Is it necessary to provide our body adequate diet and nutrition? Is good nutrition important to our health? Eating well means achieving or maintaining adequate nutrition that is necessary for every person to improve and maintain optimal health. Eating healthily includes special diets for weight loss, lowering cholesterol level, blood pressure and controlling diabetes mellitus. It also includes nutritional guiding principles and healthy recipes. Basic nutrition and diet therapy are the two most important factors we should consider to keep our health to the fullest.A person’s diet is composed of the food they eat while nutrition is the means of nourishing our body appropriately. Adequate diet and nutrition means that your body is getting all the vitamins, nutrients and minerals it requires to function at its best level. Therefore, eating a healthy diet and nutrition is your primary way to get good health.Most people believe that a balance of diet and nutrition, including physical activity can help them reach and keep a healthy weight. However, the benefits of good nutrition, outweighs the weight. Good health can also improve heart and other body organs function, including mental health; improve school performance, better wound healing and fast recovery from injury or any diseases. Having enough diet and nutrition in our body system can also boost our immune system, increasing the body’s ability to fight off diseases and infections.Every individual has unique nutritional needs, and every person’s diet and nutrition should meet those specific needs. For instance, an infant requires different diet and nutrition than an adolescent. Also, the nutritional needs of a pregnant woman are much different from those of a toddler. On the other hand, a person’s height, current weight and activity level can also influence the quantity and quality of nutrients their body needs.Here are several tips for healthy diet and nutrition:1.Eat foods that are rich in fiber. Taking in fiber rich foods can make you feel full much longer as they stay extensively in the stomach compared with carbohydrates, tricking your brain that there are still enough foods in your tummy. Thus, keeping you off from food cravings.2. Include fruits and vegetables in your diet and nutrition. It is recommended to eat fresh frozen fruits rather than ready made fruit juice for most of your drinks. Eat adequate amount of dark green leafy vegetables, beans and peas most of the time as they contain lots of fiber.3 Eat lean meats. This is one way to reduce calorie intake, especially fats that go with meats. Other protein-rich foods include fish, peas, pork, seeds, nuts and beans.4 Eat all food groups in moderate amount. Be sure you know the limits of salt, fat and sugar especially those foods that are high in saturated and trans fat as they tend to raise bad cholesterol level in the blood, increasing our risk of having heart diseases.Generally, a healthy diet and nutrition is the one that provides your body balance nutrition. It is necessary to make smart selections from every food group, balance between food and physical activity and obtain most nutrition out of your calories.

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Half of the children in the United States suffering from any kind of mental disorder remain untreated, revealed a recently published study. The researchers analyzed data gathered from the 2016 National Survey of Children’s Health, a nationwide survey administered to the parents of young adolescents.The findings revealed that out of the 46.6 million youngsters in the age group of 6 to 18 years, whose parents filled the survey, around 7.7 million teens were suffering from at least one type of mental health issue like anxiety, depression, or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Also, a year before this survey was conducted, only half of these children received counselling or any kind of treatment offered by a mental health provider.The survey further showed that the percentage of young teens diagnosed with a mental health disorder and not receiving any treatment from a provider fluctuated extensively between 72.2 percent in North Carolina and 29.5 percent in the District of Columbia. The findings featured in the journal JAMA Pediatrics in February 2019.What do child and adolescent psychiatrists have to say?Co- author Mark Peterson, an associate professor at the Michigan University (Medicine) said that he pondered upon the conditions affecting children at a young age in a comprehensive manner. But he was shocked to see such a high percentage of young teens not receiving mental health treatment in the U.S.However, child psychiatrists did not seem too surprised with the results. Dr. Barbara Robles-Ramamurthy, an adolescent and child psychiatrist at the Long School of Medicine at the University of Texas (UT) Health Science Center, San Antonio, said that unfortunately, this was not news to her. In fact, she was well-versed with the fact that the percentage of young teens with mental illness who remained untreated in the U.S. was quite high.Explaining further, Dr. Jennifer Mautone, a consulting psychiatrist at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said that the families and the children with mental illness face a number of challenges when it came to accessing mental health treatment services, thus contributing to the high rates of not receiving treatment.Extreme dearth of mental health providersThe American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) revealed that the United States was facing an extreme dearth of practicing child and adolescent psychiatrists. According to the available data, there were fewer than 17 health care providers per 100,000 teenagers.This indicates that a lot of families needed to wait long to receive treatment, which deteriorated the primary mental health condition of the affected child. Also the qualified providers available faced significant challenges while interacting with other existing systems responsible for the care of these children. Some of these systems included the health care, education, child care, and the adolescent judicial system. All these systems were supposed to take care of the child, but none of them interacted with each other, resulting in half-hearted care.A ray of hopeA lot of pediatric health systems have started integrating mental health services into their practice, to promote timely intervention of mental health services to kids. Even the mental health providers, by integrating themselves with the pediatricians, leverage the already prevalent trust factor of patients and are able to reach out to families in a familiar setting. One such program was the Healthy Minds, Healthy Kids Initiative at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, headed by Dr. Mautone.In the last two years, this initiative managed to cater to more than 2,500 patients. Robles-Ramamurthy, considered this as a positive breakthrough. Yet there is a lot more to be achieved, she feels. A lot of families still consider the presence of a mental illness in their family as a personal failure and are scared of addressing them because of the fear of the associated stigma. The work towards destigmatizing mental illnesses has really started only a decade back. Another hurdle that the parents face is insurance cover. Some of the teens are covered, while others are not covered adequately.Teen mental health treatment at ADEONA HealthcareMental illnesses, when untreated in young adolescents, pose serious threats to the community, including unemployment, poor performance in school and life in general, and high suicide rates. At ADEONA Healthcare of Rancho San Diego, adolescents aged 12 to 17 receive comprehensive behavioral treatment programs for mental disorders and related issues. The facility offers a combination of individual and group therapies crucial for the successful treatment and recovery from mental disorders.