Importance of Nutrition in Human Health
One of the most important aspects of human health is food and nutrition. Food plays an important role in the body's immunity and infection resistance. The nurse must ensure that the patients' lives are maintained, which includes not only the use of synthetic medicine but also proper nutrition. In other cases, nurses and physicians may be required to provide nutritional support in order to save the patient's life. Even if a specific diet or nutrition is not part of the doctor's prescription to the nurse, nutrition assistance should be provided in the patient's best interests (Ley, Hamdy, Mohan & Hu, 2014).
Considerations for Nutritional Support in Diabetic Patients
However, for nutritional support for a diabetic patient to be justifiable, it would be essential to consider the current dietary needs of the patients and the extent to which they are being met through regular diet. It would also be crucial to find the length of time the patient has been on an inadequate diet. Once the nurse has accessed the past nutritional status of the patient, it would be important to obtain the patient's current nutritional state as well as their medical conditions. Obviously, for a diabetic patient, food with low calories and sugar would help them not only in recuperating but also improving their medical status (Evert, Boucher, Cypress, Dunbar, Franz, Mayer, & Yancy, 2014). Nutritional support would be applied just through modified food menus. All the patient needs is food with low calories, thus it would be important that they eat fruits and whole grains.
Dietary Recommendations for Diabetic Patients
When dealing with a diabetic patient, it would be important to limit food with high sugar and eat smaller portions of food evenly throughout the day. It would also be critical to eat less carbohydrates, salt, and fat. The body system of a person ailing from diabetes cannot make a good use of insulin; which leads to high blood sugar levels. Eating food with less sugar level and other food such as fruit and vegetables help the body to keep the sugar in check. This not only helps the body to regulate the amount of blood sugar intake but also helps to reduce the level of sugar in the blood thus hastening healing.
Importance of Diabetic Diet to Different Cultural Backgrounds
Prescribed diet is in the best interest of the patient. It would be important that a patient with diabetes or pre-diabetes develops a healthy eating plan that would help keep the sugar level in control and manage body weight to keep such medical conditions as heart diseases at bay. Diabetic menus help to reduce high blood pressure and cholesterol levels. When an individual intakes excess calories, sugar level often goes off the charts, which could lead to other health problems such as kidney failure and heart damage (Evert, Boucher, Cypress, Dunbar, Franz, Mayer, & Yancy, 2014). However, diabetic menus are smart and safe choices for type 1 and type 2 diabetic patients. The menus could even help in hastening weight loss while giving the patient a host of other health benefits (Ley, Hamdy, Mohan & Hu, 2014).
Research on the Health Benefits of a Diabetic Diet
Research done by Ley, Hamdy, Mohan & Hu (2014) indicates that eating diabetic meals not only by patients ailing from this condition but also the healthy individuals could help keep them healthy. Health benefits inherent in this diet are: keeps the sugar level, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels in check. Diabetic diets also in control of the body weight. It reduces diabetes and keeps it at bay; definitely, this menu contributes to general well-being.
References
Evert, A. B., Boucher, J. L., Cypress, M., Dunbar, S. A., Franz, M. J., Mayer-Davis, E. J., & Yancy, W. S. (2014). Nutrition therapy recommendations for the management of adults with diabetes. Diabetes care, 037(Supplement 1), S120-S143.
Ley, S. H., Hamdy, O., Mohan, V., & Hu, F. B. (2014). Prevention and management of type 2 diabetes: dietary components and nutritional strategies. The Lancet, 0383(9933), 1999-2007.
