Medical Nutrition Therapy - A Key to Good Health

December 27, 2020

6 min read

Medical Nutrition Therapy - A Key to Good Health

What comes to your mind when we talk about health? We often aspire to be healthy, fit and free from illness. We strive to eat and shop healthy. Make new year resolutions to be physically active, subscribe gym memberships and take advice from anyone who is in better shape than us. Thanks to the digital lifestyle, we even try to learn from the internet on how a fad diet would solve all our health problems and last but not the least google the health benefits of the food we just ate.

Most of us would have tried at least one of the above things to keep ourselves and our families healthy. However, more often than not such attempts end in disappointment and weaken our motivation to maintain a healthier lifestyle. So, what does it take to be healthy? Or even before we get there, what exactly is health?

WHO defines health as a state of complete physical, social, mental and emotional well being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity¹. They recommend that the following preventable risk factors have a significant impact on health.

Unhealthy diet
Physical inactivity
Tobacco use
Harmful use of alcohol

Among these risk factors, the latter two have been adequately addressed by the government through various public awareness campaigns. Whereas, altering unhealthy dietary habits and inactive lifestyle needs a more personalized long term approach.

There has been a major shift in our eating habits over the past few decades. Owing to the rise in disposable income, we have increased access to a wide variety of processed foods and intake of sugar-sweetened beverages. A recent survey conducted by the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau (NNMB)² states that more than 10% of the total calorie intake of the urban Indian population is from processed and ready to eat foods such as chips, biscuits, chocolates, sweets and juices. Not so surprisingly, a high prevalence of obesity (12.5%), overweight (31.4%), abdominal obesity (53.1%), hypertension (32.8%) and diabetes (25.4%) was reported among urban Indians.

Technological advances and shift to desk jobs with a minimal physical movement made us sedentary. Sedentary lifestyle poses a threat to overall health and leads to change in the body composition reflected through various biochemical parameters. The latest guidelines by NIN with recommendations based on physical activity levels are a reflection of this fact³.

Due to these risk factors urban Indians are at a growing risk of non communicable diseases. In 2015, WHO reported that in India nearly 5.8 million people die from NCDs (heart and lung diseases, stroke, cancer and diabetes) every year or in other words 1 in 4 Indians has a risk of dying from an NCD before they reach the age of seventy years⁴. Without any interventions the NCD burden is likely to increase at an alarming rate.

Making changes to our diet and physical activity levels without any professional help is quite challenging. There is no such thing as an average person, everyone is genetically and biologically unique. Thus, general population level nutrition recommendations may not yield significant results. We need therapies that consider the biochemical individuality of each person along with our diverse dietary habits and lifestyle. Scalable disease prevention and management strategies are necessary to serve our huge population.

Medical nutrition therapy (MNT) is one such evidence-based approach to improve diet and physical activity. It has been widely reported to be effective in prevention and management of diseases such as diabetes⁵, hypertension⁶, cardiovascular^7,8, liver and kidney diseases, gastrointestinal disorders ⁹, and different types of cancers¹⁰. It is particularly efficacious for individuals suffering from conditions such as^11-19

At Clearcals, we deliver MNT based lifestyle interventions for at-risk individuals and patients suffering from chronic conditions. Our qualified clinical dietitians design health, nutrition and activity plans keeping in view the age, gender, eating habits and lifestyle, past and present medical history. Along with these plans, timely health coaching is provided to individuals to keep them focused and motivated towards achieving their goals. It is personalized for each individual and delivered remotely using suitable digital platforms. We believe in setting achievable and realistic goals with the guidance of qualified professionals to ensure sustainable outcomes in the long run.

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