Benefits of Nutrition in Addiction Treatment
How Important Is Nutrition in Addiction Treatment?
An effective addiction treatment program focuses on supporting each patient to heal from addiction within their body and mind. While amid a drug and alcohol addiction, substance abuse strains your physical health and well-being. As your lifestyle revolves around your drug and alcohol abuse, the ability to properly fuel your body with the essential nutrients and vitamins to sustain optimal health often becomes significantly impacted, causing severe nutritional deficiencies. During an addiction recovery treatment program, your body will attempt to recover and readjust to functioning without the harmful toxins and influences of drugs and alcohol. Incorporating essential nutrition in recovery programs ensures patients can improve their brain functions and overall physical health to enter into sober living with a renewed sense of self and the ability to maintain optimal physical and mental health.
Nutritional Deficiencies Caused by Drug and Alcohol Use
Depending on your choice of drug or alcohol that you regularly engage in during your addiction, you will experience different nutritional deficiencies.
Engaging in alcohol abuse can cause damage to the lining of the stomach, making it difficult to absorb nutrients. Alcohol consumption is correlated with a significant decrease in absorbing B complex nutrients and thiamine, which can lead to Korsakoff’s syndrome. Long-term alcohol abuse is associated with a calcium deficiency.
Opioid or heroin addiction has been proven to affect the brain’s ability to produce neurotransmitters, including dopamine levels, serotonin which improves your mood, and acetylcholine which impacts your memories.
Cocaine abuse has been known to cause a deficiency in essential vitamins, especially vitamin C. When an individual becomes deficient in vitamin C, there is a direct correlation to the person experiencing organ failure after prolonged periods of experiencing vitamin C deficiency.
Benefits of Good Nutrition in Addiction Treatment
Incorporating proper nutrition into your alcohol and drug treatment program will support you in regaining healthy brain functions along with healthy physical capacity and support stabilizing mental health disorders.
The benefits of nutrition in recovery are:
- Reestablish healthy body functioning within the various organ and system functioning
- Restore balance within your central nervous system
- Target healing and reparation within your organs and tissues
- Improve brain functions such as improved memory and neuroplasticity and decreased inflammation
- Increased energy levels
- Improve sleep quality
- Support in healthy, stabilization of mental health disorders while developing new coping skills and incorporating balanced diets within your addiction recovery plan.
- Reduce any drug or alcohol cravings
- Strengthen your body’s ability to increase your immune system
Nutrition and Wellness Program at Novo Detox
At Novo Detox, we value the need for an emphasis placed on nutrition and addiction recovery. Through our holistic practices within our substance use disorder treatment programs, patients will be able to strengthen their body’s ability to heal from the physical side effects of alcohol and drug addiction while also focusing on the root causes of their alcohol and drug addiction. Patients are offered a variety of evidence-based therapy methods, including dual diagnosis treatment, behavioral therapy, a 12-step program, and nutrition therapy to ensure each patient can safely overcome their drug or alcohol addiction while developing a new routine of health and wellness in addiction recovery.
Patients within our residential treatment program will have access to meals prepared daily by our on-site chefs, who focus on providing balanced diets full of essential vitamins and nutrients. During your time in drug or alcohol treatment, you will work alongside our knowledgeable team, who will teach you everything you need to know about essential nutrition and health to provide you with the tools for a healthy future in addiction recovery.
Please reach out to us at (844) 834-1777 today to discover how proper nutrition provided at Novo Detox can aid addiction recovery.
