Dr Can­di­da Khan

Type 2 di­a­betes, high blood pres­sure, high blood cho­les­terol, weight prob­lems and gut is­sues are some ma­jor health con­cerns that I en­counter in my field of nu­tri­tion and di­et ther­a­py.

There is a con­ver­sa­tion we need to have about lifestyle dis­eases and what in­flu­ences them be­cause mis­in­for­ma­tion af­fects the way that we treat these health con­cerns. These are af­fect­ed by the way that we live, eat, move, sleep and man­age stress.

Did you know that lifestyle dis­eases are not con­ta­gious? Non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases like type two di­a­betes and high blood pres­sure are not passed from per­son to per­son. This means that our dai­ly rou­tines are more im­por­tant.

The truth is that the mod­ern food en­vi­ron­ment is pro­mot­ing high­ly processed meals and sug­ary bev­er­ages for con­ve­nience. Por­tions have al­so in­creased and many of us are eat­ing less whole­some foods. The is­sue isn’t a piece of cake one day, but con­sis­tent habits that su­press a healthy lifestyle. When processed, sug­ary foods and over­sized por­tions be­come the foun­da­tion of a di­et rather than a ca­su­al part of it, health com­pli­ca­tions arise.

One meal doesn’t de­ter­mine your health.

Treat­ing health com­pli­ca­tions as sep­a­rate con­di­tions doesn’t make sense when they can over­lap. Some­one can de­vel­op both hy­per­ten­sion and high blood cho­les­terol. When I fo­cus on nu­tri­tion so­lu­tions for my clients, I fo­cus on the whole per­son. The goal is to eval­u­ate what is be­ing con­sumed, how much, how of­ten, por­tions, di­etary fi­bre, hy­dra­tion, fruits, veg­eta­bles, com­plex car­bo­hy­drates, sug­ar, sodi­um, sleep and so many oth­er fac­tors.

Food isn’t the en­e­my. We shouldn’t fear food but work with it to bal­ance our favourites and in­clude a va­ri­ety of com­bi­na­tions to build a health­i­er plate. These are foods I would rec­om­mend from the six food groups to make a bal­anced meal:

1. Sta­ples e.g. rice

2. Legumes e.g. peas

3. Food from an­i­mals: stewed chick­en

4. Veg­eta­bles: cab­bage, car­rots (coleslaw)

5. Fruit: pineap­ple

6. Fats: av­o­ca­do

One point that I would like to stress is that med­ica­tion does not re­place healthy lifestyle habits. Nu­tri­tion ther­a­py should be the main fo­cus for lifestyle dis­eases. A huge mis­take is wait­ing for a detri­men­tal di­ag­no­sis be­fore tak­ing nu­tri­tion se­ri­ous­ly. The cause of the rise in blood sug­ar, blood pres­sure or ab­nor­mal cho­les­terol should be the fo­cus. Nu­tri­tion is not on­ly about treat­ing the health is­sue but al­so pro­tect­ing health. The an­swer isn’t an­oth­er ex­treme di­et. Fo­cus on:

1. In­creas­ing wa­ter in­take to achieve op­ti­mal hy­dra­tion for your body. It can be 2L or 3L and some­times more.

2. In­clude more nat­ur­al, whole­some lo­cal foods rather than processed ones.

3. Fo­cus on sleep. This is high­ly un­der­rat­ed but vi­tal for or­gan re­cov­ery.

As a Doc­tor in Nu­tri­tion and Di­et Ther­a­py, my fo­cus is help­ing peo­ple un­der­stand the con­nec­tion be­tween what they eat and how their bod­ies func­tion. I fo­cus par­tic­u­lar­ly on di­a­betes, hy­per­ten­sion, cho­les­terol, weight man­age­ment and gut health be­cause these con­cerns are not sim­ply num­bers on a lab­o­ra­to­ry re­port. They af­fect re­al peo­ple, fam­i­lies, en­er­gy lev­els, con­fi­dence, qual­i­ty of life and long-term health.

Dr Can­di­da Khan

PhD Nu­tri­tion and Di­et Ther­a­py

MSc., RD.

Reg. Di­etit­ian Nu­tri­tion­ist

Chron­ic Dis­ease Spe­cial­ist

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