3 research outputs found
Functional gastrointestinal symptoms and increased risk for orthorexia nervosa
Purpose: Recent guidelines point out the possible risk for orthorexia nervosa in functional gastrointestinal disorders, however,
to date, no study has investigated this association. The present study aimed to explore the potential relationship between
irritable bowel syndrome-related functional gastrointestinal symptoms and certain maladaptive eating behaviours, such as
symptoms of orthorexia nervosa and emotional eating.
Methods: A sample of 644 Hungarian volunteers (Mage=22.37; SDage=3.95) completed a survey with the following questionnaires: the Rome IV Diagnostic Questionnaire (R4DQ) for adults—Irritable bowel syndrome module for the measurement of functional gastrointestinal symptoms, the Hungarian version of the ORTO-15 questionnaire (ORTO-11-Hu) to assess symptoms of orthorexia nervosa, the Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ) Emotional Eating subscale to measure symptoms
of emotional eating and the Short Health Anxiety Inventory (SHAI) for the assessment of health anxiety. Spearman’s rank
correlation was used to explore the associations between the measured variables, and structural equation modeling was used
to test the proposed mediation models.
Results: Functional gastrointestinal symptoms were positively related to symptoms of orthorexia nervosa and emotional
eating. The relationship between functional gastrointestinal symptoms and symptoms of orthorexia nervosa was partially
mediated by health anxiety, while the association between functional gastrointestinal symptoms and symptoms of emotional
eating was partially mediated by symptoms of orthorexia nervosa.
Conclusion: Our fndings highlight the possible risk for developing orthorexic symptoms in functional gastrointestinal symptoms, which could lead to other types of disordered eating patterns, such as emotional eating. The results also underscore
the potential role of health anxiety in these relationships