Nutrition Matters During Illness

Good nutrition is fundamental to immune function, tissue growth and replacement, and to support quality of life. Nutrition helps maintain normal immunity by helping defend against infectious diseases. Nutrients provide structural materials to build and replace tissue components, supply energy to support cell growth and function, and provide building blocks for synthesis of regulatory messengers to control these processes. Inadequate nutrient intake or depleted reserves of energy, protein, and other nutrients create the risk of malnutrition.

Poor nutrition and malnutrition take a toll on human health and well being, particularly for individuals who are most vulnerable—older adults and the ill. Prevalence of malnutrition is especially high among patients with such diseases as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cancer, stage 4–5 chronic kidney disease, congestive heart failure, gastrointestinal disease, and HIV/AIDS. The health consequences of malnutrition can be numerous. In all cases, poor nutrition or malnutrition needs to be evaluated.

Learn more about treatment and prevention

Nutrition is particularly critical during periods of rapid tissue growth (eg, in post-surgical healing) and during illness (eg, cancer). Nutrition is essential to immune function for prevention of or recovery from disease. Nutritional interventions can restore normal nutritional status and improve outcomes such as:

• reduction in infection and complications
• improvement of wound healing
• reduction of mortality

Learn more about the impacts of malnutrition

Learn more about ways to treat and prevent malnutrition