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Nutritionist
Last reviewed: 03.07.2025

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A nutritionist is not the most common profession in the medical field. And you will not find a nutritionist in every district clinic. However, this doctor can help not only cure many diseases, but also predict and prevent their development in advance. That is why the profession of a nutritionist is so necessary and important.
Who is a nutritionist?
Even the ancients said: we are what we eat. This saying is quite appropriate if we are discussing the profession of a nutritionist. So who is a nutritionist and what does he do? The name "nutritionist" comes from the word "diet". The word "diet" means - the rules of nutrition and the correct selection of products, their preparation, frequency and quantity of consumption.
This means that a nutritionist is a doctor who knows how to eat right. Moreover, he can choose the right diet for a patient with a particular disease. A nutritionist will tell you how to eat so as not to worsen the condition of the body during illness, but on the contrary, to alleviate its condition and promote a quick recovery.
But these are not all the possibilities of dietetics and a dietitian. As is known, many diseases are the result of an unhealthy lifestyle. One of the key elements of an unhealthy or harmful lifestyle is unhealthy nutrition. What we eat can easily develop a number of acute and chronic diseases in the body. Unhealthy nutrition can lead to obesity.
Obesity has a negative effect on the body as a whole and on many of its systems, for example, on the cardiovascular system. Obesity can lead to the formation of fatty plaques in the vessels, to heart attacks and many other problems.
Therefore, a nutritionist is not only a treating physician, but also a doctor whose advice will help you avoid treatment. His advice will help prevent the development of many diseases through proper nutrition.
When should you see a nutritionist?
First of all, you should not contact a nutritionist when health problems have already begun. If you are young and healthy, then it is high time to learn the rules of healthy eating and preserve the priceless gift - your health and beauty. A nutritionist will help you with this.
In addition, he can assess your weight and susceptibility to developing certain diseases and help develop a proper and healthy diet. Such a diet can prevent the development of diseases and keep you healthy for many years.
People with both excess and insufficient weight should consult a nutritionist. The right diet combined with adequate physical activity will help you gain or lose weight and live a healthy and fulfilling life.
If you have problems with your gastrointestinal tract or cardiovascular system, you should also see a nutritionist. A nutritionist will help if you have problems with your skin, nails, and hair. It is quite possible that these cosmetic problems are caused by “imbalances” in nutrition and a lack of certain vitamins and microelements. It is the nutritionist who will help you create the right diet and restore your former beauty.
What tests should you take when visiting a nutritionist?
Any doctor may ask you to take a general blood test. This simple test will show the general condition of the body. In addition, it is better to do a biochemical blood test, check the blood sugar level and take a general urine test.
There is another test that is often prescribed by nutritionists. This test is called TSH for short. It determines the level of thyroid hormone. After all, it is thyroid dysfunction that can lead to excess weight and obesity.
Without these tests, it will be difficult for a nutritionist to rule out some possible chronic diseases or causes of a particular phenomenon. It is the tests and their results that will help the doctor to create the right preventive or therapeutic diet.
What diagnostic methods does a nutritionist use?
One of the main diagnostic methods that nutritionists often use is testing. Your doctor may prescribe you various blood and urine tests. They will help your doctor get a proper idea of your body's condition.
In addition, a nutritionist can refer you for an ultrasound examination of the abdominal organs. After all, people with gastrointestinal diseases often consult a nutritionist. An ultrasound will help determine what disorders have occurred in the body and what diet can cope with this condition.
What does a nutritionist do?
A nutritionist is engaged in the correct selection of a diet for both healthy and sick people. For a healthy person, a nutritionist will help to create the right diet that will supply his body with the necessary amount of nutrients, vitamins, minerals and microelements.
At the same time, a nutritionist will help you choose the right caloric content of your food. Nowadays, people eat a lot of "empty" food. This food is very rich in carbohydrates, fats and proteins, that is, it is very caloric. But at the same time, such food products can be poor in vitamins and other useful substances.
With such a diet, adults and even children easily gain excess weight, but at the same time their body starves and suffers from a lack of vital substances. Such a "hunger strike" slows down the growth of bones, cartilage, muscle tissue, nerve cells and other important parts and systems of the body.
With a lack of vitamins and microelements in the diet, the body is unable to produce some essential hormones. For example, with iodine deficiency, the thyroid gland cannot produce its hormone.
Therefore, the nutritionist's task is to create a balanced diet that will not only contain "empty" calories, but also all the substances necessary for a healthy life. Such a diet is called healthy. In some regions, there is a pronounced deficiency of some substances in water or food products, for example, iodine or selenium. Then the nutritionist places special emphasis in the diet on replenishing these substances or prescribes their intake in medical preparations. Such a diet is called preventive. After all, replenishing the deficiency serves as an excellent prevention of the development of various diseases.
