Relationship between nutrition and health

 Relationship between nutrition and health

 

Figure 1.2 shows that individuals can be broadly categorized into having optimal nutritional status or being undernourished, overnourished, or malnourished. The major causes and consequences of these nutritional states are indicated. It is important to realize that many other lifestyle and environmental factors, in addition to nutrition, influence health and well-being, but nutrition is a major, modifiable, and powerful factor in promoting health, preventing and treating disease, and improving quality of life.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Regulation of blood glucose concentration

  Regulation of blood glucose concentration The exocrine pancreas (and other tissues) is primed to expect a rise in blood glucose concentration by peptide hormones such as gastric inhibitory peptide (GIP) that are secreted from enteroendocrine cells within the mucosa of the small bowel. As the glucose concentration in blood rises above 5 mM after a meal, these peptide hormones amplify the response of the  β -cells of the endocrine pancreas, resulting in the dis-charge of the hormone insulin from secretory gran-ules which fuse with the cell membrane. Insulin has several effects on metabolism, including facilitating the transport, by GLUT4, of glucose into adipocytes and muscle cells.   In healthy people, blood glucose concentration (glycemia) is homeostatically controlled within a fairly narrow range. It seldom falls below about 5 mM, even after a prolonged fast, and returns to this value within a couple of hours of a meal. In the absence of uptake from the gut (the postabsorptive state
Read more

Biology of protein and amino acid requirements

Image
  Biology of protein and amino acid requirements Body protein mass A major and fundamental quantitative function of the dietary  α -amino acid nitrogen and of the indis-pensable amino acids is to furnish substrate required for the support of organ protein synthesis and the maintenance of cell and organ protein content. Therefore, in the first instance the body protein mass is a factor that will influence the total daily require-ment for protein. Adult individuals of differing size but who are otherwise similar in age, body composi-tion, gender, and physiological state would be expected to require proportionately differing amounts of nitrogen and indispensable amino acids. Changes in the distribution and amount of body protein that occur during growth and development and later on during aging may be considered, therefore, as an initial approach for understanding the metabolic basis of the dietary protein and amino acid needs. Direct measures of total body protein cannot yet be made in l
Read more

Vitamin A - Human Nutrition

Image
  Vitamin A Vitamin A was the first vitamin to be discovered, ini-tially as an essential dietary factor for growth. It has a role in vision, as the prosthetic group of the light-sensitive proteins in the retina, and a major role in the regulation of gene expression and tissue differentia-tion. Deficiency is a major public health problem in large areas of the world, and prevention of vitamin A deficiency is one of the three micronutrient priorities of the World Health Organization (WHO) (the other two are iron and iodine). Vitamers and international units Two groups of compounds, shown in Figure 8.1, have vitamin A activity: retinol, retinaldehyde, and retinoic acid (preformed vitamin A); and a variety of caro-tenes and related compounds (collectively known as carotenoids) that can be cleaved oxidatively to yield retinaldehyde, and hence retinol and retinoic acid. Those carotenoids that can be cleaved to yield retinal-dehyde are known as provitamin A carotenoids.   Preformed vitamin A (
Read more