Clinical nutrition focuses on the
nutritional management of individuals or group of individuals with
established disease condition. Clinical nutrition deals with issues such
as altered nutritional requirements associated with the disease, disease
severity and malnutrition and many such issues about which we will
learn in this unit and other units in this course. Nutrition is an integral
part of the medical therapy as adequate nutrition support can go a long
way in improving quality of care and improving patient's medical
outcome. The importance of nutrition in the prevention of illness and
disease has been long recognized. Do you recall your grandma's
homemade remedies for common illnesses such as fevers, cough/cold,
stomach ache, and indigestion or heart burn? Yes, nutritional care in
terms of providing hot cups of soup or porridge ensured that you were
adequately and appropriately nourished which helped improve
medical outcome. There is certainly more to clinical nutrition than
this. So let us get to know about clinical and therapeutic nutrition
Learning Objectives:
After reading this unit, the students will be able to:
1. define the terms dietetics, clinical nutrition, therapeutic diet and explain the concept of diet planning in disease, 2. enumerate the scope of dietetics and the role of dietitian in health care,
3. explain the relationship between nutrition and infection,
4. discuss the adaptation of normal diet to therapeutic diets, and
5. describe the types of therapeutic modifications with respect to consistency,
frequency of meals, methods of cooking etc,.
- Teacher: Mr. Sambu