Requirements:
Discussion 1: Eating and providing the body sustenance is necessary for life. Explain why Nutritional Medicine should be the first place to start in any intervention plan for yourself or your client.
Nutritional medicine in any intervention plan
Nutritional medicine is a nutritional therapy, based on the concept of the consumption of all types of macronutrients as well as micronutrients in an optimum amount. This is required for the proper functioning of the body and also plays a vital role in the prevention and treatment of a disease. It is considered as a holistic approach to demonstrate the interactions of environment and nutrition on the health of humans. This provides an enhancement of our ability for food processing, absorption of nutrients, detoxification, and elimination of waste products from our bodies. Nutritional medicine can be any type of dietary supplement containing amino acids, herbs, minerals, enzymes, and various types of organic natural ingredients. Supplements such as iron, calcium, glucosamine, fish oils, probiotics, garlic, echinacea, etc. are some of the popular and widely used dietary supplements. Nutritional intervention includes several steps which consist of the assessment of nutrition, nutrition diagnosis, the intervention of nutrition, and then the monitoring and evaluation of nutrition. A combination of dietary counseling along with ONS has proved to be one of the most effective intervention plans (Early & Stanley 2018, p.345).
According to the World Health Organization, nutritional intervention is a plan of diet administered for deworming in reproductively- active women, adolescent non-pregnant girls, children, and pregnant women, optimal cord clamping timing for prevention of anemia (iron deficiency) in infants, reduction of the risk of malaria in pregnant ladies by the use of insecticide-treated nets, etc. (Bush et al. 2020, p.10). Nutritional medicine should be the first place to start in any intervention plan for ourselves or a client as it’s considered as a key component for the education and management of diabetes. It is also known as medical nutrition therapy. There are a lot of benefits of nutritional therapy including gain or loss of weight, boosts the immune system, reduction in chronic fatigue and stress, avoidance of nutrient deficiency, management, and prevention of chronic diseases, etc.
References
Bush, Blumberg, El-Sohemy, Minich, Ordovás, Reed, & Behm, (2020). Toward the definition of personalized nutrition: a proposal by the American Nutrition Association. Journal of the American College of Nutrition, 39(1), 5-15.
Early, & Stanley, (2018). Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: the role of medical nutrition therapy and registered dietitian nutritionists in the prevention and treatment of prediabetes and type 2 diabetes. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 118(2), 343-353.
