Nutrition as a Nursing Intervention: The Dash Diet Mediterranean Solution by Marla Heller
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Nutrition as a Nursing Intervention: The Dash Diet Mediterranean Solution by Marla Heller
Introduction
Scholars write various books documenting strategies to help people maintain or improve their health. This paper details a brief breakdown of Marla Heller’s book, ‘The DASH Diet Mediterranean Solution’ and presents its outstanding ideas and their significance in the nursing practice. First, I will detail the book description and why the book is appropriate for this review. Then I will proceed to highlight some topics in the book that I find interesting, evidence for their success, and finally their significance in the nursing practice. ‘The DASH Diet Mediterranean Solution’ by Marla Heller details a nutritional solution for people vulnerable to weight fluctuations and unhealthy food consumption patterns.
Book
I chose Marla Heller’s book ‘The DASH Diet Mediterranean Solution’ for a variety of reasons. First, the book informs my interest in nursing interventions involving nutrition and the significance of diet management in maintaining a healthy weight and in the recovery process. Also, I chose the book because it is authored by a registered dietician and explains one of the best diets approved for use in the medical field. The author also provides recipes to make the diet more interesting and appealing to patients and users.
Topics of Interest
The basis of Marla Heller’s book rests on the DASH and Mediterranean diet plans. Heller’s Med-DASH diet incorporates proteins into originally vegetarian diet plans to make them more acceptable and doable for Americans (Heller, 2018). The DASH diet significantly helps to improve the heart disease crisis prevalent among Americans and improve the life expectancy of the United States population. The Med-DASH diet programs help patients reduce or maintain their weight by incorporating essential nutrients in their diets without making the journey unpleasant (Heller, 2018). This topic spiked my interest because, it helps me incorporate better nutritional choices in my diet, and effectively advise patients on their diets to help them achieve better healing and maintain a healthy status.
The author also lists relearning how to eat as a strategy for healthy nutrition to avoid pathological implications. In the book, Heller explains the importance of learning how to include certain foods in the Med-DASH diet rather than what foods to exclude (Heller, 2018). Using the jump-start plan, one can achieve significant results from an inclusive diet different from what is widely known. This subject is fascinating because, exclusive diets often put a lot of pressure on patients, and a diet that focuses on what to include rather than what to remove from their diets significantly eases the patient’s journey.
Corroboration
The DASH diet is an evidence-based strategy to improve nutrition practices among patients and results in better health outcomes. Studies show that the DASH diet lowers the risk of adverse cardiac episodes, obesity, and diabetes, which are major health concerns for Americans (Challa, 2020). Heller strongly proposes the ability of the Med-DASH diet plan to help Americans deal with prevalent problems like obesity and cardiac ailments. Also, the successful inclusion of limited amounts of protein-rich foods like red meat in the DASH diet enables patients to achieve a healthy balance of nutrients (McNeill, 2014). The DASH diet, as outlined by Heller, details the practice of inclusion rather than exclusion of lean meats and poultry in limited amounts to keep nutritional balance.
Practice
Nutrition is indispensable in the medical field and forms an integral part of patient care and healing. The DASH diet explained in the book provides me with important information to help me advise patients suffering from ailments such as cardiac problems, obesity, and hypertension. My application of the strategies in the book increases my professionalism since it is an evidence-based solution for nutritional concerns. I also learned various approaches that make nutritional changes less cumbersome for patients and allows them to include their favorite foods in the recommended nutrition diets. Consequently, the knowledge makes me a better student and helps me translate my knowledge into effective nursing practice.
References
Challa, H. J., Tadi, P., & Uppaluri, K. R. (2020). DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop hypertension). In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing.
Heller, M. (2018). The DASH Diet Mediterranean Solution (1st ed., Vol. 1). Van Haren Publishing.
McNeill, S. H. (2014). Inclusion of red meat in healthful dietary patterns. Meat Science, 98(3), 452-460.