human
How do you know if you're nutritionally deficient in some way?Male. Late 20s. Non smoker. Non drug user. Non drinker.So I have a fairly basic diet. I eat a reasonably healthy mix of meat veg and fruit every day. But it is basically the same things every day. So unless there is a major health issue as a symptom is there a way to know if there's something else I need to be eating?For example I can't eat fish/ seafood. Is there a symptom that I should mindful of that means I'm missing something from my diet that fish/ seafood would normally provide?
gpt
Usual disclaimer: no one can provide specific medical advice for a person or condition without an in-person interview and physical examination, and a review of the available medical records and recent and past testing. This comment is for general information purposes only, and not intended to provide medical advice. No physician-patient relationship is implied or established.True nutritional deficiencies are almost unheard of in modern first-world countries. They are either the result of very restrictive diets, or of medical conditions that cause problems with the absorption of nutrients, such as inflammatory bowel disease or celiac disease, or surgery of the gastrointestinal system, such as bariatric surgery (weight-loss surgery) or removal of parts of the small intestine (usually due to injuries like getting stabbed or shot in the abdomen).As an aside, there is an "epidemic" of vitamin D deficiency currently. I use the quotation marks, as this is a controversial issue. By some measures, up to 60% of people in the United States are "deficient" in vitamin D. However, it is possible that the values that are considered to be sufficient are just wrong. For an interesting discussion of how this came to be you can read this interesting article about the physician who more-or-less singlehandedly creates the modern idea of vitamin D deficiency.https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/18/business/vitamin-d-michael-holick.htmlIt should be noted that there are studies that associate vitamin D deficiency with worse outcomes of various illnesses, including COVID-19, but that large studies of vitamin D supplementation have never shown any benefits whatsoever.Finally, and to me mysteriously, despite the "epidemic" of vitamin D deficiency, children are oddly spared the effects: vitamin D deficiency in children produces a specific syndrome called rickets, which is very nasty, but somehow, there is essentially no rickets in the United States. The only case I ever saw was a well-meaning but utterly misguided family feeding their newborn infant home-made vegan formula.
Please forgive my ignorance, this is genuine confusion and not sarcasm or anything like that but I'm really not understanding how anything is relevant behind the time at which formula milk goes bad at room temperature. Whether he's fed 10ml an hour or 1 liter an hour into his stomach or his bowel, the fact would remain that the rate at which milk would spoil at room temperature would be a constant - I'm having difficulty understanding why the answer is not straightforward that 'formula cannot sit unused at room temperature for xyz hours' as an example. Nothing unique to him or his situation would make milk sat at room temperature last longer - at least that I can think of - but if I am being ignorant to something that changes everything then please tell me so I can learn.Right now in my head I'm having trouble getting away from the concept of whether I eat chicken in 2 bites or 17 or whether I put it in a blender or I eat it fried, it would still be unfit for consumption if it were first left out for a period of time. And given that we believe the nurse is doing something we've been told is bad, it wouldn't make sense to ask her because she wouldn't contradict herself. It makes more sense to me to look for a consensus from different professionals.For his feed, that's my bad referring to it as an IV, it's in a bag that hangs up on a pole and is administered slowly over 4 hours at 45ml per hour. We give him 180ml and change the bag every 4 hours. The line runs through a kangaroo thing that pumps it into his bowel through a J port in a button on his chest. Instead of 180ml at 45 per hour for 4 hours the night nurse is feeding him 360ml in the bag over 8 hours at the same rate so just doubling the contents of the bag and leaving the bag at room temperature for 8 hours while it is administered into him
It's not milk though is it? It's some type of tube feeding. Look at the bottle, and then look on the company website.For example, Vital AF, a common tube feed formulation used in my hospital can hang unrefrigerated for 48 hours per the company website.https://www.abbottnutrition.com/our-products/vital-af-1_2-cal