These two new anxiety afflictions sound similar, but they aren’t.
Orthosomnia refers to the possibly-insomnia-provoking anxiety induced by concern over less-than-optimal results from one’s sleep tracker. In one of his books, David Sedaris describes his obsession with his step-counter; he achieves 90,000 steps most days because the app makes him hyper-competitive. This would be a big problem for anyone who is not an independently wealthy celebrity who has hours most days in which to walk. Apparently, some people have a similar dynamic with their sleep trackers, but unfortunately for them, you can’t Just Sleep the way you can Just Walk.
Sleep is not forceable.
A sleep tracker that keeps you up at night is a joke, though orthosomniacs may not realize this, because lack of humor is one result of sleep deprivation.
Orthorexia refers to anxiety and anti-social behavior induced by concern over deviating from one’s preferred diet. If you suffer from some of its more extreme symptoms, such as inability to eat sub-optimal food when you’re literally* starving, anxiety or depression induced by minor deviation from your regimen, or inability to be in the same room with disdained foods, you may need help. But some of the other defined symptoms indicate wise choices, not pathology.
One symptom is Eliminating entire food groups. As the UK has recently become the first government to acknowledge, as fat-studying scientists have known for decades, and as epigeneticists are learning every day, there are complete categories of food that are degrading our species’ gene pool and health. If you aren’t avoiding processed vegetable oils (though you should be slurping lots of EVOO), processed foods that resemble nothing in nature, and excess sugar, you are courting serious disease, reducing your body’s ability to fight unavoidable toxins, accelerating aging, and possibly, depending on your age, depleting the gene pool of your future children. It’s true that you shouldn’t obsess about occasional lapses, but the key word is occasional. Less is more here.
Another symptom is Fixation over the quality of food. Our lives are filled with toxins we cannot avoid, from indoor air pollution to plastics. Our bodies have evolved to eliminate toxins, but the modern toxic load is so high, and modern nutrient levels so low, that we aren’t keeping up. High quality food–whole, organic foods–have nutrients and lack toxins. Maybe fixation is too strong, but being determined to get most of your calories from those is not mental illness.
Anyone who thinks that the idea of food causing sickness or diseases is mostly unfounded is, well, I’m going with Wrong. Good food is medicine, in the sense that it can prevent or heal disease. Also, it tastes great!
If you disagree, you can call me orthorexic, and it won’t bother me at all.
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* I’m using literally in its actual meaning, literally, not its modern meaning, figuratively.