TYPES OF ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE

Nutrition is an applied science in relation to food and its impact on the human organism, its normal development and functions, and the appearance of diseases and metabolic disorders. Nutritionists are important mediators in the transfer of the achievements of nutritional science to the general public in order to maintain or improve their health. Two of the occupations are that deal professionally with food as a form of medicine are nutritionists and dieticians.

What is the difference between a nutritionist and a dietitian? The main differences between them are those derived from education and recognition, as both of them vary from country to country I cannot really give a general comment, however dieticians undergo a longer (often outdated) training while nutritionist are more experimental and cutting edge at times Both professions advocate that eating foods from each food group with variety, balance and moderation are the keys to success. Eating well means eating a variety of foods to obtain all essential nutrients for growth, plus additional nutrients needed to help fight any illness. Essential nutrients include protein, carbohydrates, fat, water, vitamins and minerals.

Nutrition is a vast subject and I don’t intend to answer everything within this article. However, the basics of nutrition are the same no matter what you read. Two main fundamentals principles are necessary to maintain a healthy body and mind. First you need to increase or maintain a quick metabolism and second you need to balance your blood sugars. These facts are shared by both the dietician and nutritionist. However Nutritionist is a young profession, whereas their curriculum, often are not thoroughly based on scientific rigorous testing. This has allowed nutritionist to use together with a diet or regime, the prescription of synthesized nutrients, vitamins, enzymes, glandular extracts and even herbs. Often a visit to the nutritionist would involve a lifestyle assessment so that eating habits can be individually assessed and gradually adjusted to a manageable "optimum" nutrition meaning the best possible eating and lifestyle habit the patient can handle. Despite it is nutrition centered the psycho/physical and holistic aspect of disease is taken in strong consideration when design a program. Several visits are often needed to see the nutritionist who will monitor the benefits of the program. While a dietician will monitor calories intake, blood abnormalities, chemical reaction and most often advise their patient generally on the intake of low fat, low sugar diet, high carbohydrates. The nutritionist instead will possibly have advised the client to follow a cleansing regime, possibly cleaning the colon and other organ ridding them of excess toxins, before dealing speciphycally with the patient’s pathology.

Nutrition is one of those fields that are inundated with quacks who will try to sell you the latest secret to weight loss. A basic myth-spotting motto: If it sounds too good to be true? It is. Nutrition is also a subject where a lot of books and magazine are freely available; this has resulted in excessive, often confusing and contradictory unofficial information made available to the general public. To complement this, health and women magazines as well as TV and radio shows are popular form where people gather unpresedented information which at times leads to irresponsible excessive dieting, false knowledge, trends, short lived fads. On the other hand people thirst for self help method in this field, as a possible cure and healing method, can only suggest that it is a field that will undoubtedly grow in the year to come. Let’s hope it will be taken more seriously and studied by the scientific community too.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 2:42 pm and is filed under nutrition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.