Nutritional disorder is a major challenge before the health care providers in several countries. The conventional approach categorise this under malabsorption and resorts to supplementation therapy. The holistic concepts of homeopathy believes that the nutritional disorder is not due to the deficiency of nutrients and micronutrients alone, but also due to the body's inability to absorb and assimilate them from the food and its inability to synthesize them wherever possible. This is considered as a constitutional error of the individual, which is further influenced by factors such as repeated infections, poor hygiene, emotional and low socio economic conditions. Constitutional correction through homoeopathic treatment facilitates the system to utilize the nutritional supply from food at an optimum extent. It will also take care of the adverse effects produced due to external supplements. More importantly, it is seen that in case of supplementary therapy, when it is stopped, the disorder reappear gradually, where as in constitutional approach, since the problem is dealt at the fundamental level, the nutritional status is maintained more efficiently for a long time.
Malnutrition is not a simple nutritional issue, but associated with social and economic factors. Creating awareness about healthy diet, good living habits, hygiene, avoidance of alcohol and smoking are equally important besides community development and health education. Along with creating awareness, there is need to ensure that resources for nutritional supplements are identified, generated and maintained by the society itself. This will happen only through community participation and community empowerment.
