Everyone should “eat right”. But people with a spinal cord injury or brain damage with an impact on mobility have even more reason to do so.
A sedentary lifestyle, little physical activity, is itself a vascular risk factor. Vascular risk factors are those circumstances – such as high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, high cholesterol, smoking, etc. – that cause our blood vessels (especially arteries) to “age” in an unhealthy way and atheroma plaques to form, thus increasing the risk of vascular diseases such as stroke or heart attack. Eating correctly can help to counteract this tendency.
On the other hand, when mobility is reduced, fewer calories are expended and, therefore, the need for caloric intake drops drastically. If you eat the same, for example, as you did before the injury, or the same as a person who is very physically active, you are likely to gain weight progressively. Obesity is a vascular risk factor that, in turn, favors the appearance of other vascular risk factors such as arterial hypertension or diabetes. It also makes mobility even more difficult and causes the same neurological lesion in an obese person to lead to a greater degree of dependence than in a person who is not overweight. Obesity can also reduce respiratory capacity, which sometimes, due to the injury itself, is already limited.
In addition to cardiovascular diseases (the most frequent in the society in which we live), a balanced diet will make us stronger against infections, less prone to other types of diseases (cancer, deficiency diseases such as anemia, etc.) and happier. It is therefore necessary to establish healthy habits, among which food is basic.
What do we mean by eating well?
Eating the nutrients that our body needs, each one in the right amount: no more and no less.
What are nutrients?
A nutrient is that component of a food that is essential for the subsistence of living organisms. Nutrients are the substances in food that are utilized by our body.
What do we need from food?
- We need energy (nutrients with energetic function) so that the body can perform its functions: maintenance of vital functions (breathing, circulation, digestion…) and daily physical activity.
- We need materials (nutrients with a plastic or construction function) to form and renew the body’s structures (healing, growth if necessary, cell renewal, hormone production, defenses, strong bones…).
- We need elements for everything to work (regulatory function). Some of them in very small quantities, but equally essential. These are vitamins and some minerals, which allow some chemical reactions to take place at the right time.