Nutritional medicine / clinical nutrition medicine is an area of medicine that seeks to identify and treat disorders in the human body that result from improper or inadequate diet, or from clinical or pre-clinical conditions that make the body unable to optimally handle the nutrients delivered to it in the normal diet. The usual treatment is dietary and through the consumption of nutraceuticals. Nutraceuticals are defined as foods, food-derived compounds, dietary supplements, or natural food additives that have been demonstrated to offer health benefits.

Nutritional medicine is also important in certain diseases, like liver disease, where the diet has to be carefully formulated so that normal nutrients and byproducts do not become toxic, because the liver is not working properly.

The underlying principle of nutritional medicine is that when the body is supplied with the correct balance of foods, vitamins, and nutrients, it will be healthy. When disease is present, an attempt is made to fortify the affected organs or organ systems through supplemental targeted nutrition. 

When a body becomes ill, nutritional medicine calls for higher, therapeutic doses of basic nutrients to address illnesses and disorders. It is effective in addressing diseases of deficiency that may be caused by poor diet or environmental factors eg stress, irregular life styles, inadequate sleep. Because this method uses substances vital to a body's well being, nutritional medicine is well received by the body.

Article contributed by: OmniGreen Wellness