You must have thought once in your life, I look fit, so why should I follow a nutrition-based diet? Why should I pay a lot of money to a nutritionist or dietician to remodel my diet plan even though I am fit? so, Why is Nutrition important for wellbeing?
Catch; I know you guys have many questions, some like the ones mentioned above or some new ones. So what are we waiting for? I want to answer all your questions about why nutrition is important. And why should you change your eating habits?
Table of Contents
Nutrition is a broad area of science that deals with diet and its effect on the human body’s growth, development, metabolism, physiology, and composition. Since not all calories are equal and not all foods work in the same way, instead, the importance of each food is defined, and deficiency of constituents may lead to disease and badly affect our physical and mental well-being. Hence balancing nutrition is key to a good healthy lifestyle.
Why is Nutrition important for wellbeing
If we want to live to the fullest, then intake of nutritious food is inevitable. Each process of our body requires different micronutrients, macronutrients, vitamins as cofactors, intermittent products, or sources of energy to complete the process, and our body produces or absorbs them with the breakdown of foods we eat. Hence, maintaining the right amount of balanced nutrients in our diet is essential for the proper functioning of our body.
Therefore, if you eat one kind of food and avoid others, you are creating an imbalance. Eating a variety of fruits, vegetables, cereals, lentils, and non-veg items (if non-vegetarian), in harmony with the seasons, can provide a whole lot of essential protein, fat, carbs, micronutrients, and vitamins.
Importance of nutrition in Health conditions
Besides nourishing, nutritional food aims to prevent mental and physical health conditions.
Importance of nutrition on mental well-being
Although we fail to understand that nutrition does have a direct and indirect correlation with mental health. In fact, studies have found that nutrition such as LC n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, carotenoids, vitamin B, D, and polyphenols preserve the normal functioning of the brain, stop rescue brain energetic defects in aging, and control mental well-being [1, 2]
Role of Nutrition in Depression
Depression is a disorder that might increase the feeling of sadness and anxiety, might not feel like engaging in any fun activity, loss of interest in foods, and frequent mood swings. Although emotional trauma is characterized as the cause of depression, the deficiency of neurotransmitters like dopamine, noradrenaline, serotonin, and GABA plays a role in depression with or without mental trauma.
However, amino acid nutrition, like tryptophane, if consumed on an empty stomach, boosts the production of serotonin since tryptophan is the precursor of serotonin. Tryptophan can induce sleep, tranquility, and an increase in serotonin levels reduces depression (if the deficiency of serotonin is the cause). Similarly, Tyrosine and phenylalanine are the precursors of dopamine and norepinephrine, other neurotransmitters whose deficiency may cause depression [3, 4, 5].
Drop down in the levels of Omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin B (folate), and magnesium can also play a major role in depression hence the fulfillment of omega 3 through various diets such as fish, nuts like Almonds and Walnuts, Seeds like chia seeds and flax seeds, fruits like avocado, etc., the rich source of omega 3 can prevent it. In fact, depression patients are recommended to consume Omega-3 fatty acids containing 1.5-2 g of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) as a dietary supplement which potentially lights up their mood [6, 7].
In the case of B-complex, it is observed that supplementation of vitamin B12 at the rate of 0.4 mg/day and folate at 0.8 mg/day can help treat depression by decreasing the symptoms of depression. A similar case is also observed in magnesium; rapid recovery was observed in patients intaking 125-300 mg of magnesium with each meal. The above studies are directly establishing the correlation of nutrition in the treatment of mental disorders [8, 9, 10]
Role of Nutrition in Anxiety and other mental disorders
Anxiety is a mental disorder linked to fear and manifests as a future-oriented mood state. According to the United Nations, nearly one billion people are suffering from mental disorders worldwide [11]. Like physical illness, mental disorders are equally potent enough to decrease the efficiency of the person.
The causes of this mental illness are many, and one of them is a nutritional imbalance; in fact, there are certain nutrients that are the cause- and certain nutrients work as a treatment. For example, analysis shows that food high-fat diet, inadequate tryptophan, and high intake of sugar and refined carbohydrates are associated with higher levels of anxiety [12]. In addition, Artificial sweeteners, processed vegetable oils rich in Omega-6 fatty acids, and gluten, which we tend to consume in home food, can also increase the risk of anxiety and mental illness.
