When a doctor suggest you for medical nutrition therapy, the main aim is to access your current diet and create a healthy meal plan for you that will help you to let go of your old sedentary lifestyle.
The stress caused by our everyday lives isn’t something new. This stress is the reason for our poor digestion, low energy levels, food intolerance, and sleeplessness. Every individual has their own unique nutritional needs and a different physiological structure. Similarly, each body requires different nutrition. In nutritional therapy, a nutritionist provides you a diet with nutritional intake and lifestyle modifications to prevent and treat different conditions like diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, depression, and obesity. This course of treatment may include oral supplements, medical food, and IV treatments.
In this article, we will review 8 reasons why nutrition therapy aids different medical conditions.
What Is Nutrition Therapy?
In nutrition therapy a nutritionist will first examine your medical history, your current lifestyle, and your dietary plans. After that, they will perform a tailored diagnosis and treatment program according to your body’s requirements.
Examples of nutrition therapy can be medical nutrition therapy for weight loss, digestion and absorption support, natural detoxification, stress management courses, etc.
They provide you a diet plan with mainly plant and animal-sourced food items. These foods contain macronutrients like protein, fats, and carbs. Additionally, there are organic and unprocessed foods that contain micronutrients such as vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, probiotics, and fiber.
Benefits of Medical Nutrition Therapy
Whether you’re dealing with a minor health issues or complex issues, with the professional guidance of a nutritional therapist, anyone can ensure proper well-being.
Let’s have a look at some of the benefits of medical nutrition therapy.
1. Weight Control Management
For maintaining healthy weight, you have to combine physical activity with a nutritious diet. With the guidance of a nutritionist, you can achieve a healthy weight. Through medical nutrition therapy for weight loss and weight gain, your body can get all the important nutrients it needs and an exercise treatment. Weight control therapies vary according to the results you are looking for.
For example, if you want to lose weight, they will suggest a diet with fewer calories than you burn each day. On the contrary, if you want to gain weight, they will suggest a diet with higher calorie intake and less exercise that burns off calories. It depends on how you want the results.
2. Maintains A Healthy Heart
Most heart disease is typically brought on by eating too much sodium, fat, and cholesterol. Lowering your intake of cholesterol, fat, and sodium will decrease your risk of developing heart disease. In particular, Trans and saturated fats are extremely unhealthy for the heart. Dishes like red meat, fried foods, palm oil, and packaged snacks all include this sort of fat.
Nutritionists suggest that in order to attain a healthy heart, you should start eating natural fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat dairy products. You should consume these foods roughly four to five times every day.
3. Heightens Your Immune System
Practically speaking, when you start consuming something bad for your body, this way or that way, your body indicates to you that something is going wrong, which needs amendments immediately. One of the indicators of this can be a poor immune system.
One might think of it as a minor issue when this is just the initial stage of major health issues, one of which is COVID-19.
In the last two years, we have all learned different lessons, which also include taking care of our health issues and building strong immune system. When you start providing nutrients to your body, it’s able to function in exactly the way it was designed to. With a carefully curated nutritious diet, you can strengthen your immune system within a short period of time.
4. Prevention and Reversal of Chronic Diseases
Most chronic diseases are caused by risky behaviors. It can lead to various health conditions such as obesity, high blood pressure, etc. These diseases are quite hard to manage, but with the help of medical nutrition therapy, you can slow down their progression, or even reverse or stop some of their symptoms. An example of this could be a type 2 diabetic person who is facing several symptoms of unmanaged diabetes.
In medical nutrition therapy, they will conduct a medical screening to diagnose the current medical situation. After that, they will make diet plans accordingly, which will be able to balance their blood glucose levels in the targeted range.
5. Lowering Healthcare Costs
Well, when you start working on your body and managing your symptoms more effectively, you can reduce a lot of healthcare costs down the road. Working on yourself presently will save you from various unwanted procedures and invasive tests.
Whether you have insurance or not, it will either cost you money or a lot of hassle both ways. On the other hand if you start working with a nutritionist today, they can guide you several ways of improving your health.
For example, if you’re diagnosed with a heart problem, in association with a nutritionist, you can work on your cholesterol. This way, you can be free from the hassle of going through an operation to remove or clean your main arteries in the future.
6. Beneficial For Food Allergies And Sensitiveness
Over the last few years, we have seen a significant increase in a variety of food allergies and sensitivity symptoms. According to the US Food and Drug Administration, the most common food items that cause sensitiveness and food allergies in individuals are:
- Milks
- Eggs
- Fish
- Shellfish
- Soyabeans
- Wheat
- Peanuts
- Nuts
Symptoms of allergic reactions can cause significant harm to human bodies. These allergic reaction symptoms include flushed skin or rash, loss of consciousness, swelling of the face, tongue, or lips, abdominal cramps, and much more. Reactions to insensitiveness, allergies, or intolerance can be different from one another.
With the help of your nutritional therapist, you can help identify the cause of your problem. They can plan a diet accordingly, which removes all the toxic substances that trigger your allergies.
Whilst dietary removal is beneficial for a short period of time, the main objective will be to detect and support any immunological dysfunction that may have resulted in the development of sensitivities or allergies.
7. Maintains Brain Health
According to the national library of medicine, Dietary factors play a significant role in managing brain processes by regulating neurotransmitter pathways, synaptic transmission, membrane fluidity, and signal-transduction pathways.
Research on the recent events has shown evident that proves the capacity of nutrients to affect neural pathways that are linked with synaptic plasticity. Nutrition is linked with Alzheimer’s disease. Proper nutrition can help stave off Alzheimer’s disease by protecting your brain cells and boosting blood flow to your brain.
Proper nutrients for your brain eliminate food items such as- junk food, steamed and grilled foods. A nutritional therapist ensures to add a lot of dark fruits and vegetables along with items such as Fish (salmon), flax seeds, krill, chia, kiwi fruit, butternuts, walnuts, which are filled with Omega-3 fatty acids, , green tea, Ginkgo tree, which are rich in Flavonoids, and items such as-, avocado, nuts, peanuts, olives, seeds, spinach, wheatgerm, etc in your diet which contains natural saturated fats and are rich in vitamin E.
8. Health Issues Which Requires Longer Medication
Health problems such as high blood pressure, diabetes, or thyroid dysfunction can lead to long-term medication. These situations can make anyone frustrated, because who wants to use medications as a diet and lifestyle choice?
During your medical nutrition therapy, your therapist can guide you to make several lifestyles and dietary changes that can help you improve your health condition. In some cases, your doctor might even reduce or remove your medication if necessary.
When you start working with nutritional therapists, you will realize that to make your future more fruitful, it is crucial to make changes in your present lifestyle. In the last few decades, medical nutritional therapy has significantly grown to alleviate, manage, and even treat various medical situations. Cutting down on foods high in fat and replacing them with whole grains, dark fruits, and vegetables, will help you develop better-eating habits and you will experience crucial changes in your lifestyle.
