A nutritious diet is crucial for proper health. But, there are differences in nutritional requirements that do not depend only on your weight, age, and activity level. Your gender also plays a factor. Being aware of these gender-specific differences in nutritional requirements can help you maintain good health as well as avoid certain health problems.
Ideally, your diet should be individualized. It should revolve around two types of nutrients - macronutrients and micronutrients. To maintain the balance, you need to take both, but keeping in mind the gender-specific differences in nutritional requirements. Too much of a good thing can sometimes create, rather than solve a problem.
Macronutrients, such as carbohydrates, protein, and fat, represent the bulk of our diet and provide the energy that keeps us going. On the other hand, micronutrients that are found in vitamins and minerals are needed in small amounts but play an essential role in helping prevent many health problems.
To understand the gender differences in nutritional requirements for our health, let us understand more about the macronutrients. These nutrients are needed in large amounts, and our diet should revolve around:
Micronutrients are found in vitamins, minerals, and organic acids. Natural food is the best source of these micronutrients instead of supplementation so that you can avoid potential adverse effects of any excess. These are two examples of how differences in nutritional requirements can affect your meal planning:
Therefore, gender differences in nutritional requirements are very real and should be taken seriously, especially if taking supplements.
Inflammation can affect you on different levels and for various reasons, but it is merely a way your body deals with stress - both physical or psychological.
Although the inflammation process is usually associated with pain, infection, or other kinds of discomfort, inflammation is necessary for the body to heal itself naturally. The inflammation process helps the body to get rid of harmful pathogens that caused it. So, occasional inflammation is nothing to worry about because the symptoms you experience in the process, e.g. redness, swelling, pain, and heat, are simply the side effects of the healing process.
However, there is a significant difference between acute and chronic inflammation. While acute inflammation is a natural process of self-repair, chronic inflammation is a sign of things getting out of control.
Besides, inflammation is not an isolated process. If one part of the body is affected, the problem can spread to the other organs and systems like the immune system, gastrointestinal tract, microbiome, and brain.
One of the conditions that contribute to and is triggered by chronic inflammation is Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome (AFS).
When your body tries to resolve a stressful "situation", your adrenal glands release cortisol, the anti-stress hormone, which helps you keep stress under control. However, if stress is a way of life and cortisol is being pumped into your blood non-stop, the adrenals will eventually become exhausted resulting in Adrenal Fatigue.
When a new disorder is identified, there is always a new drug discovered to fight it. Fighting AFS with anti-depressants and corticosteroids is not recommended and is potentially very harmful. On the other hand, the NeuroEndoMetabolic (NEM) stress response model views AFS as a lifestyle-related condition. It is dealt by improving the diet and lifestyle because it is these that cause inflammation in the first place.
Supplements, or foods rich in certain micronutrients, that can boost your body's self-healing mechanism and help it cope with inflammation, are fish oil, probiotics, vitamin C, glutathione, enzymes, quercetin, bromelain, vitamin E, turmeric, and vitamin D. It is best to get these from a balanced diet, however, if this for some reason not possible, then proper nutritional supplementation should be considered.
It is important to note that buying individual supplements over the counter and supplementing your diet without consulting a medical practitioner comes with a risk. Differences in nutritional requirements between men and women mean that excessive use of certain micronutrients can be very harmful.
Besides, if you are at an advanced stage of AFS you need to be particularly careful about what supplements you take, because by now your liver is already fatigued at this stage, and nutrient assimilation will be slow.
While high-stress levels and a fast-paced world contribute to “inflammation”, it is easy to balance your diet, while respecting the gender differences in nutritional requirements. You can follow the comprehensive NeuroEndoMetabolic (NEM) nutritional therapy that is based on a holistic approach to health recovery.
© Copyright 2020 Michael Lam, M.D. All Rights Reserved.
For certain physiological reasons, there are significant differences in the nutritional requirements between men and women. Both the deficiency and excess of certain nutrients, especially if taken in the supplement form, can create a chemical imbalance and lead to different health problems.