If a person with some disease turns to a nutritionist, the nutritionist's task is to create a therapeutic diet. Such a diet not only includes healthy products, but it excludes harmful foods or methods of their preparation.
A therapeutic diet can help a sick person restore the correct metabolic process in the body. In addition, there are many foods that have a therapeutic effect for a particular disease. Their correct consumption can contribute to the fastest recovery of the body and recovery.
What diseases does a nutritionist treat?
The competence of a dietitian includes quite a lot of diseases that can be treated with a diet. Again, contacting a dietitian can help prevent the development of various diseases: from colds and gastrointestinal diseases to cancer.
What patients can benefit from and even need a visit to a nutritionist? Firstly, these are people with gastrointestinal diseases. Which is quite logical, because, first of all, any food gets into the gastrointestinal tract, is digested, absorbed into the blood and only then spreads throughout the body.
Therefore, improper nutrition is the primary cause of gastrointestinal diseases. And proper nutrition itself can serve as a cure for various gastritis, colitis, cholecystitis, and so on.
At the same time, a nutritionist can exclude different food products from the diet, for example, fatty or spicy food. In addition, he can advise the best ways to cook food. He can exclude fried food or fresh fruits and vegetables from the diet, replacing them with boiled and baked food, or steamed products.
Another area of activity of a nutritionist is the treatment of cardiovascular diseases. Improper nutrition can cause problems with the heart or blockage of blood vessels. Correcting your diet will help improve heart function and avoid thrombosis and other similar diseases.
Weight disorders or obesity are another disease that falls within the competence of a dietitian. Exercise or proper physical activity may not give the desired results if not supplemented with proper nutrition. Dietitians study how metabolic processes occur in the human body. This knowledge can help improve the efficiency of metabolism and accelerate the reduction of excess weight.
A nutritionist can also provide advice on such a disease as anorexia. Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly "popular" among teenage girls and young women. Here it is simply necessary to select a high-calorie and highly nutritious diet to help patients gain weight and restore health.
Another area of activity of a nutritionist is viral or infectious diseases. Of course, a diet alone cannot cure you of the flu or a cold. But it can help the body fight a virus or infection. After all, it is no secret that some foods are especially rich in vitamins and minerals that strengthen the human immune system. A strong immune system can quickly and effectively cope with most infections and viruses.
In addition, a consultation with a nutritionist is simply necessary for the prevention or treatment of oncological diseases. Many foods are rich in substances that neutralize carcinogens and prevent the proliferation of cancer cells.
Therapeutic nutrition can strengthen the body during chemotherapy and promote its speedy recovery.
Advice from a nutritionist
The advice of a nutritionist may be different for different categories of patients. But there are also general useful recommendations and rules for healthy eating that will suit almost everyone.
One of these tips concerns the frequency of eating. Sometimes people overeat for one simple reason: irregular eating. A person may not eat all day, but then eat to the point of bursting in the evening. Excessive hunger stimulates the absorption of excess food. It is poorly digested by the body, which can lead to disruption of the gastrointestinal tract, to ineffective digestion: flatulence, bloating, upset stomach or constipation.
In addition, long breaks between meals make the body afraid of hunger and overeat. The body begins to store nutrients and deposits them in fatty tissues, which inevitably leads to obesity. Therefore, a good dietician's advice is fractional nutrition.
It is better to eat several times a day, but in small portions, than to eat a lot in one or two meals.
Another principle of healthy eating is not to eat dry food. The stomach requires a variety of food: solid, liquid and hot. This way you can avoid the development of gastritis and other gastrointestinal diseases,
Another great tip from a nutritionist is to start your day with a healthy breakfast. Some people skip this first and very important meal of the day. They think that not eating breakfast is a good way to lose weight. But this is not true at all. If you start your day with a meal, you kind of “start” your metabolism and increase its efficiency.
The body prepares for digestion and absorption of food from the very morning. It is not “afraid” to spend calories, as it happens when a person does not have breakfast and keeps the body on a starvation diet from the very morning. If you skip breakfast, the body is in no hurry to spend calories received at lunch and dinner, and puts them aside for later. Therefore, a healthy and moderate breakfast is a quick way to lose weight and lose weight.
The right diet can significantly increase the effectiveness of physical exercise and sports. It will help you quickly lose weight without causing harm to your health. Or, on the contrary, it will help you gain weight, but not fat, but muscle mass, creating a beautiful and healthy body.
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