October 19, 2020

Nutrition For Addiction Recovery (And Health)

Has your relationship with food become distasteful due to a substance use disorder? Whether food turns to ash in your mouth, or you have stopped prioritizing food altogether, drug addiction has detrimental effects on your eating habits. Food is medicine and provides essential nutrients to maintain and fuel your body. Healthy nutrition for recovering addicts is a vital part of rehabilitation. Experts in nutrition and recovery from substance abuse are available to provide complete personal care during your drug addiction recovery.

At addiction treatment centers, detox, rehab, and therapy are just the surface of provided in-depth care. Nutrition in recovery includes therapeutic education that will establish a healthy relationship between you and food. Call our addiction specialists today at 405-583-4309 to take the first step towards recovery and connect with the best treatment plan that fits your needs.

Content

Is nutrition really all that important in recovering from addiction? Keep reading on to find out. Click the links below to jump to that section. If you require additional assistance please contact our specialists today.

Why Are Healthy Foods So Important?
Nutrition in Recovery
Nutritionists as Part of Therapy
Food as Medicine
Moving Forward

Nutrition For Addiction Recovery (And Health)

Why Are Healthy Foods So Important?

Bodily Health

Physical strength and stamina are dependent upon your food intake. As drug addiction progresses, nutritional neglect often worsens. Appetite suppression can stem from the brain’s intense drug cravings, taking priority over even the most basic human needs. Eating becomes a chore and a poorly executed chore to boot. Often, addicts eat only when necessary and are at the mercy of whatever they can get their hands on. More often then not, access to healthy foods is incredibly limited, making body aches, pains, and drug symptoms, like constipation or diarrhea, even more challenging to process.

Ultimately, the decreasing amount of food intake, healthy or not, affects the body. Like a dying car battery, your body will continue to weaken each time you exert force. Nutrition for recovering addicts is essential to gaining your strength and energy back into balance by eating protein-rich foods, fruits and vegetables, and whole grains for fiber.

Brain Health

Your brain has neurotransmitters and naturally occurring chemicals that regulate and maintain brain health and functionality. GABA neurotransmitters are responsible for feelings of calm and relaxation. Tyrosine is an amino acid that converts to dopamine during digestion, which controls feelings of happiness. Moreover, tryptophan is also an amino acid that assists the uplift of the sister neurotransmitter, serotonin.

These are all great pieces of information, but how do you incorporate all of these into your health regimen?

Choosing nutritional foods such as bananas, whole grains, and cheese for tyrosine, shrimp and cherry tomatoes for GABA levels, turkey, tuna fish, and lentils for serotonin are just the beginnings of well-balanced nutrition to help with addiction recovery. Whole foods, fresh fruits and vegetables, and clean cuts of lean beef or pork are only a fraction of foods and superfoods. Please consult with your Registered Dietician Nutritionist (RDN) throughout rehab; they will help design a meal plan tailored to your body’s needs.

Nutrition in Recovery

Foods to Eat

How nutrition helps with addiction recovery is all in the details. Whole foods, clean proteins, and fresh fruits and vegetables all have unique characteristics that add excellent benefits to your body. Superfoods like broccoli and spinach have more or extra health benefits that naturally help the body rid itself of harmful toxins and promote strength and energy. Drugs drain the nutrients from your body that can be revitalized by eating the right kinds of foods.

So, what are the right kinds of foods?

Proteins such as chicken, beef, and eggs
Dairies such as milk and cheeses
Whole grains for fiber such as oats and quinoa
Tyrosine-rich foods such as bananas, sunflower seeds, and soybeans
Antioxidants such as blueberries, onions, and pecans
Tryptophan-rich foods such as turkey, pork, and lentils
Fresh fruits such as mangoes, plums, and apples
Fresh vegetables such as artichokes, brussel sprouts, and spinach

By shopping around the four walls of a grocery store, you will find the healthiest food choices. Produce, meat, bakery, and dairy departments are all located along the grocery store walls. Inside the aisles, you will find some healthy options, such as peanut butter, but ultimately, shopping alongside the walls and avoiding the aisles is good practice to shop nutritionally.

Foods to Avoid

There are hundreds of food options that someone should avoid. Greasy, fatty, and fried foods such as from fast-food restaurants are a top food genre to prevent as much as possible. Nutrition for recovering addicts requires food that provides health benefits rather than deficiencies. Not knowing where your food came from or prepared leads to some skeptical chemicals in food. For instance, did you know that a burger from McDonald’s does not decompose? When “food” like that behaves unnaturally, we find it’s best to just back away slowly, and never return.

Preservatives for profit are what thought patterns are behind the artificial food-like substances along the aisles inside grocery stores. Many companies will mix additives and preservatives to their foods to ensure a longer shelf life to widen the profit margin. Eating foods that have added chemicals to prolong shelf-life is incredibly dangerous to your body. Over time, those chemicals will affect your health in various ways like heart complications, liver dysfunction, and high cholesterol.

Foods that are high in bad fats, salts, sugars, additives, and preservatives should all be avoided, especially during recovery. Your body needs robust and healthy food to repair and heal your body when recovering from a substance use disorder.

