What is Functional Nutrition and Why should you care?

Introduction

Over the last few years, functional nutrition has started gaining the popularity within the health and the wellness circles.

Well known as nutraceuticals, functional foods are not only highly nutritious but are also associated with a host of powerful health benefits that it carries along.

For instance, functional foods can help protect against various diseases, prevent nutrient deficiencies, and also help promote essential growth and development.

In this article we will look at the definition, benefits, and some of the potential uses of functional nutrition. 

Functional medicine- As an alternative method of treatment

Functional medicine is nothing but a more individualized, patient centric, and a science based approach that allows patients as well as the practitioners to collaborate and address the underlying causes of the disease and also in promoting the optimum wellness.

Functional nutrition and functional medicine

Rather than simply diagnosing and determining which drugs or surgery will help treat the condition best, Functional Medicine dives deep into understanding the patient’s history as well as the biochemistry also figures out as to why is the patient ill. 

Functional medicine is mainly very personalized and moreover, it includes a detailed analysis of the patient’s genetic makeup. 

Functional Nutrition

Functional nutrition is a powerful mainspring to functional medicine. It considers food as a natural therapy in restoring the balance, fill in the nutrient deficiencies, mend the gut, and so much more.

Functional medicine is an extensive medical approach which helps in treating the health problems considering it as a part of a system breakdown in the human body.

While in contrast to this, functional nutrition takes this aspect one step further by spotlighting the various ways how food can be a fundamental component of health and eventually also be the cause of physical problems.

However, it is important to take a note that functional nutrition is not a onetime effort to put in, but a habit to develop, which eventually becomes a lifestyle that one needs to adopt.

It is mainly the practice to consider every aspect of one’s health, diet, and the overall lifestyle along with giving them the nutrition recommendations.  

A functional nutrition approach demands the dieticians to follow an order of steps in order to determine what dietary changes are required that their client will best benefit from. 

Below are some of the steps, which may vary from situation to situations.

• Extensive evaluation of the previous medical history
• Review of the organ systems
• Review of the medication as well as the supplement history
• Review of the current diet as well as the lifestyle habits
• Review of the previous medical testing and its respective results
• Nutrient test in order to gauge the potential deficiencies

From the result of these tests, the Functional nutrition then works on to develop a completely customizable program to target the cause of the health problems.

This may even include eliminating the processed foods or even eliminating the entire food groups like gluten or the dairy products. Sometimes doctors also recommended a supplement in order to improve the digestion system or may even encourage establishment of the beneficial bacteria.

However, most of the times, the doctors will teach and handhold their client on how to control their lifestyle factors, for instance, how to handle stress or how to manage their nervous system impulses.

To summarize, a functional nutrition dietitian will study the patient, understand the underlying cause and the disease, try to find the root cause of the disease and guide the patient how to bring around a change in the lifestyle. 

How functional nutrition uses food as a medicine?

Contrary to the very well known opinion, there is nothing like one single functional nutrition diet. Rather, the right dietary strategy is one that is customised and designed to address a patient specific health concerns.

Nevertheless, some of the basic premises hold true for most of the people that are seeking to eat healthy and right for their body. Following are some of the principles answer as to what exactly functional nutrition is supposed to look like on a personal level.

1. Helps filling up the gap with essential nutrients

All the components of the food together serve as the building blocks for the entire body. Essential nutrients like the vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, amino acids, carbohydrates, and more are very vital for keeping the body strong and healthy. Helping the body nourishing it with what it actually needs every day, you are welcoming a healthy lifestyle.

2. Stick with the quality foods

Eating processed junk food will prevent the body from taking all the nutrients that it needs, thereby compromising on your system.

Understanding the functional medicine matrix 

Functional medicine practitioners make use of couple of tools to sort out the information, analyze it, and guide in the required treatment, thereby allowing flexibility and the essential personalized care.

Functional medicine matrix is a way of understanding the patient’s potential root causes of the dysfunction, and post which the doctor can prescribe the required interventions in order to address these root causes. 

Although, it was primarily designed for the doctors, however, it is also applicable for dieticians and nutritionists.

The actual functional medicine matrix is copyrighted by IFM, which one can find here digital copy of the matrix here. 

The 5 R protocol

Many functional dieticians and nutritionists uses the 5R protocol which is as follows:

1. Remove: Remove all the foods from your diet that causes allergy, sensitivity, or intolerance, and any pathogens in digestive tract.

2. Replace: Replace what makes you deficient in, vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, digestive enzymes, bile, etc.

3. Repopulate: Repopulate the gut with right balance of gut bacteria, using probiotics & fermented foods.

4. Repair: Repair the damage to the gut, with the required supplements to support the process.

5. Rebalance: Examine the current lifestyle and look for places where it is unbalanced. It also includes sleep quality, stress levels, work-life balance, social support, etc.

