Abstract
Purpose
To analyse the relation of illness anxiety, dysfunctional cognitions characteristic of somatic symptom disorders and orthorexic eating behaviour in a non-clinical sample.
Methods
N = 445 participants (n = 363 females) completed an online survey with the following questionnaires: the Düsseldorf Orthorexia Scale to measure orthorexic eating behaviour, the Attitudes Towards Body and Health Questionnaire to assess dysfunctional cognitions concerning the perception and interpretation of bodily sensations and the Multidimensional Inventory of Hypochondriacal Traits to measure illness anxiety.
Results
In the total sample, orthorexic eating behaviour was associated with the aforementioned variables to a very low extent. However, individuals with high levels of orthorexic eating behaviour (n = 19) displayed significantly higher levels of health habits and of perceptions of autonomic sensations, as well as higher levels of hypochondriacal worry and absorption than individuals with low levels of orthorexic eating behaviour (n = 19).
Conclusions
Orthorexic eating behaviour is associated to some characteristic features of illness anxiety and dysfunctional cognitions characteristic of somatic symptom disorders. Future studies should investigate whether illness anxiety serves as a risk factor for the development of orthorexic eating behaviour.
Level of evidence
III, case–control analytic study.
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Acknowledgements
The authors sincerely thank Joëlle Murray for her valuable assistance with language revision and Fabian Gümüsdagli for technical support.
Funding
This study did not receive any funding.
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Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Conceptualization: FB, SH; methodology: FB; formal analysis and investigation: FB, SH; writing—original draft preparation: FB; writing—review and editing: FB, RP; Resources: RP; supervision: RP.
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The authors declare that they do not have any conflict of interest.
Ethical approval
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Local ethics committee approval was not required for this study that only includes a survey. Surveys are commonly used research tools and the technique itself received ethical approval several times. Participants were asked about their eating behaviour and their cognitions towards bodily sensations, and questions like these are not supposed to cause any harm to adult human beings. Even in the very unlikely case that participants felt uneasy while answering the questions, they could easily cancel the survey at any time without any disadvantages.
Informed consent
Participants were informed that their participation was voluntary and anonymous, and that their data would be handled according to privacy policy. Furthermore, participants knew that they could cancel the survey any time by not completing the questionnaire or not sending their data using the send button. By sending their data, they agreed to participate in the study.
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Upon request, original data are available from the corresponding author.
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Barthels, F., Horn, S. & Pietrowsky, R. Orthorexic eating behaviour, illness anxiety and dysfunctional cognitions characteristic of somatic symptom disorders in a non-clinical sample. Eat Weight Disord 26, 2387–2391 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-020-01091-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-020-01091-3