Nutritional Failure

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Nutrition and Aging

Food is more than just fuel – it is the foundation for good health. Nutrition impacts your health throughout your lifespan. To keep your body functioning correctly and aging gracefully, you must ensure that all its components work in tandem: from stomach acids that break down food to bile acid transporting fats and enzymes breaking protein into absorbable amino acids. When even one aspect fails or declines substantially in quantity, our bodies can suffer significantly.

Two facts emerge: Aging impacts your nutrition negatively. Nutrition affects how you age.

Getting to the Root Cause of Nutritional Failure

Aging impacts your nutrition negatively. Research has also proven that as we age, we tend to eat less, digest food less effectively, and absorb nutrients less effectively. However, we have similar or even increased nutrient needs compared to our younger selves. The production of acids, enzymes, and digestion is all decreased due to age, medications, trauma, and infections.

Nutrition affects how you age. Research has proven that choosing low carbohydrate diets or diets rich in vegetables, fruits, nuts, cereals, fish, and unsaturated fats, containing antioxidants, potassium, and omega-3 decreases cardiovascular diseases and obesity risk, protects the brain from aging, reduces the risk of telomere shortening, and promotes an overall healthier life.

What is worse is that our food now contains less nutrition than it did even four decades ago. Our fruits and vegetables lack vitamins; our proteins contain antibiotics that kill off beneficial bacteria. Pesticides and herbicides contaminate everything we eat or drink – including water.

A poor diet full of nutritionally deficient foods can take an extreme toll on your overall well-being. It makes perfect sense why every system within us would operate below its optimal capacity due to such adverse conditions.

Causes of Nutritional Failure

Undernutrition, in the way of poor digestion as well as low consumption, is a grave issue when an individual does not have adequate food to fulfill their energy needs. Its primary symptoms consist of severe weight loss, difficulty gaining strength, and depletion of body fat and muscle mass. Undernutrition or malnutrition can also be caused by poor nutritional habits, such as a lack of variety in one’s diet or overeating. Poor nutrition can lead to deficiencies in vitamins and minerals essential for our bodies to function correctly.

A range of nutrients in the right quantities is essential to stay healthy and sustain your body’s vital functions. Malnutrition occurs when there is not an adequate intake of these necessary substances. Unhealthy eating habits and digestive issues that interfere with food breakdown or nutrient absorption can contribute to nutritional deficiency. Even a single missing vitamin or mineral could damage your physical health and well-being!

We review what you eat to identify the core issue behind your nutritional challenges and determine its quality and quantity. We further assess your body’s ability to break down food and evaluate which nutrients are in your system. Based on these observations, our team can tailor-make a personalized approach for you that can include alterations with respect to food intake, supplements taken, or digestion processes involved – whatever is necessary to ensure that your body becomes the most powerful version of itself imaginable.

Treating Nutritional Failure

Treatments for undernutrition or malnutrition, also known as a nutritional failure, may involve dietary modifications and supplements of vitamins and minerals. A doctor or nutritionist will assess the underlying cause of nutritional deficiencies and create an individualized plan for managing them.

An essential part of any nutritional failure treatment is a dietary change that includes eating more nutrient-dense foods. Eating various fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, and healthy fats can help increase the number of essential vitamins and minerals in the diet. Eating meals regularly at intervals throughout the day may also improve nutrient absorption.

Sometimes, dietary modifications may not be enough to correct nutritional deficiencies. In these cases, supplements or other medications may be necessary in addition to dietary changes. Vitamin and mineral supplements can help replenish nutrient stores, while other medications may be prescribed to correct gastrointestinal problems or treat underlying medical conditions that cause nutritional deficiencies.

The medical industry needs to be better at providing adequate education on nutrition and its impact on our health. Nevertheless, it is a critical factor for longevity; after all, we are what we eat! There might be times when healing from either longstanding maltreatment or an unexpected event becomes necessary – then repairing the gut should take precedence.

Review the various Advanced Testing which we perform in our office. Read about the varied approaches with have in offering you real Solutions. Remember: Supplements supplement healthy foods; supplements do not replace food.

Advanced Testing

When looking at Nutritional Failure, we look to the gut, the microbiome, and the factors which negatively impact that environment. The critical thing to remember is that you, as a unique individual, may require more or fewer tests than others. Your provider will determine which test is necessary after an in-depth evaluation of your history, family history, and exposure.

Our comprehensive method of Testing for Nutritional Failure:

MDLifespan Inbody570

Body Composition Scan

As we age, our body composition changes, and it's essential to understand what these changes are and how they can affect us. A body composition scan is one of the best ways to accurately picture your current body composition.

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MDLifespan Food Sensitivity Combined Testing Genova

Food Sensitivity Combined Testing

Every day, more people discover that their health issues may be related to their food. We can be born with food allergies passed down from our parents, but we often develop these sensitivities due to an imbalance of the gut. As we age, our gut microbiome changes and can make us more prone to developing an intolerance.