The 5-R protocol is helpful because it provides a basic framework in order to address the complex issues, with multiple nutrition interventions.

Reasons to consider functional nutrition over conventional nutrition

Functional nutrition goes out of the box in identifying the root causes of diseases to helps people heal by using food and nutrition as the main approaches.

It is been used in combination with conventional medicine reason, because it is backed by science, but more than this, it is a patient-centered approach. 

Pros and cons of conventional nutrition 

Conventional nutrition comes cheap, while personalization is the key difference between the functional and the conventional nutrition.  

Although the functional food is quite similar in appearance, a conventional food that is been consumed as a part of a usual diet, can be demonstrated to have physiological benefits as well and, or reduce the risk of some of the chronic disease beyond the basic nutritional functions, which they contain as a bioactive compound.

A nutraceuticals is nothing but products that is purified from the foods which is mainly sold in medicinal forms and are not usually connected directly with the foods. A nutraceuticals is mainly demonstrated to help avail physiological benefit or even provide protection against some of the chronic diseases, like diabetes, cancer, menopause, anxiety, weight loss, etc. 

Benefits of Functional nutrition

• Help prevent nutrient deficiencies
• Help protect against diseases
• Help promote growth and development 

Cons of Functional nutrition

Although there isn’t any possible disadvantage of the functional foods, however from a health education viewpoint, it can obscure boundaries between the food groups. This influences the simple and practical dietary advice that can be formulated.

Moreover, functional foods are always a good example of the advances that are been made by industry in the food technology and development.

What are functional foods?

Functional foods are mainly of two categories. One is conventional and the other one is modified.

Conventional foods are primarily natural, whole food ingredients which are rich in the essential and vital nutrients like vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, as well as heart-healthy fats.

Modified foods are fortified with the additional ingredients, like vitamins, minerals, probiotics, etc, in order to increase health benefits.

List of functional foods one should start taking

Here is the list of some of the conventional functional foods

• Fruits: kiwi, peaches, apples, oranges, bananas
• Vegetables: broccoli, spinach, cauliflower
• Nuts: almonds, cashews, nuts
• Seeds: chia seeds, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds
• Legumes: black beans, chickpeas
• Whole grains: oats, buckwheat, brown rice, barley
• Seafood: salmon, , anchovies, mackerel, 
• Herbs and spices: turmeric, cinnamon, ginger, 
• Beverages: coffee, black tea, green tea, etc

Here are some illustrations of modified functional foods:

• fortified juices
• fortified dairy products, like milk and yogurt
• Almonds, coconut, rice, cashew milk
• fortified grains, such as bread, pasta
• fortified cereal and eggs

Nutrition food is much more than food. Nutrient-rich foods such as fruits, veggies, etc are considered as functional foods, together with fortified foods such as juice, eggs, cereals, etc

Practicing functional nutrition

Practicing functional nutrition is possible by eating real, whole foods and which are filled up with all the essential nutrients. 

Taking care of your gut health (gut microbiome)

Eating the most nutritious diet won’t do you any good if the digestive system is not performing well.

 

 

 

 

 

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As per the research more than 70% of the immune system is located in gut, without which it cannot functioning properly, as you are at risk for the infections, inflammation, and even hormonal balances.

Ensuring signs of leaky gut syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, and other conditions so that you can tell when something has fallen out of place.

Ensuring that you eat healthy foods that are filled with probiotics ensures that your microbial levels always stay high, which ultimately your immune system keeps working. 

Living a healthy lifestyle

A functional nutrition diet isn’t short time, it is a practice.

Instead, it is a continuous and a dynamic process that you will continuously have to experiment with the diet and the lifestyle until you find what works best for you.

Success only start coming from having a conversation with the body that keep you aware about how well it responds to the different factors so that one can continuously set it up for the better success.

Avoid toxic growing environments and Stuff with GMO

In today’s world, it is very vital to understand what is present in your food.

Factory farmed animal products, GMO crops, etc, fill the digestive system with those substances, that humans are not exposed to, and this impacts on the health. Ensure having sourced the food from the places that are trusted. 

Adding vitamin supplements to your diet

Supplements are not really the alternative to the regular diet, but in fact in this busy going world and the lifestyle that are people are adopting, it becomes difficult to even eat regular diet.

Moreover, those who are vegans and vegetarians do not get essential nutrients from direct raw food, as compared to the non vegetarians to can directly consume fish, etc.

In this case, Functional nutrition supplements come as a boon since it contains nutrients like omega 3, so in these cases supplements help tremendously to fill in the nutritional gaps. 

Conclusion

Functional nutrition is the answer to most of the notable health problems currently, and thereby switching your diet based on your health concerns can help make a difference in the quality of your life.

By focusing more on the functional nutrition diet, one can achieve the best health ever for the long run.