪调节能力较差的参与者获得掌控感。
我们的研究结果表明，与其他饮食失调症相比，有正食癖倾向的个体在情绪方面可能存在类似的困难。虽然我们的研究结果很重要，但受到我们测量正食癖行为方式的限制，我们建议，一旦开发并验证出一种更好、更具特异性的工具来更准确地筛查正食癖特征，后续研究应重复我们的发现。