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MDLifespan Metabolic Testing

Metabolic Testing

Your metabolism is the rate at which your body consumes energy. That's why it's important to understand and monitor your metabolic health. Glucose is crucial for the body as it provides instant energy. However, sugar has damaging side effects - coating proteins and leading to cellular damage and inflammation.

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MDLifespan Microbiome Testing Longevity

Microbiome Testing

Our overall health and well-being are inextricably linked to the condition of our gut microbiome. Studies have revealed a direct connection between an unbalanced gut microbiome with various illnesses within and beyond the gastrointestinal tract.

Read more
MDLifespan Nutritional Testing

Nutritional Testing

Nutritional testing can help you identify which nutrients your body is lacking. Our digestive system becomes weaker as we age due to decreased stomach acid production, and pancreatic enzymes, beneficial bacteria, and hazardous microorganisms begin replacing those helpful for meeting nutrient needs.

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Total Toxin Testing

Toxins are a significant threat to our health. Our environment contains toxins in food, air, and water. Our bodies are constantly exposed to these toxins, so we must know how much of each toxin we consume. As we age, our bodies cannot handle these toxins effectively, which can cause serious health problems.

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Solutions

In healing the gut, you must incorporate healthy eating, treating for harmful bacteria and pathogens, treating for digestive enzyme decline, and removing toxins from the gut, and replenishing the healthy bacteria.

Our comprehensive Solutions for Nutritional Failure:

MDLifespan TPE Solutions Home

Detox and Cleanse Therapy

Detoxification is an essential but often misunderstood and misconstrued process. Despite popular belief associated with trendy "detox" drinks that promise quick results without lasting impact, the real power behind detox stems from making small lifestyle changes to help your body flush out unnecessary toxins for improved health and well-being over time.

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MDLifespan Solutions Toxin Therapy

Toxin Therapy

Toxins are a pervasive danger in our environment, far beyond the traditional scope of heavy metals. Discovering plastics, petroleum products, herbicides, pesticides, and traces of medications and other contaminants in significant quantities inside your body is common.

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FAQs & Sources

We value fact over opinion. Please refer to our FAQs for the most commonly asked questions. In addition, we have listed the medical references for the facts stated on the website.

To review the articles and references cited on Nutritional Failure, click here

FAQ

Do we age because of bad nutrition?

Short answer, yes. A healthy diet is key to everything good, and an unhealthy diet is key to everything bad.

If I eat a healthy diet, will I be healthy?

Short answer, maybe. Nutrition is what you eat (ingestion) and how you digest, absorb, utilize, and eliminate waste. From problems with ingestion (poor food choices), to digestion (think dentures, decreased stomach acid), to absorption (think lack of enzymes to break food down to the basic building blocks), to utilization (think B vitamin deficiencies), to elimination (think diarrhea). All these factors must be considered, and only when all these factors are corrected do you get healthy by eating healthy food.

What causes food not to be absorbed?

Food is poorly absorbed if the food is not completely broken down, such as lack of chewing, stomach acids, or pancreatic enzymes. Food is poorly absorbed if the transit time through the bowels is too fast, such as chronic diarrhea or a surgical procedure that shortens your bowel. Food is poorly absorbed if any part of the intestinal tract is inflamed, such as Crohn’s disease, celiac disease, ulcerative colitis, or autoimmune diseases.

Do I need to eat well if I take a lot of supplements?

Too often, patients believe that supplements are nutritional. Supplements do just what they say, they supplement a healthy diet, but they do not replace a healthy diet. Our providers believe in the power of high-quality supplements. However, nothing replaces a healthy, nutrition-packed diet.

What are the healthiest anti-aging foods?

Nothing can replace a healthy diet. Aging is brought on with increasing severity as nutrition fails more and more. For the healthiest antiaging and longevity foods, consider apples, pears, cherries, and berries, like blueberries and acai. Vegetables include broccoli, cabbage, tomatoes, avocados, and all dark green leafy vegetables. Protein includes fresh wild-caught fish, open-range bison, beef and deer, and free-range chickens and eggs. Let us not forget the spices like ginger, garlic, cumin, and cinnamon. Nutrition against aging is a highly effective weapon.

Sources

  1. Brown, LaVerne. The Effect of Nutrition on Aging.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8838212/
  2. DeSilva, Dana. Nutrition as We Age: Healthy Eating.” https://health.gov/news/202107/nutrition-we-age-healthy-eating-dietary-guidelines
  3. Roman, Ryan. “How your Nutritional Needs Change as you Age.”  https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/nutritional-needs-and-aging
  4. Mathers, John C. “Impact of Nutrition on the Ageing Process.” https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-nutrition/article/impact-of-nutrition-on-the-ageing-process/89A00A1CB155D209EEFDF093A2AC8BE8#
  5. Jong J.C.K. Nutrition and healthy ageing: The key ingredients. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8838212/