Christina’s specialization in clinical nutrition, clinical researches, continuous education – including psychology science -, pharmacotherapy knowledge, enteral nutrition therapy know-how, as well as her interaction with various healthcare professionals and experience with numerous patients, offer her a broad range of talent and skills in clinical nutrition field that can make a tremendous difference! That means you receive deep insights and expert nutritional care no matter your diagnosis. Christina has dealt cancer patients (particularly breast cancer), patients with mental illness, children with growth failure, and a wide range of disease states and conditions. She realizes that dealing with specific diseases is a huge challenge for patients and families alike, and will be there for you with attentiveness and compassion.
Dedicated to provide the safest, most tailored, and compassionate nutritional care and service, she is here for you every step of the way, as you or a loved one navigate the process of disease from treatment to recovery and well-being.
Christina works with the patient and the physician/ interdisciplinary healthcare team to provide an individualized, evidence-based nutritional diagnostic, therapy, education and counseling services to patients, families and their caregivers that is derived from the findings of an in-depth nutrition assessment and is integrated and compatible with the patient’s needs, in diverse patient populations from pediatrics to geriatrics. In certain diseases, disorders and medical conditions, nutrient requirements and ultimately a proper nutritional status, cannot be met by the consumption of standard foods alone. In such cases, Foods intented for Special Groups (FSG), especially highly sophisticated foods called Foods For Special Medical Purposes (FSMPs), administered orally (Oral Nutritional Supplements) or via a feeding tube as indicated, are vital to supplement the diet or to replace food so as to ensure good overall nutrition. Christina has the know-how of Enteral Nutrition (Oral Nutrition Supplements and and Tube Feeding) and can provide expert advice and recommendations to ensure the effective and safe use of FSMP and other FSGs in order to support enhanced patient outcome through an improved nutritional health.
Physical health matters, mental health matters! And Christina strives to deliver nutrition care to anticipate her patients’ needs and exceed their expectations so that they can focus on their health (physical and mental) and recovery.
Christina provides Clinical Nutrition Care and Support services for Gastrointestinal Diseases, Diabetes, Renal Disease,
Lipid Disorders, Food Allergy and Food Intolerance, Rheumatic Diseases, and other specific conditions including:
Pediatric Growth Failure (Failure to Thrive):
Growth failure is a condition that describes children whose weight or length/height is not increasing at a rate consistent with a growth reference or standard, caused by inadequate caloric intake, malabsorption, excessive caloric expenditure, or defective use of nutrients. Failure to thrive carries a lot of emotional weight and must be handled delicately. Medical Nutrition is vital for its management and Christina’s nutritional therapeutic intervention is the appropriate step to get your boy or girl who is failing to thrive back on track to a healthy childhood and to give your child a good start in life.
Cancer:
The disease and its treatments can change how you taste, swallow or chew your food and can temporarily change how your body uses food. Thus, even when a person makes good nutritional and lifestyle choices, achieving good nutritional health may be challenging. Optimal nutrition is an integral part of the cancer recovery process and beyond. Whether a patient is going through treatment or he/ she is disease-free or has stable disease following recovery, Christina’s services include optimum therapeutic diets for achieving or maintain a healthy body weight and optimum nutritional status with a strong immune system, nutrition build-up prior to and during therapy, management of cancer symptoms or nutrition-related treatment side effects, counseling on dietary supplements and complementary nutritional therapies, counseling on drug-diet interaction and nutrition education for patients, families and their caregivers.
Mental and behavioral disorders (other than developmental disabilities).
Nutrition matters! Targeted Nutrition for Mental Health (Nutritional Psychiatry) to individuals with depression, bipolar affective disorders, dementia, psychotic disorders and other mental illnesses are essential for lifelong mental wellness. It works alongside conventional treatment and can improve:
– Nutritional status: Our food relates to brain health and by extension to mental health..meaning our mood, our cognition, our ability to think and feel, our ability to manifest 100% us!
– Reduce the side-effects of medication (e.g. weight gain – a major side effect of several antipsychotic medications – or weight loss/ undernutrition – commonly seen in patients with dementia),
– Optimize medication effectiveness (e.g. mood stabilization, better sleep mode, stress reduction),
– Manage concurrent and comorbid conditions (e.g glucose intolerance, dyslipidemia)
and in general improve overall physical health and quality of life thus enabling the person to function at the highest level of independent living.
When it comes to managing people with mental disorders, the quality of the care means everything. Christina has extensively researched the area via her two years (2008-2010) of participation in the successful Greek Solutions for Wellness (Eli Lilly’s Solutions for Wellness, SfW) program (funded by Pharmaserv Lilly Greece) and has treated more than a thousand of persons with severe mental illness (SMI) with documented success.
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"Teamwork always takes you further. I truly believe in the collaborative value of partnerships. Good partnerships with your doctor, like-minded healthcare professionals and industry experts as needed enables me to bring additional value to my clients, to empower them and achieve the best results for my client’s nutrition, health and wellness goals”
