Exploring the effects of internal and external factors that can influence nutritional decisions is important for determining the patterns associated with healthy populations. While the connections between unhealthy diets and morbidity have been previously established, researchers have to focus on discovering what specific psychological or medical factors contribute to the effectiveness of nutritional intake, requirements, or counseling.
Psychological Factors and Nutrition
Psychological factors that influence nutritional patterns or the need for counseling are associated with what patients feel or think. In most cases, they are difficult to describe due to their dependence on such factors as individuals’ upbringing, lifestyles, and overall attitudes toward healthy living. It has been identified that psychological stress, mood, beliefs, values, and general habits can have both long- and short-term influence on nutrition. For instance, a patient’s values and beliefs can contribute to food choices on a regular basis while mood and emotional struggles (e.g., stress, anxiety, depression) lead to the short-term changes in diet.
When exploring psychological factors that affect nutritional patterns, it is important to mention nutritional counseling, which is a relatively new mental health care field (King, 2017). During nutritional counseling sessions, a patient can identify and treat his or her psychological issues that lead to dietary imbalances. Psychological problems can also lead to the lack of adherence to nutritional sessions and the inability of a patient to manage the identified issues. Overall, psychological factors are considered secondary and less visible, even to patients who experience them. For ensuring the development of healthy nutritional intake that contributes to the improvement of well-being, the balance in requirements, and adherence to counseling, psychological factors should be identified, assessed, and addressed.
Clinical Factors and Nutrition
Clinical factors also play an important role in determining nutritional requirements, intake, and counseling. In individuals who suffer from conditions that limit their health, nutritional habits, choices, and intake can change dramatically. On the one hand, those who recover from such diseases as cancer that caused significant muscle loss are required to increase their nutritional intake and consume high-calorie food. On the other hand, patients diagnosed with obesity or heart disease are advised to limit the caloric intake of some foods and substitute them with healthier options to facilitate recovery. Therefore, clinical factors that can affect patients’ nutritional intake, requirements, and counseling needs are associated with vital indicators such as blood pressure, cholesterol levels, BMI, previous conditions and treatments (e.g., surgeries, medications), history of nutrition, substance abuse, food allergies, and so on (The Scottish Public Health Observatory, 2017). Any patient characteristics that can be improved or deteriorated because of food intake are all associated with patients’ nutrition.
Nutritional counseling may not only help patients identify the psychological reasons behind some food choices but also assist in adhering to the dietary changes that have been recommended to patients because of their clinical diagnoses. Importantly, nutritional counselors set a goal of preventing drug-nutrient interactions that can harm patients’ well-being; for instance, individuals who have been prescribed such medications as monoamine oxidase inhibitors are required to “follow a tyramine-controlled diet to avoid dietary interference with their medication” (“Nutrition counseling,” 2018, para. 2). In conclusion, it is important to mention that clinical and psychological factors usually interact and thus influence patients’ adherence to nutritional counseling, dietary choices, and the desired nutritional intake for improving the overall health outcomes.
References
King, L. (2017). What is nutritional counseling? Web.
Nutrition counseling.(2018). Web.
The Scottish Public Health Observatory. (2017). Clinical risk factors: Overview. Web.