This class was taken during my fall semester of my Junior year. It was during this course that I figured out that one’s nutrition can be a super power for keeping them healthy! This was also a nursing class I chose to enhance to receive honors credit upon successful completion of this course.
Exactly as the course title describes, we studied nutrition. Interestingly enough, we didn’t study the stereotypical “Which option is healthy for you, which option is unhealthy for you” but we studied how certain foods affect the body on a chemical level, how the body uses nutrients and energy to perform basic requirements, the different conditions relating to poor nutrition, how certain conditions require different nutrients and diets, and how to care for patients simply using an improved diet plan.
Never in my wildest imagination did I ever expect to learn that there were so many diseases and conditions associated from poor nutrition. This class taught me just how important nutrition is for the body. The body functions trying to maintain homeostasis (a constant state of balance). In order to do so, the body needs the appropriate nutrients to fuel the body’s efforts. When the body is in excess or shortage of certain nutrients, depending on the nutrient, it can have catastrophic effects on the body. Numerous conditions and diseases can be prevented only if individuals had the education and access to knowledge to incorporate a more efficient way of incorporating appropriate amounts of nutrients in their diet. Even if someone does not have a specific nutrition-related illness, one’s prognosis may increase drastically if they incorporate proper diets. Patients with cancer, kidney stones, COPD, broken leg, heart attacks, and strokes all require differing nutritional plans because their needs are very different.
One project that I remember specifically was our diet tracking project. The assignment was purposed to show the students how difficult it is for patients to follow a drastically different diet that they are suddenly prescribed on to help their condition. The assignment had students chart their current diet for 2 weeks, and then incorporate various nutrition goals within the next two weeks that must be met. Calories, sodium, grams of sugar, amounts of trans fat, bottles of water, and many more important factors of nutrition had to be logged every single day for a month. The goal of the assignment was to make students understand why some patients fail to remain compliant with certain diets when they have been practicing something else for the majority of their life. This was eye opening for me because I have several family members who always seem to be noncompliant to diets that doctors put them on. This process taught me ways to connect with my patients, but also provide different strategies to help patients more easily incorporate the changes into their lives.
For the enhancement project of this class, I decided to combine this and my pharmacology class’ enhancement into one project. My partner and I decided to select several medications that we were learning in our pharmacology class and completely break down everything that a patient would need to know about that medication. We included drug classifications, foods that would positively and negatively interact with that medication, detailed descriptions of the pathophysiology of why the medication was effective, symptoms that would warrant the use of that medication/incorporating certain foods into your diet, and many more factors.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1sgfYIy00cJgLhMPbHaU7TIRa4XmPq7EH2niGcXJtJoc/edit?usp=sharing
Above is the link to my Nutrition and Pharmacology Enhancement! Feel free to flick through!
This class shed a lot of light on the importance of nutrition and just how crucial eating proper nutrients are to sustaining a healthy life!