Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT) is an essential component of comprehensive health care. Individuals with a variety of conditions and illnesses can improve their health and quality of life by receiving medical nutrition therapy. During an MNT intervention, Dietitians counsel clients on behavioral and lifestyle changes required to impact long-term eating habits and health.
Medical Nutrition Therapy includes:
One of the most important functions of our kidneys is to get rid of waste products generated by our body. If allowed to accumulate, these toxic, waste products would lead to death very quickly.
The kidneys also help regulate the amount of water and substances called electrolytes in the body. Sodium, calcium and potassium are examples of electrolytes.
In patients with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), these vital functions are greatly reduced or eliminated. As a result, great care must be taken to manage patient’s diet to avoid too rapid build of waste. This is usually achieved with the help of an experienced dietitian
At Global Health, our experienced dietitians
offer Medical Nutrition Therapy to patients with CKD. We also offer consultation service to Dialysis facilities and kidney treatment centers.
Controlling diabetes requires strict attention to your diet. While there is no cure for this disease, proper control can help to prevent its complications such as eye disease or retinopathy, painful nerve disease or neuropathy and kidney disease or nephropathy. Our Medical Nutrition Therapy Program for Diabetes Management can help patients whether they are on medications for their diabetes or not. In fact, studies, most recently The Look Ahead trial, have shown that lifestyle modification, which includes diet and exercise, can help patients decrease the number of diabetes medications that they use.
Recently, a new group of people at especially high risk for developing diabetes has been identified. They are called prediabetics. People with prediabetes have as much as fifty percent increased risk for developing diabetes. In other words, for every 100 persons with prediabetes 50 will develop diabetes in 5 years.
The good news is that in a landmark clinical trial, The Diabetes Prevention Trial, researchers have shown that lifestyle modification alone (proper diet and exercise) can prevent or delay the progression from prediabetes to diabetes. In this study, lifestyle modification alone was better than medicine in this regard.
People who are overweight or obese are at increased risk for diabetes and prediabetes. Weight management can help with both of these conditions. The success of lifestyle modification in the two trials mentioned above was achieved mostly in people who had a five to ten percent weight loss.
At Global Health and Nutrition Consults, our Diabetes Management Program targets weight loss when appropriate and offers customized meal plans to help control diabetes.
At Global Health, our experienced dietitians offer Medical Nutrition Therapy to patients with CKD. We also offer consultation service to Dialysis facilities and kidney treatment centers.
Hypertension or high blood pressure has been described as a silent killer. It is silent because you can have it for many years without any symptoms. Yet if left untreated, this condition can lead to many complications, such as stroke and heart disease, which can be fatal. Fortunately, hypertension is easily detected and working with your doctor, it can be controlled. One of the first lines of control is lifestyle modification. This includes diet and exercise.
Lifestyle modification is recommended whether or not you are on medication for your high blood pressure. It is particularly effective in patients who are overweight or obese. In some patients, lifestyle modification is enough to control their blood pressure. In others, it can decrease the number or amount of blood pressure medications.
At Global Health and Nutrition Consults, our dietitian will work with you to customize a nutrition program to help you control your blood pressure.
Sensitive to salt
It is believed that many people with hypertension are sensitive to salt. Therefore, salt restriction is a key part of any control strategy. Our dietitian will teach you how to read food labels in order to determine the amount of salt in the foods you eat and help you identify low salt alternatives. We will also provide you with recipes to some tasty low-salt dishes.
In order to eat healthy, you need to have healthful food readily available. This might sound simple and obvious, but it is far easier said than done.
First, figuring out what is healthful is a challenge. Food labels are often confusing if not downright misleading. Secondly, healthful foods are usually more expensive than their less healthful counterparts. Compare the price of whole wheat bread to white bread. Finally, even if you knew what to look for, and are willing to pay for it, actually finding the right food can be a daunting task.
Global Health and Nutrition Consults offers customized grocery tours. During these tours we can help you identify opportunities to buy healthful foods at reasonable prices. Here is a hint: the local farmers markets. We also teach you to read food labels so that you can understand serving size and identifying ingredients such as trans-fat and sodium nitrite which can be harmful to your health. This would allow you to better compare different brands of the same food. As a general rule, the more healthful food has less salt, less fat, less sugar and no preservative.
Half the battle of eating right is shopping right. Call Global Health and Nutrition Consults to help you fight that battle and, therefore, lives well.
Take your health in your hands. You are what you eat.
