Trinitie Czech

Health and Nutrition

Ron Vernon

November 21, 2018

Malnutrition

Being that this is a fairly broad term, I’ll be explaining many forms of malnutrition. How

someone can overeat and how someone can undereat. Including a generalized description of it,

how you diagnose and treat malnutrition, the pathology, and much more in depth information.

Let’s start off with what is malnutrition. Stated in the class textbook it is, “Failing health

that results from longlasting dietary practices that do not coincide with nutritional needs.” People

are not meeting the healthy amount of nutrients that are needed to live a healthy life. Meaning

they could be not enough nutrients, or too much. This can lead to other nutritional disorders

depending on what nutrients are lacking more than the rest. Malnutrition falls into 2 broad

groups. Undernutrition is when someone is not eating enough. They aren't getting all of the

required nutrients to keep the body healthy and stable. There could be many reasons why

someone isn’t getting everything that they need. It’s a

possibility that people can’t obtain the food needed.

The person could have an interference with drugs or

alcohol that make it harder for you body to

metabolise or absorb nutrients. Or simply your body

doesn’t metabolise a certain nutrient. The most

obvious sign of undernutrition is the loss of body fat.

People are abnormally skinny, making it so their skeletal structure is extremely visible. A

doctor's evaluation can diagnose it, or even blood tests. The ways that many treat something like

undernutrition is through eating. For some people that can be a lot easier said than done. You

need to focus on getting a balanced diet with a variety of vitamins and minerals. The doctor

could even prescribe certain vitamins that you should take.

The second group is called overnutrition or hyperalimentation. This is also commonly

related and linked to obesity. The amount of nutrients that a person is taking in supasses what

you need for normal human growth. The amount of foods going into your body exceeds the

amount that you should be eating causing your body to oversupply. Oversupplying your body

with too much vitamins or minerals becomes very toxic to your health. Just like undernutrition,

overnutrition requires you to focus on your eating habits. People are all built different so there

are many different diets out there to help people with their needs. Fad diets promise weight loss

or a stronger body with making unusual food choices and being extremely restrictive. For

example you eat good for a long period of time; following along with the things you can and

can’t eat, and then you finish the diet and go back to your old habits. This is what you need to
avoid. They will not help you, only get you almost back to where you started when you began.

You must get help from a doctor so that you aren’t going to back-track. They will know with

your body type what things work for you and what would not.

“More than ten million children suffer from severe acute malnutrition globally each

year.” (Tappen, 2018) Many third world countries are the ones that struggle the most with

malnutrition. Haiti is said to be the most undernourished in the world. People here don’t even get

2000 calories per day. They average about 1900 per day. In Uganda malnutrition is seen as a

medical emergency instead of here in America it is just considered a preventable condition.

Because of places like that they don’t always have access to food or the proper medical

treatment. Tappen was in Uganda studying and trying to help empower the women there and

promote nutritional health. She then wrote a book called The Riddle of Malnutrition. It includes

all of her knowledge and experience that she had learned from being there and helping the

women and children. Malnutrition not only occurs in children in poverned countries but also to

the elderly. They often start to lack certain nutrients in their body has time goes on. For example

in some cases when they are malnourished they will sometimes develop weak bones.
 There are many ways that someone can be diagnosed with malnutrition. For adults they

take into consideration your BMI. They check to make sure that you are in the healthy body

weight range, and if not then they can more easily determine you are. For children they will have

to measure their height and weight and compare it to an averaged sized kid. To get a more

accurate result they will do tests. Things like blood tests to see what nutrients you are lacking.

Doctors can also normally visually see you when you come in all the time to get check up, they

have history of your weight so when they notice you're losing weight everytime you come in.

The doctor will know that something is up.

Malnutrition can happen to anyone and is not a rare disease. It is a fairly reasonable

disease to cure as long as the person is in the right mindset to get help and stay healthy once

they get better. It could be very easy for someone to fall back into their old habits of not eating

properly. But once they have access to food it should be relatively easy to stay on track. People

with malnutrition need to be helped as soon as possible. It can become very serious and life

threatening if they don’t get the proper care that is needed to stay alive. Because it all leads

back to a properly working and functioning body. If it doesn’t get everything that it needs the

body then doesn’t know what to do. So then its last resort is to take nutrients from other parts of

your body. Eventually you won’t have any leftover and so then your body will just shut down on

its own.
Sources

Knudsen, Johanna B. ​Malnutrition : Risk Factors, Health Effects, and Prevention​. Nova Science

Publishers, Inc, 2012. ​EBSCOhost,​

libprox1.slcc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN

=541662&site=eds-live.

Tappan, Jennifer. ​The Riddle of Malnutrition : The Long Arc of Biomedical and Public Health

Interventions in Uganda.​ Ohio University Press, 2017. ​EBSCOhost​,

libprox1.slcc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN

=1530155&site=eds-live​.

Nag, Oishimaya Sen. “Most Malnourished Countries In The World.” ​World Atlas​, Worldatlas,

10 Mar. 2016, ​www.worldatlas.com/articles/most-malnourished-countries-in-the-world.html​.

“Malnutrition Symptoms and Treatments.” ​NHS Inform - Scottish Health Information You Can
Trust,​ ​www.nhsinform.scot/illnesses-and-conditions/nutritional/malnutrition#diagnosis​.

Laur, Celia V., et al. “Malnutrition or Frailty? Overlap and Evidence Gaps in the Diagnosis and
Treatment of Frailty and Malnutrition.” ​Applied Physiology, Nutrition & Metabolism,​ vol. 42,
no. 5, May 2017, pp. 449–458. ​EBSCOhost​,
libprox1.slcc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=s3h&AN=1
22654820&site=eds-live​.

Wardlaw, G. M., Smith, A. M., & Collene, A. (2015). ​Contemporary nutrition​. New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill Education.