Nutrition, Feeding, and Eating
Malnutrition Associated with Specific Health Conditions
What specific health conditions increase the risk of malnutrition?
Malnutrition is said to be seen when one takes too much or too little of certain nutrients. Worldwide, this disease affects many people since some countries get a high risk of getting it due to the development of certain kinds of malnutrition based on their lifestyles, resources, and surroundings. It is associated with severe health problems such as eye issues, heart illnesses, diabetes, etc. there are specific conditions that can increase the risk of malnutrition. They include long-term conditions that lead to loss of appetite and vomiting, among others. These long term conditions include lung conditions and liver disease conditions.
Overview and Relevance
Malnutrition is a condition caused due to nutrients overconsumption or nutrients deficiency. It is associated with severe health conditions like eye disorders, heart disease, diabetes, etc. Different conditions can raise the risk of malnutrition, including long-term illnesses that contribute to lack of appetite, nausea, among others (McKinster, & Orozco‐Covarrubias, 2019). Such long-term illnesses include disorders in the lungs and liver problems. Other health conditions may consist of Psychological health disorders, such as schizophrenia, which may affect your performance and ability to eat conditions that impair your ability to consume food or consume nutrients, such as Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis dementia, can cause an individual to disregard their well-being and skip meals.
Malnutrition Screening Tool
MST is a reliable method to test people at risk of malnutrition. The device is perfect for an inpatient/outpatient care facility or adult in medical settings. The criteria of the diet panel include weight loss and appetite. Another tool is named the Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA), a quick and easy-to-use screening tool that requires below five minutes to complete. Calf curvature may be replaced for BMI in patients who cannot be evaluated or quantified. This is the most frequently used method of MNA.
Nursing Assessment Questions
- Depression
- Lack of appetite
- Lack of concentration
- Based on body tissues and muscle mass.
Factors that influence malnutrition
They include;
- Instability of the family
- Ignorance
- Large sizes of the families
- Expectable infections
- Poor environment
Anthropometry
Based on most hospital settings, nursing staff increases the length and mass needed for several therapies, including medication dosages. You will measure the height with a measuring stick or a non-stretchable glue connected to a flat, vertical wall, and a right-angled headboard. If possible, use a detachable measuring rod affixed to the upright scale of the platform.
The patient removes his shoes and stands straight so that to be measured the weight. Then the headboard is lowered to the top of the head. After that, you have to align your sightline with corresponding with the headboard level in order to obtain the correct measurements. Based on the mass, evaluate the patient after he’s already drained. Tell him to remove his sportswear, except underwear. Make sure that the device is determining the exact. Use a vertically beam-type scale for outpatients. To attain the patient’s mass, ask him to place his feet above the platform’s middle.
Laboratory tests
After noting the patient’s BMI, the lab test is needed to identify nutritional status in that whether they are more than required or less. Many factors can be obtained from the lab results such as alcoholism. In connection, the nutritional panel is used to get the baseline rank of plasma proteins. Additionally, based on the nutritional board, the balanced nitrogen is also measured. Within one day, the intake of nitrogen is calculated by having to divide 6.25 into the total protein’s gram that is ingested. In order to measure the output of nitrogen output, one-day urinary urea nitrogen is used. In order for adequate healing of malnutrition, a positive balance of nitrogen is needed.
Dietary
Any information gathering will include the age of the patient, medical history; religious or cultural dietary patterns; socio-economic status; private dietary preferences; psychological effects, alcohol or substance abuse, vitamin, mineral or nutritional supplements, pharmaceutical or over-the-counter drugs; and general dietary awareness. Having to ask a patient to keep a dietary diary can help recognize caloric patterns; you can use it to measure nutritional intake and equate it with dietary reference intakes (DRIs) to see whether nutritional needs are sufficient. One could also use 24-hour dietary questionnaires to evaluate trends over time.
Clinical observation
Finding malnutrition associated with specific health conditions via physical assessment can be said to be imperative. The provision of malnutrition status is due to the evaluation of the patient’s general appearance, energy level and posture, weight, and appetite, among others. Then there is the inspection of the skin, nails, hair, and not forgetting the oral cavity, which helps to note malnutrition.
The patient should eat a balanced diet and avoid many nutrients from one type of nutrient. This is essential since people affected by diseases such as cancer, can limit their intake of nutrients or increase depending on the condition one is suffering from. This information should be shared with the nursing profession to learn the best ways to treat malnutrition associated with specific health conditions. This paper’s theme is to note that the particular health conditions increase the risk of malnutrition and how to manage them. The findings are that; patients should be eating a balanced diet to avoid more nutrients or less being taken into the body.
References
McKinster, C. D., & Orozco‐Covarrubias, L. (2019). Skin Manifestations of Nutritional Disorders. Harper’s Textbook of Pediatric Dermatology, 831-840.