What is...?
What is Trauma?
According to the National Institutes of Health, a traumatic event is a shocking, frightening, dangerous, or violent encounter that can initiate strong physical and/or emotional reactions persisting long after the event, which can eventually lead to physical or mental diseases.
What is Stress?
According to the National Institutes of Health, stress is a physical and/or emotional reaction that people experience as they encounter challenges in life. These physiological reactions can influence nutritional habits in several ways.
Trauma is stress, stress is trauma.
Trauma ⇆ Stress
How is Trauma related to Stress?
Trauma can be understood as excessive stress because it involves experiencing or witnessing events that are often perceived as emotionally devastating, triggering a profound stress response in the body. Experiencing these events triggers a cascade of hormonal reactions in the body that produce the fight-or-flight response (the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change). Prolonged or intense stress responses can result in biochemical changes that affect nutrient availability often resulting in nutrient deficits limiting the body's ability to effectively heal. This, thereby creating additional physical stress, perpetuating the stress cycle.
Medical Nutrition Therapy
What is Medical Nutrition Therapy?
Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT) is an integrated approach that synergistically combines the principles of nutrition and medicine to address a wide spectrum of health needs.
Actual Definition
According to Chapter 486-Part X, FS and Chapter 64B8-42 of the Florida Administrative Code, MNT is defined as the assessment of nutritional status, the design and implementation of personalized nutrition care plans, and the application of MNT for the treatment of both complex and uncomplicated medical conditions and trauma.
Nutrition for Trauma
How can MNT be used as in clinical practice for people who've experienced extreme stress or trauma?
The integrative nature of MNT involves nutritional treatment and counseling techniques that focuses on cellular pathways of human biochemistry, but it can also utilize other forms of healing that integrate spiritual and mental health aspects to facilitate successful lifestyle recovery. It goes beyond traditional paradigms and personalizes therapies to adapt to individual circumstances. This helps to support endocrine, autoimmune, and mental health diseases; or cerebral, neurochemical, or neurological impairments, and its metabolic implications.
How does MNT help with trauma-induced or stress-induced lifestyle recovery?
The principles of MNT find relevance through many different facets, including recognizing the nutritional signs of trauma and/or stress and its physiological effects on the whole body, and supporting these pathways with nutrition interventions, mental rejuvenation strategies, and faith-based practices. However, MNT also considers our individual dietary behaviors, such as food and plant addictions, food purchasing choices, meal decisions, food access issues, and disordered eating patterns.
Macro- and micro-nutrients support changes in cerebral and neurological health, and with body-spirit-soul practices, MNT can build a stable foundation for those with lived trauma or extremely stressful lives. Ultimately, implementing such practices and techniques encourages informed choices, provides increased nutrition knowledge, improves health-related quality of life, and helps in the mastery of self-directed practices, leading to productive lifestyles.
.png)