The dietitian is a nutrition professional working in the paramedical sector. Its mission is both preventive and curative: its objective is to prevent diseases, overweight and all the inconveniences associated with poor nutrition. A dietitian provides advice to patients and defines with them a food behavior adapted to their problems. His mission may differ somewhat depending on the place where he works: hospital centre, clinic, care establishments, private practice, school group, etc.
What Is The Difference Between Dietician and Nutritionist?
The term nutritionist applies to physicians who have completed additional training in nutrition while dieticians are not physicians. Certified nutritionists are the only ones to have a prescription right and their consultations are reimbursed by Social Security. The term” nutritionist “alone has no value, just like nutrition coach, or Nutri-expert: This represents a real danger because without solid training you do not properly master the basics of health and can lead to real aberrations.
When to consult?
Your general practitioner can refer you to a dietitian with precise management instructions, but you can decide to consult him on your own initiative. It is important to know that you can get help if you gain weight and that you suffer from it but also if you lose weight without wanting it, if you feel excessively tired without any disease because this can- be a sign of deficiencies or that the simple act of eating causes pain or disorders (abdominal pain, intestinal pain, painful acid reflux, persistent diarrhea and/or constipation).
For who?
A number of situations may prompt you to consult a dietitian:
- When you are athletic and according to your goals: performance, muscle gain, weight loss
- When you are vegetarian or vegan because badly led, these diets can cause deficiencies
- When you are diabetic, to reduce medication intake and reduce blood sugar
- When one suffers from eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia, etc.) in parallel with a psychological follow-up
- When taking certain treatments that can have an influence on weight (cortisone, hormone therapy, etc.)
- After bariatric surgery to check or adapt the nutritional profile
- When you are being treated for cancer; the treatments induce changes in appetite and taste, sometimes causing disorders that diet can reduce or even prevent.
- When one suffers from dyslipidemia
- Pregnant women
- Seniors and people with cancer-prone to undernutrition and sarcopenia.
How to Find a Nutritionist and Why?
Maintaining a healthy lifestyle and proper weight loss today is a priority in the lives of many women and men. Many people don’t know what to do to feel and look great. There is a wide variety of food products on store shelves, but not all people are able to find food for a healthy diet among them and make up their diet from it. Nutritionists are professionally engaged in this selection of food. As a rule, they are physicians who have a higher or secondary specialized education, know the anatomy and physiology of the body, including how the enzyme system works, have information about the composition and usefulness of products. Today there are many specialists, but how to find a good doctor among them?
What Kind of Specialist?
Dietetics is a separate branch of medical science, but it is closely intertwined with almost all disciplines. If you do not eat properly, then the treatment can be nullified. A nutritionist is a specialist with fundamental knowledge of the physiology of nutrition and its influence in the treatment of diseases, in addition, he can evaluate the effect of food on the health of the whole body.
Today, nutritionists are turning to people who need to lose weight or help their health by switching to proper nutrition. However, a nutritionist is also a doctor, and he will not be able to solve all your problems in one go or consult on the Internet.
How can you find it?
First of all, a nutritionist, like any other good doctor, is passed from hand to hand. The testimonials of his previous clients are the best references. You should not believe the advertisements on the Internet or on TV, you need to give feedback from real people who go to a nutritionist and achieve pronounced results. But reviews do not guarantee one hundred percent success and results. People are all different, and everyone has their own subjective opinion about the doctor. Therefore, there are criteria that a good specialist will characterize relatively accurately.
What are the diets offered by a dietician?
As a general rule and contrary to popular belief, dieticians do not give diets, they help to make corrections, we call that a re-balancing. Their goal is to make their patients autonomous and understand the basics of a diet conducive to good health in order to be able, in the long term, to be alone in their health. The interest of the dietitian’s training is to allow him to adapt to the pathologies and the objectives of the patients.
What is the cost of a consultation?
The cost of consulting a dietitian depends on the location and the reputation of the practitioner and not on an established scale. Some sites offer consultations by phone or Skype, always with qualified practitioners: the prices are often lower.
