One of the little-known benefits of professional drug rehab centers is that they treat the whole person. What this means is that the experts and professionals available to you at a quality facility like Denver Recovery will help you to become an overall healthier person. You’ll begin healing both body and mind, while also overcoming your drug dependency. One of the best ways to improve your chances of recovery is to address any nutritional deficits you may currently have. Let’s take a look at what nutritional education is and how it works to provide you or your loved one with a solid foundation for beating substance abuse.
About Nutritional Education
Drug and alcohol abuse leads to a depletion of vitamins, minerals, and hydration from the body. Substance abuse can even cause hormonal imbalance and improper metabolic function within your system.
Just as dual diagnosis treatment is necessary for those with mental health issues and a heroin addiction, nutritional counseling aids in treating another aspect of your whole self. Ensuring clients are healthy in all aspects of their lives is essential to increasing the odds of successful treatment. Returning balance to your system through healthy foods reduces drug cravings and gives you the foundation you need to fight relapse.
The Effects of Drugs on Nutrition and Your Health
Opioids and other drugs take a real toll on the body. Part of a quality rehab program should include a nutritional assessment in order to best meet the needs of each client. It’s not unusual to discover you have some kind of nutritional deficiency. Many individuals beginning recovery have weight problems, dehydration issues or severe sleep deprivation. Particular substances each affect the body in very different ways.
For example, opioids like heroin or prescription pain medicine are central nervous system depressants. They cause many of the body’s most important systems to work more slowly. Digestion is one of these systems. Nutrition-related symptoms of opiate users can include such problems as loss of appetite or chronic constipation. More importantly, your body can’t properly absorb the nutrients you do take in. So no matter what you eat, you won’t receive adequate nutrition. That’s why nutritional education is so important to recovery.
Healthy Goals of Nutritional Education
There’s a wide variety of other nutritional problems that stem from different drugs or alcohol abuse. Addiction wreaks a great deal of havoc on the body. The primary goal of nutritional education is to help you gain a healthy body so that you can better address your drug problem or mental health issues. Ways professional rehabilitation centers achieve this goal include:
- Stabilizing your body
- Providing education on proper eating habits
- Restoring proper weight and muscle mass
- Modeling healthy food choices
- Sharing an enjoyment of food beyond survival
Chances are you or your loved one have learned poor eating habits in the past or that drug use has prevented you from eating well in the first place. Nutritional education shows you healthy choices to make with regard to food. The assessment that goes along with this counseling also ensures your body is in balance by restoring hydration intravenously, replacing lost nutrients through supplementation or encouraging lost appetite.
Choosing Denver Recovery as your rehabilitation center will give you a strong emphasis on nutritional education. We offer a holistic approach to drug treatment by attending to each of your needs as a whole person. Services like our expert nutrition education, along with in-depth mental health treatment, outdoor therapy and case management will have you living in a healthy manner again.
You can overcome substance abuse, and you don’t have to do it alone. Our caring staff is waiting to assist you. Call us at (844) 602-3175 to learn more.