Additionally, caffeine and energy drinks are ludicrously high in sugars and are dangerous to your heart health. Nutrition helps with addiction recovery by bringing back healthy nutrients, oils, and minerals that your body craves and your brain absorbs. Avoid any foods that would hinder that process. It’s time to let your body heal with good nutrition. If you are battling an addiction, then call us today. Our experts will help you get the jump start you need to succeed in your recovery.

Nutritionists as Part of Therapy

How Drugs Affect the Body

Everyone experiences a spectrum of symptoms from drug use, and the side effects from each drug are different. However, some side effects remain consistent for the vast majority of users. For instance, opioids like heroin, oxycodone, and morphine mess with your gastrointestinal system, causing diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting. None of these symptoms are pleasant, and they drain your body of resources faster than usual.

It becomes tough to win a race if someone keeps moving the starting line farther and farther away from you. Nutrition and recovery from substance abuse are healthy, available avenues to pursue to regain control of your life, health, and future.

Alcoholics struggle with nutritional deficiencies more than most, as alcohol drains you of your B vitamins. For instance, when an alcoholic has drunk so much that vitamin B1 has depleted, they are now at risk for a mental disease called Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, a.k.a. “wet brain.” This brain-damaging disease causes corruption to the thalamus and hypothalamus, primary functions controlling senses, sleep, and growth. Moreover, the disease also affects the core parts of the brain that are responsible for memory.

Nutrition in recovery is essential for recovering from addiction to rejuvenate the mind and body with appropriate and effective food medicines using an educated strategy.

Stimulants like meth, crack, and cocaine significantly reduces your appetite and keep you awake for days. Dehydration and deficient diet cause the body to dry out, becoming fragile and weak. Nutrition for recovering addicts is a way to prepare their bodies to receive medicines and treatments for addiction. Furthermore, while enduring withdrawal symptoms, healthy food can make a difference in the level of pain they experience.

Balanced nutrition makes your body feel better. These practices are how nutrition helps with addiction recovery.

Registered Dietician Nutritionists

Food education practitioners are called Dieticians or Nutritionists. Studying and educating others about proper dieting, food intake, food-related health risks, and how to avoid them is what they do. Nutritionists work with individuals to devise meal plans based on personal needs and deficiencies.

Using nutrition to help with addiction recovery is essential to a successful recovery, by helping each patient properly repair nutritional dietary gaps that make you feel better. These specialists can also educate on dietary restrictions, food preparation, and healthy eating habits that will help you long after rehab is complete.

Food as Medicine

Relationship Between Food and Recovery

Maria Schellenberger is a student at USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, studying under the Master of Science in Nutrition, Healthspan, and Longevity program. In her studies, she has found that most recovery patients suffer from eating dysfunction such as malnutrition, eating disorders, and fluctuating body weight from drug side effects. Schellenberger co-wrote an article for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics; she explains RDN’s importance inside rehab centers.

Many individuals with substance abuse problems have had little education about nutrition and often lack the skills necessary to purchase and prepare healthy meals for themselves. By including an RDN in the treatment plan, clients can address their nutritional concerns throughout treatment.

By educating patients on healthy nutrition, food preparation, and maintaining a consistent diet, your relationship with food can grow into a healthy practice. Imagine seeing food and being inspired to cook a colorful meal for yourself with bright peppers, clean cuts of beef, and fresh herbs. Seeing food as medicine customizable to your every physical and mental need can reshape how food is in your life.

In ayurvedic practices, the kitchen is considered sacred. Taking time to precisely measure, chop, marinate, simmer, season, and store each ingredient before and after every meal is essential. The kitchen is their sanctuary, as they see food as medicine that heals the body and spirit. There is care, love, and intent in every meal they prepare for themselves and others. They also envision cooking to be a sacred practice because of the combination of ingredients. Also, the care that produces the highest quality food medicines.

Treat your body like a sacred place. Changing your relationship with food can change your life. Let us help you change your life. Call our professionals today, and start your new life now.

Maintaining a Healthy Diet

We all know how hard it can be to stick to a diet. If given a chance, most people will go against their diet within the first month. Especially to a recovering addict, this can be a hindrance to more than your food intake. When something learned in recovery starts to lose its inspiration, it may not be long before other good habits begin to fall off as well. Think of going against your new diet as a food relapse. Returning to a low diet filled with heavy starches, sugars, and fats are harmful to your newfound health and a fresh start. Do not give up on yourself; you deserve healthy food.

In short, recovering from addiction is hard work, why make your body work harder than it already is? Healthy food choices are a small way to make a massive difference in your overall health, wellness, and can improve brain function and efficiency. Nutrition is recovery is a great place to start, as detoxing will flush out all of the toxins, while nutrition can stock you up with minerals, oils, and amino acids to make you healthy again.

Moving Forward

To summarize, healthy nutrition for recovering addicts is a vital part of recovery. Experts in nutrition and recovery from substance abuse are available to provide complete personal care during your drug addiction recovery.

At addiction treatment centers, detox, rehab, and interventions are just the surface of in-depth care. Nutrition in recovery is a recognized therapeutic education that will establish a healthy relationship between you and food. However, call today at 405-583-4309 to take control of your addiction. Also, receive guidance toward the best treatment plan that fits your needs.