The Benefits of Good Nutrition

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The Benefits of Good Nutrition.

• Helps to keep weight stable

• Helps delay the weight loss and wasting seen so often in the end stages of various diseases and sicknesses.Weight loss is often the event that begins a vicious cycle of increased tiredness and decreased physical activity, including the inability to prepare and consume food.

• Helps prevent muscle loss and maintain strength, so enabling the person to stay in control of their life for as long as they want and to stay active – either in paying jobs or in the household

• Helps replace nutrients :

  • lost due to the sicknesses and disease itself.

  • lost due to symptoms such as diarrhoea, vomiting, appetite, loss of energy, poor quality of food.

• May help prolong time between HIV infection and progression to AIDS

  • research has concluded that weight loss and micronutrient deficiencies are associated with an accelerated progression of HIV infection to AIDS

• Improves wound healing

• Faster recovery from infections

  Nutrients (especially proteins, vitamins and minerals) are needed by the immune system to work effectively and if these are available to the person then the immune system will work more rapidly in dealing with infections and attacks from opportunistic diseases.

• Person is able to deal better with medication and treatment

  • Foods and nutrients can affect the way drugs work

  • All medicines are best taken along with food

• Can help to deal with some of the nutrition problems of HIV/AIDS

  Nutrition can be an important part of the management of symptoms such as sore mouth and throat, nausea, vomiting etc.