Dietary Modifications in Critically-Ill Patients: A Comparison of Persian Medicine and Conventional Medicine Perspectives

Table 1

Types of acute illnesses and sample foods suitable for each.

Type of illness	Period of illness	Type of suitable food	Examples
Extremely acute	4 days or less	Extremely light foods (similar to a clear liquid diet)	Highly diluted nonalcoholic barley water, very thin soup, highly diluted pomegranate juice, and highly diluted oxymel [17, 21, 23]
Very acute	Between 4–7 days	Very light foods (similar to the liquid diet)	Diluted oxymel, diluted pomegranate juice, diluted pumpkin juice, and diluted cucumber juice [17]
Acute	Between 7–14 days	Light foods (similar to the soft and semisolid diet)	Porridge, soup, thick barley water, soft-boiled egg yolk, and very small fish [17, 23]
Subacute	Between 14–27 days	Medium-light foods (similar to the semisolid and solid diet)	Chicken, lamb and goat meat, and fresh fish [17, 23]
Chronified acute	Between 27–40 days	Dense foods (similar to the solid diet)	Regular diet suitable for patients [17]