Detecting Malnourishment

Malnourishment is difficult to detect. There are visual signs someone suffers from malnourishment, yet it is not whether they are under or over weight. Teens are extremely allusive. Frequently the only method to determine bad habits is by eating habits.

It is presumed that someone who is malnourished is very thin and hardly has any body fat. Someone can eat and exercise excessively to gain a starvation diet. I have written about maintaining a proportional diet between age, height and exercise in the past; however, competition often makes people feel as though the additional surge of energy is a good reason to increase exercise.

Anorexia has many definitions beyond under eating or always eating the same foods. There is also a tendency to want to burn any additional calories. When obsessing over weight, the tendency is to want to exert more energy to solely burning fat. The body also needs calories for basic function. A person also burn calories for sleep, dreaming, respiration, heart-rate, lymphatic systems, digestion and other necessary function; ergo, a person must maintain calories to live healthy.

Another basic function of calories is in association to the nervous system. Frequently when lacking appropriate chemical reaction because of a lack of a chemical to make organs produce a chemical reaction the brain activity is the first to shut down. In Adults, the effect is noticeable. There is a tendency to be overly emotional and a fussy feeling. It is difficult concentrating. Teens are usually emotional because of excessive chemical reaction for growing. A teen can be under-active and eating well while expressing mood-swings and difficulty concentrating. It is a part of adolescence.

In Adults, there are specific symptoms of disease when the body is malnourished because of lack of variety of food or simply unable to process food. There is a yellowing of teeth. A person has to be malnourished for a long time before this sign is visible.

A person brushes their teeth. In a few hours or even an hour their teeth are dingy looking again. The next sign of malnourishment is decreased bone density.

This might affect a thin person. Seeing they are thin, with hardly any body fat means they might be close to starvation, yet maintaining enough health to avoid malnourishment. People who are overweight are probably retaining water. They retain water because of excessive solubles. The water is creating puss to remove harmful chemicals.

Additional signs of disease causing water retention are yellowing or reddening of the skin. Yellowing indicates liver disease. Reddening indicates kidney disease. It is a tone in addition to natural skin color, not a person's skin color.

Another sign is nail breakage. Dying cells are being moved to assist in the lymphatic system and recovering from any number of illnesses; instead of, being moved to thicken hair and nails. There are more split ends. Nails tend to peel in breakage, as opposed to breaking along the tips. It as though the layers separate; however, excessive nail breakage of any kind is a sign of malnourishment.

All of these signs are visible in under or over weight Adults. This includes: dingy teeth, yellowing tone, reddening tone and nail breakage.

Teens are still growing. These signs are unnoticeable, because the natural health benefits of adolescence hide these signs. The only real method of knowing is by how much food they eat in relation to activity. They also burn more calories than usual, because of additional chemical reaction to grow. This includes height and puberty.

As a Teen, I did not notice anorexic tendencies for a long time. I walked everywhere and did not associate it to exercise. On an average day, I walked a quarter mile to and from the bus stop. I walked a mile to a friend's house. Sometimes we walked two miles to the mall and walked around the mall. Then we took the bus to another mall. We would walk a half mile from the mall to a diner a few times. Then I would exercise. Eventually, I did not have the energy to exercise and felt lazy.

I was concerned about my diet, so it was important to adhere to a 2,000 calorie or under diet. Unfortunately, this was wrong. I should have been eating more liberally. Instead of snacking, I would eat all my calories during two meals a day to control hunger. I would eat very fast during these meals.

During class, my stomach growled. I often felt hunger pains and light hotheadedness when standing. There was no real physical notification or anorexic tendencies. I was thin, yet healthy looking. In some cases, because of body type, looked bigger than some of the other thin, healthy Girls my age.

After finding out the signs of anorexia, it was a task to eat. Both Adults and Teens have difficulty knowing they are anorexic. After starving for several days, it becomes easy to ignore a desire to eat. There is no desire to eat. It is cumbersome eating. With a predisposition to not eat, it seems normal to slowly eat less overtime.

A person has probably already become a victim of illness. Whether changing eating habits and forcing themselves through regular meals, they will probably have to see a Doctor. It is important to get full panel blood tests every few years for awhile.

I was showing signs of hypothyroidism as early as age thirteen and was misdiagnosed on the first blood tests. It was not until age eighteen and showing extreme signs of illness that the signs of hypothyroidism appeared on blood tests. Before then I was still within normal ranges even though making regular adjustments to meals and exercise to improve health.

Malnourishment is awkward. Sometimes under-weight people have an advantage. Sometimes it is a deficit. Eating more does not equal exercising more. An over-weight person might be eating a lot of similar foods in attempts to gets a trace amount of what their body needs; ergo, still suffer from malnourishment. It has complications that are noticeable, yet the person suffering from malnourishment is unlikely to realize they are in a deteriorating cycle of health. Knowing the signs better, it might be time to implement a plan to live better.

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