Timely, healthy diet helps avert health complication for chronic patients: Experts

By Mahima Devkota, Kathmandu, Sept. 4: Experts have suggested maintaining a healthy diet in a timely manner during Dashain for chronic patients to avoid health complications. 

Yogita Sapkota, a dietician supervisor at the National Trauma Center, said that patients with chronic diseases such as sugar, diabetes, pressure, cardiovascular diseases, and kidney problems, need a timely and balanced diet.

She said, “The ideal gap of eating for such patients is three to four hours. However, during Dashain, the intake of food intervals lengthens because of puja and many denizens prioritize having meat over other diets due to which many health problems such as constipation, high blood pressure, kidney problems, and cardiovascular diseases are observed.” 

She added that diabetic and sugar patients must be extra cautious as untimely eating during festivals can lead to hypoglycemia. 

According to her, meat is a good source of protein, but if it is not maintained it causes constipation and gastritis. Meat has also a good amount of fat, if excessive fatty meat is consumed then it increases body weight and cholesterol in the body. 

Similarly, many people use repeat oil while cooking meat, which causes trans fat, cholesterol, and cardiovascular diseases. 

Pointing out that the number of patients in the hospital increases soon after Dashain, she suggested maintaining a balanced diet that is moderation of each item in a diet, even more in Dashain as the workload is more and the body needs a proportionate food item. A plate diet should have 50 per cent of vegetables and fruits, and the rest should be a mixture of everything. 

She suggested that water should be consumed thoroughly and white meat such as chicken and fish should be focused on rather than red meat. She said that 100 grams of meat can be consumed daily

Dr. Om Murti Anil, a consultant cardiologist at the National Cardiac Center said that a balanced diet is 90% of medicine. If the same food is unbalanced, 90 percent of diseases can occur. Many people do not stick to a balanced diet during festivals like Dashain where oily, fried, and greasy meat and cold drinks are excessively consumed. 

Any chronic diseases like diabetes, cholesterol issues, heart problems, high blood pressure, and kidney problems are all related to food and if the intake of a balanced diet is not maintained then health problems, especially in chronic patients, are observed. 

He said that during the Dashain festival meat is given priority in Nepali households. There is a tendency to consume fried and greasy meat with cold drinks which have only sugar and fat. This accumulates fat in the body, which increases body weight as well.  

He suggested cooking meat in saturated fat such as oil rather than unsaturated fat. If we put extra fat or oil in the meat while cooking then it increases cholesterol in the body.  When cholesterol is high, LDL increases in the body, which leads to heart issues. 

He stressed that a healthy diet should be maintained along with physical exercise in festivals for disease-free festivities.