Most likely, part of society would not call nutritional deficiency a serious condition. People might describe it as a phase when a person eats differently than usual but would not attribute it to serious health disorders. What is it, and what is your view of society’s attitude?
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We live in a truly strange era. Nutritional deficiency, by the way – like obesity, is somewhat accepted in society. Sometimes nutritional deficiency is described as a good thing because a person is supposedly thin. But the situation is such that these two nutritional states – both deficiency and obesity – are serious health disorders. These are diseases that need treatment because they not only worsen a person’s quality of life but especially significantly change their health condition.
Speaking in more detail about nutritional deficiency, if we can already diagnose it in a person, we know that the hospital stay will be much longer. If they need surgery, their recovery after the operation will take time. Regarding chemotherapy, sometimes it cannot be applied due to nutritional deficiency because the drugs will not work. Ultimately, in this condition, the effect of drugs is completely different.
And the most frightening thing – lifespan. The lifespan of a person suffering from nutritional deficiency is much shorter than that of someone who eats a health-friendly diet.
How to recognize this condition? Finally – how long do people fail to recognize it, considering that some symptoms are misleading and make one think of other diseases.
That is exactly the case. Nutritional deficiency is a treacherous condition. There are often no specific symptoms at the very beginning – there may be general weakness, slightly reduced appetite, patients say: “Well, I don’t want to eat today. Actually, I didn’t want to yesterday either.”
Maybe people eat less for certain reasons – they cannot swallow food but think it will pass. People ignore it and start losing weight. Unintentional weight loss is one of the most significant symptoms. If a person loses 5% of their body weight unintentionally in a month, the causes must be investigated – why did this happen? Sadly, it is usually due to health reasons.
So – these symptoms are not specific, but they can definitely be noticed. A person cannot live without eating, so if we observe, we will see – the routine is disturbed, the amount of food eaten changes, etc.
Another thing – blood tests show nutritional deficiency, but only in advanced stages. The indicator that most often shows nutritional deficiency is somewhat adaptive. It is the total protein and albumin level. In fact, they can be normal for months even though nutritional deficiency is developing. And if we find them decreased, the signal is already very serious.
What are the most common causes of this condition – diseases, surgeries, or can it be intentional weight loss?
Nutritional deficiency develops when the human body does not receive the necessary nutrients. Why does this happen? It can be intentional weight loss, which, sadly, sometimes leads to nutritional deficiency.
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As much as it sounds, for us doctors, this situation is somewhat simpler. The greatest concern is unintentional weight loss, often provoked by disease. It can be mental health disorders, it can be one of the symptoms of oncological disease, then it signals not even the beginning of the disease but a stage. Sometimes nutritional deficiency develops at the beginning or during the course of the disease, and sometimes before or after surgeries.
In other words, we are not protected; you cannot say that with certain diseases, nutritional deficiency will not occur – no, we cannot say that. We want to draw attention not only to every person but also to medical professionals. Let’s see the person! Of course, if a person comes to the emergency department, often something urgent and acute has happened, and the condition needs to be stabilized. But after that, two actions that would allow recognizing nutritional deficiency are very simple – weigh the person and measure their height. Sometimes after doing this and telling the person, you hear surprise because it was more before.
You need to know that simple actions sometimes give very good results in recognizing disorders.
But how do you help people who do not want to eat? What do you do if there is simply no appetite?
Recovery situations depend on when we recognized nutritional deficiency, but in this situation, we have a variety of tools. Depending on when exactly we notice nutritional deficiency, the recovery time varies – sometimes a week, sometimes ten days, and sometimes a month or half a year, and there are people for whom the risk of nutritional deficiency remains for life.
But dietitians have many tools to treat this condition. Food that a person can eat more of is always selected first, and it must contain all nutrients. The person keeps a food diary or we simply ask to photograph the food they eat. We must be sure that everything is fine with regular food – enough is eaten.
And sometimes we have situations, for example – swallowing disorder, early satiety due to illness, nausea, etc., when a person cannot absorb enough nutrients by usual means. Then we have the opportunity to help with special-purpose food products.
In other words, at first, we take steps to try to use the digestive tract because that is the most physiological. Special-purpose food products are again selected according to consistency, composition – higher protein content or lower, higher calorie content or lower. So special medical-purpose food products would be another stage to give food to a person in the usual way – through the mouth.
The next stage is feeding through a tube. There are situations when a person, say, suffers from multiple sclerosis and it is hard to expect that their swallowing will recover in half a year, then a gastrostomy is formed through the abdominal wall, and through it, by the way, the same special medical-purpose industrially produced enteral mixture is injected into the digestive tract.
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