In contrast, the nutrients present in turmeric, i.e., curcumin, polyunsaturated good fat like Omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, and the ketogenic diet, are linked to the treatment of anxiety with the regulation of microbiome and inflammation. For instance, the ketogenic diet helps in addressing the biopathological foundation of chronic neurological diseases and mental illness, vitamin D regulates calcium homeostasis and ion channels, and neurotransmitter levels (e.g., dopamine and serotonin) in the brain, curcumin improves gut microbiome, decreases inflammation and inflammasome, and regulates microRNAs and histone deacetylases, etc. [13, 14, 15, 16, 17].
Importance of nutrition in chronic health condition
Chronic diseases are defined as long-term diseases or health deterioration caused due to combination of genetic, physiological, environmental, and behavioral factors. The disease which is categorized as chronic is cardiovascular diseases (account for 17.9 million deaths), cancers (9 million deaths), chronic respiratory disease, and diabetes [18].
Like mental illness, this chronic disease also has positive and negative associations with nutrition. For example, in diabetes, high glycemic index (GI) foods may negatively affect the patients, while low-GI foods positively help in the reduction of insulin resistance since low-GI foods like lentils, legumes, and oats are composed of complex carbs which break down slowly, followed by slow absorption in the gut and, therefore, lower glucose spikes [19, 20].
Pro-inflammatory dietary items are another reason for chronic diseases like cancer and diabetes [21]. The Dietary inflammatory index scores estimate the level of inflammation and risk of cancers like breast, colorectal, lungs, and pancreas. In contrast, anti-inflammatory diets such as the Mediterranean diet and diets high in foods containing antioxidants and polyphenols may lower the risk of various cancers [22].
Examples of pro-inflammatory foods are high in oils high in omega-6 fatty acids, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, artificial transfats, refined carbohydrates, excessive alcohol, and processed meat. At the same time, the foods high in anti-inflammatory are oils and fatty fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids, berries, Broccoli, Avocados, Green tea, pepper, mushrooms (shiitake mushroom), grapes, turmeric, and cherries.
With the consumption of anti-inflammatory foods, you are not only avoiding cancer and diabetes, but you will also avoid Cardiovascular diseases [23].
Importance of nutrition in Weight management
All the nutrition we talked about and diseases, whether mental illness or chronic health conditions, are closely related to a person’s weight, especially body fat percentage. Since the risk of diseases is high in obese people than the person with normal BMI, an imbalance in nutrition intake is probably shown by the change in weight and can be taken as an alarm or warning to work on the nutrition balance.
If you are able to maintain the correct BMI meaning, you are avoiding 90% of physical and mental illnesses.
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How to define the nutritional requirement of a person
Water and food are essential to life, without which our survival is impossible. But only eating sufficiently isn’t enough appropriate intake of nutrients is the key to the good life. Although there are certain guidelines for measuring the adequate amount of nutrient intake and deficiency, the actual nutritional requirement may be different for each person depending upon the age, height, weight, genetics, and environment in which they live.
Hence, the diet chart that works for one person might not work for others. Therefore, each person should analyze how food affects their body. For instance, mushrooms are a good source of protein, and eating mushrooms for one person might build muscles, but at the same time, another person might be allergic to them. So, taking a close look at the foods is important to establish a perfect balance between them.
Routine whole-body checks can be another way to determine your nutritional requirement. For instance, if a person is deficient in vitamin D, that means he needs to increase the consumption of dietary sources of vitamin D, increase sun exposure or take vitamin D supplements depending upon the level of deficiency. Moreover, the deficiency or overproduction of any micronutrients or vitamins can only find out with biochemical reports.
A routine check-up may also prevent you from chronic diseases by diagnosing them at their primary stage and may be cured. The metabolism disorder is the beginning of most conditions. For example, it’s pretty easy to reverse type 2 diabetes in pre-diabetics than the patients who have crossed the level and developed diabetes. Moreover, reversal is only possible with a change in eating habits.
Final Line
There is a strong relationship between nutrition and a person’s overall well-being. As we have seen above, not only in weight management and chronic diseases but also in mental illness, nutrition plays a role from both the positive and negative sides. Consumption of certain foods might aid the disease, whereas consuming other nutritious foods might cure the illness.
