Define Nutritional Management of Anorexia Nervosa?
The overall goal of nutritional rehabilitation of anorexia nervosa patients is to restore weight, normalize eating pattern, achieve normal perception of hunger and satiety, and correct biological and psychological sequence of malnutrition. To achieve this goal, we need to understand that in the severely malnourished patient, two separate but linked processes occur. First, insufficient food utilization leads to wasting and functional changes in all tissues. Second, the common metabolic response to infection, trauma or other stress results in further particular nutrient losses and cellular damage. Now starting to eat again after a period of prolonged starvation, what we call as the 'refeeding syndrome' can precipitate problems and complications in an anorexic patient. Hence, the first step has to be to repair the machinery along with tissue repletion being a secondary consideration throughout the early phase of treatment.