Nutritionist Makes Case For Doctors’ Training

A Nutritionist, Mr Philip Amiengheme, has called on the Federal Government to train more doctors in nutritional medicine, to enable them provide dietary advice to patients.

Amiengheme, Nutritionist and President of Advocacy for the Prevention of Non-Communicable Diseases Initiative (APNDI), an NGO, made the call in an interview with newsmen.

“Most doctors are not trained in nutrition medicine, they are only trained in pharmaceutical medicine, they know their pharmaceutical drugs, treat only the symptoms, leaving the causes of the diseases untreated.

“Nutritional Medicine practitioner views food, diet and nutritional supplements from the perspective of their therapeutic potential.

“Providing dietary advice to clients and prescribing nutritional supplements to assist in the treatment of a broad range of health conditions.”

Amiengheme lamented that the country’s life span of about 46 years was due to the consumption of processed foods.

He said that people in countries like Japan and China had longer life span because they ate more of nutritional balanced food.

Amiengheme advised Nigerians to avoid junk food to prevent diseases, adding that people patronised fast food joints, making them eat foods devoid of nutrients.

He said that research had shown that what people ate or failed to eat could lead to sickness.

“For instance, vitamin C, which is found in plants, fruits and vegetables is vital for the prevention of scurvy, while iodine is for prevention of goiter, and iron prevents anemia.

“But when people go for processed foods, they miss out all these, which makes them to fall sick.”

The nutritionist complained that parents had also formed the habit of feeding their children with processed food, noting that such act would affect the health of the child in future.

“Parents should feed their children with natural foods.”

The U.S Centre for Complementary and Integrated Medicine has advised that nutritional medicine involved the use of vitamin and mineral supplements, usually given orally, in the form of tablets or liquids.

It also said that for any living organism to function adequately, there were trace elements such as zinc, magnesium and chromium and a number of vitamins usually described by letters of the alphabet (A to E) that are essential.

Their absence leads to disease, an observation first noted by James Lind in 1753.

He was a naval physician, who observed that sailors on long voyages, and therefore, without fresh fruits and vegetables, developed scurvy.

This deficiency caused illness that can kill a significant proportion of the crew on a long voyage, consequently significantly debilitating the navy’s ability to fight or even man their ships of discovery.

Lind also observed that the addition of lime juice to the sailor’s diet could prevent scurvy. (NAN)