Functional gastrointestinal symptoms and increased risk for orthorexia nervosa

Abstract

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 (M_age = 22.37; SD_age = 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 findings 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.

Level of evidence: Level V (descriptive cross-sectional study).

Keywords: Emotional eating; Functional gastrointestinal symptoms; Health anxiety; Irritable bowel syndrome; Maladaptive eating behaviours; Orthorexia nervosa.