The Increasing Role of Medical Nutrition

Medical nutrition is becoming increasingly widely used, and this is the case across the globe. Demand for advanced medical nutrition products has been growing steadily, but relatively slowly for a while now, but has really taken off over the past year or so.

Why More Doctors Are Using Specialist Foods

There are a number of reasons for this. The first is the increasing attention the medical profession is paying to the role of nutrition in the healing process. There is an increasing body or research that shows that what a patient eats during their recovery radically increases their chances of recovering quickly and fully.

Hospitals have changed their menus and the way they feed patients to aid their recovery. Many patients are being advised to follow special diets prior to and after major operations. People with chronic illnesses are also being sat down and had the importance of a balanced diet explained to them in detail. They are increasingly being given advice and support to maintain the right diet. Cancer patients are an example of this. If a patient is struggling to eat doctors will prescribe medical nutrition products designed to avoid malnutrition.

The Impact of the Increasing Age of the Population

A large percentage of these advanced foods are being used to care for the elderly. Alarmingly, figures show that 25-30% of the elderly in hospitals and care homes are suffering from malnutrition. They have usually arrived there in this condition.

For the elderly maintaining a healthy diet is more difficult than it is for the majority of the population. They find it hard to get up and prepare food and often have less of an appetite. Their digestive system is not as efficient at absorbing nutrients, so malnourishment amongst the elderly is a big problem. Understandably, those people suffering in this way become very frail, very quickly and they have a very low resistance to disease. Inevitably, serious diseases follows, Sarcopenia is increasingly common.

However, much of the damage is completely reversible with good nutrition. A good diet will reverse some of the damage, but it takes a long time to do it this way. Specialist medical nutrition products produce positive results much more quickly.

Nutricia develop and sell a growing range of advanced medical nutrition products. They offer oral, enternal and parenteral nutrition products.