Can­di­da Khan

In Trinidad and To­ba­go, we have made herbal sup­ple­ments part of our dai­ly rou­tine. Cap­sules of­ten promise quick re­sults and may lead us to think that they are safer to use. Women use them as reme­dies for men­stru­al pain, fer­til­i­ty, and hor­mone bal­ance, to name a few. The be­lief that they are nat­ur­al is mis­lead­ing and while some herbs have ben­e­fits and I rec­om­mend them in my pri­vate prac­tice, sup­ple­ments can car­ry hid­den risks that are over­looked, es­pe­cial­ly for women. The most pow­er­ful tool for main­tain­ing women’s health is prop­er nu­tri­tion.

Un­like pre­scrip­tion med­ica­tions, herbal sup­ple­ments are not reg­u­lat­ed by au­thor­i­ties. This can mean that it may not be ac­cu­rate in the guar­an­tee that is be­ing ad­ver­tised or writ­ten on la­bels. Some sup­ple­ments might not even dis­close in­gre­di­ents and may have heavy met­als or bac­te­ria, which can be dan­ger­ous for women. The bot­tom line is that we don’t know what we are putting in­to our bod­ies. I per­son­al­ly don’t use sup­ple­ments. I use nu­tri­tion as my fu­el source and rec­om­mend that to my clients. Our bod­ies need nu­tri­ents that come from the food we eat, not a pill that we are be­ing pro­grammed to use by ad­ver­tis­ing com­pa­nies.

There can al­so be se­ri­ous side ef­fects when mixed with pre­scrip­tion med­ica­tions. Many of us don’t re­alise that some herbal prod­ucts can af­fect our blood pres­sure and sug­ar lev­els. It can be dan­ger­ous if com­bined with med­ica­tion be­ing used to treat hy­per­ten­sion or di­a­betes. These risks are not al­ways dis­cussed with health­care pro­fes­sion­als.

Mis­lead­ing terms that are com­mon­ly used in mar­ket­ing in­clude “detox the body”, “boost fer­til­i­ty” or “cure”. These are claims not based on sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence. There is no mag­ic cure for com­plex con­di­tions and be­liev­ing in these claims can gen­er­ate false hope, which can lead to in­ef­fec­tive treat­ments, for ex­am­ple, with PCOS. In many cas­es, it can wors­en health is­sues over time. I have per­son­al­ly no­ticed this in many clients.

Prop­er nu­tri­tion is the base­line of health. It plays a cru­cial role in pre­vent­ing chron­ic dis­eases such as di­a­betes, heart dis­ease, hy­per­ten­sion and obe­si­ty. These are ma­jor health con­cerns that plague Trinidad and To­ba­go. I be­lieve in the pow­er of healthy eat­ing habits not on­ly be­cause there is re­search ev­i­dence and many stud­ies to back up find­ings, but al­so be­cause of the re­sults my clients achieve. Prop­er eat­ing helps with reg­u­lat­ing blood sug­ars, sup­port­ing blood pres­sure and cho­les­terol lev­els, as well as achiev­ing weight goals.

Prop­er nu­tri­tion is safe. Whole foods are far less like­ly to cause harm­ful side ef­fects when con­sumed in nor­mal amounts and can help reg­u­late hor­mones and sup­port re­pro­duc­tive health among women. Our lo­cal foods in Trinidad and To­ba­go pro­vide ex­cel­lent nu­tri­tion­al val­ue. We have so many fruits and veg­eta­bles such as man­go, paw­paw and cu­cum­ber, baigan and toma­to. Ground pro­vi­sions are an amaz­ing source of sus­tained en­er­gy through­out the day be­cause they are com­plex car­bo­hy­drates that di­gest slow­ly, in par­tic­u­lar pota­to.

While herbal sup­ple­ments pro­mote quick so­lu­tions, they are not worth the risk to women, in my opin­ion. Prop­er eat­ing habits save lives by pro­vid­ing nat­ur­al sources of nu­tri­ents that our bod­ies need to sur­vive. When fo­cus­ing on bal­anced, whole­some foods and seek­ing guid­ance from qual­i­fied health­care pro­fes­sion­als like my­self, we can all make in­formed de­ci­sions to ben­e­fit our fu­ture, which are usu­al­ly found on the plate.

Can­di­da Khan, MSc RD al­so known as Di­di is a Reg­is­tered Di­etit­ian Nu­tri­tion­ist

She is al­so the CEO of Di­di’s Nu­tri­tion Con­sul­tan­cy didis­nu­tri­tion­con­sul­tan­cy.com