Nutrition therapy
Nutrition therapy is the therapeutic method, which offers an individualized food diet plus nutritional supplementation, according to the bio-chemical individuality of the patients, and the disease that they are suffering from to treat and/ or improve the wellness of the patient. Nutrition therapy is used for treatment of a wide range of diseases, as the general wellness of any living organism is in direct relation to its own proper nutritional needs. In advance, in science of nutrition therapy, the nutritionist, by knowing the positive and negative effects of the diets, different aspects of the disease, and general situation of the patient, can greatly improve the wellness and quality of life, of the patient.
This course helped me to understand the fact that, the therapeutic method can be used for variable purposes, such as:
- Prevention
- Disease Prevention: general wellness
- Nutritional Support: oral, parenteral, enteral
- Pediatrics: infant/child feeding for growth and development, failure-to-thrive, inborn errors of metabolism.
- Weight Management: overweight/obesity, eating disorders, bariatric surgery
- Women’s Health: pregnancy, anemia, osteoporosis
- Treatment
- Treatment Pulmonary Disease: COPD, cystic fibrosis
- Renal Disease: insufficiency, chronic failure, transplantation
- Cardiovascular Diseases: hypertension, dyslipidemia, congestive heart failure
- Diabetes: Type 1, Type 2, Gestational
- GI Disorders: celiac disease, cirrhosis, Crohn’s disease
- Oncology/Cancer including bone marrow transplant patients; HIV/AIDS
- Food allergy
Therefore understanding the nutritional needs of the body parallel to understanding the different aspects of the disease is important as far as good medical condition might be made or even developed worse just in result of an improper diet. As far as I understand now the body must be treated as whole. It was interesting for me, when I found out at that HIV infection leads to malnutrition. Malnutrition facilitates the development of the disease. So an HIV infected body with malnutrition, means more viruses in the blood, more viruses in the blood means a higher rate of transmission. Therefore, malnutrition does not only have a worsening effect on general wellness of a patient, but also increases it’s transmission rate. So, a very simple way to reduce the transmission of HIV in population is a proper diet, parallel to the common treatments for each individual infected by HIV.
References
Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT). (n.d.). Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT). Retrieved October 20, 2014, From:http://www.stjude.org/stjude/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=f0681976d1e70110VgnVCM1000001e0215acRCRD
Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT). (n.d.). Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT). Retrieved October 20, 2014, from http://www.stjude.org/stjude/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=f0681976d1e70110VgnVCM1000001e0215acRCRD
