Clinical Nutrition Can Change Lives and Help Patients with Diabetes, Heart Disease, or Obesity-Related Cancers
Clinical nutrition is the nutrition of patients in health care, often within specialized health care settings to deal with injuries, sickness, surgery, and for proper recovery. In this case, clinical refers to the management of patients, which includes both inpatients in hospitals and outpatients in clinics. It includes a wide variety of topics, such as weight management, nutrition research, healthy eating, nutrition education, and much more. Clinical nutrition is an extremely popular field because nutritionists work with patients daily and help them live healthier and longer lives. Clinical nutrition is a branch of nutrition that deals mainly with the diagnosis and management of disorders that affect the absorption, consumption, and overall metabolism of various dietary constituents. It is a rapidly expanding field that incorporates many research-based concepts with the application of scientific data to diet, medicine, and public health.
Clinical nutrition addresses the problems of both general and clinical nutrition that affect individuals from different backgrounds and ages. Clinical nutrition is also concerned with the definition, assessment, prevention, and management of various nutritional disorders. Which may include obesity and eating disorders, excesses or deficiencies in the diet, and chronic diseases such as diabetes mellitus, cancer, hypertension, and heart disease. Clinical nutrition helps prevent malnutrition, restore body tissues, and increase the energy and immunity of the human body. Apart from this, it helps in providing an adequate amount of other nutrients such as minerals, vitamins, proteins, etc. to the patients to maintain a healthy energy balance.
The scope of this field is quite wide and it has become one of the major areas of research for dietitians, nutritionists, practitioners, educators, and others. This field integrates all the knowledge, skill, and tools that are needed to understand the dietary components as well as the physiological processes involved in the absorption of nutrients. It also involves the application of knowledge and skills in evaluating nutritional interventions such as food additives, foods, food processing techniques and their ingredients, and the role of micro-nutrients in the diet. Recent developments in technology and industry have made it possible to incorporate sophisticated methods in food processing technology. This has resulted in an increasing number of foods that are rich in micro-nutrients.
However, the field of clinical nutrition is concerned more with prevention rather than diagnosis. As such, it is quite different from conventional nutrition and is much focused on the diet, the eating habits, the person’s lifestyle, and the medical aspects of the nutrition. Clinical nutrition basically addresses the three areas of concern, such as nutrition, illness, and treatment. Some advantages of clinical nutrition are it can help lead a better life at any age and is very effective in treating diabetes (type 1 or type 2). Usually, individuals get the necessary nutrients through a normal daily diet that processes foods within the body. However, there are situations such as stress, distress, a disease that may prevent the body from getting adequate nutrients. In such situations, dietary supplementation may fill the void created by such situations. It can come in the form of clinical nutrition.
