Prevalência de ortorexia nervosa em estudantes de cursos da área de saúde da Universidade Federal de Campina Grande - CES - Campus de Cuité - PB.

Abstract

Orthorexia nervosa is an obsessive-pathological behavior related to an obsession with food health. This clinical picture has not yet been officially recognized as an eating disorder and is not present in DSM-V. Individuals with orthorexia nervosa are fixated by healthy foods, which they call "pure", and they devote a lot of time to the preparation and preparation of these meals. This exaggerated preoccupation with food causes individuals to exclude from the menu: lactose, gluten, dyes, preservatives, salt, sugar and fat, as they are seen as harmful to health. However, the exclusion of so many foods favors nutritional deficiencies which, in turn, can contribute to the emergence of various diseases associated with micronutrient deficiency, for example anemia, hypovitaminosis and osteoporosis. The objective of the project was to evaluate the risk behavior for the development of orthorexia nervosa in the Health Education and Nursing Center (CES) of the Federal University of Campina Grande - Campus de Cuité - PB. It was a qualitative / quantitative field research of descriptive and transversal character. The Orto-15 questionnaire was the research instrument used to evaluate the risk behavior to develop orthorexia nervosa. The questionnaires were numbered and then transposed to a digital platform using the features of the Microsoft Access version 2010 program. For the validation of the typing, the Epi Info program version 6.02 was used. After typing, the database was transferred to the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) for Windows version 13.0 for statistical analysis of the data. As results, we found that 34% of the students presented risk behavior for the development of orthorexia nervosa, while 66% did not present. They were used as parameters; age, weight, marital status and BMI for risk analysis for orthorexia, where all participants showed risk behavior. The percentage of suggestive results for orthorexia nervosa among the girls suggests the need for new studies to verify the divergences of some of the findings found in the literature, such as the question of marital status, age and BMI. Therefore, it is important to carry out population surveys, with larger and more representative sampling