Because of my aspirations to go into clinical nutrition in a hospital setting, medical nutrition therapy is an extremely interesting area of nutrition to me. The recent research using molecular and genetic information revealed that nutrients have an impact on metabolic, genomic, and immune fucntions.3 This research stands out to me because in the future when I am working with cancer patients, heart disease patients or patients with renal failure, understanding how certain nutrients influence immune function is crucial.
Although much of this research is new, the idea that diet has an impact on human health has been here for ages. Fueled by genomic sequencing the knowledge of medical nutrition therapy has expanded from its effects on evolution to its role in diabetes and heart disease and now it is leading us to discovering clues for preventing disease.3 The more I learn about nutrition the more it resonates with me that taking care of our bodies is so important and something that is widely undervalued in society. Having good nutrition is the best form of preventative medicine to ensure an excellent quality of like in our 70’s and 80’s. Beyond this, the new and exciting fields of nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics show us how each individual’ s body responds to nutritional factors- which allows dietitians to develop a more personalized nutrition plan for disease prevention.1
Before deciding on personalized nutrition plan, there are steps every dietitian has to take to make sure they have all the information. They must collect a medical history to establish the presence of acute or chronic diseases, previous surgeries or medication use. This is imperative because similar to how drugs interact with each other, drugs can also interfere with food absorption. They also collect anthropometric data including BMI, height, weight and nutrition focused physical findings. These can be signs of iron deficiency or other problems. A complete diet history is the last piece of information necessary before administering medical nutrition therapy.2 With the increasing number of links between nutrition and disease prevention or treatment, taking all the right steps to gather all of the information is more important than ever.
The newest research is in the modulation of immune function by nutrition, which shows the ability to treat diseases like cancer, increase immunity, plays a role in inflammation and to fight infection. Nutrients such as phytochemicals, have shown to play a role in preventative medicine. These antioxidants decrease patient’s risk of hypertension, cancer, diabetes, and neurodegenerative diseases. For example, honey is being researched as an anticancer agent because it has the ability to induce apoptosis and antitumor properties. Overall, phytochemicals have been showing increasing inhibiting ability related to carcinogenic, inflammatory, microbial, viral and aging properties.3
All of these new discoveries make now such an exciting time to be starting a career in nutrition. Being able to communicate with patients about something that can understand and take control over, their diet, when it feels like their body is betraying them is the reason I want to become a dietitian.
1http://asn-cdn-remembers.s3.amazonaws.com/adcc65029a9ff9d9fec59796719afe8e.pdf
2https://www.diet.com/info/facts/medical-nutrition-therapy
3COOPER EL, MA MJ. Understanding nutrition and immunity in disease management. J Tradit Complement Med. 2017