Registered Dietician, Katherine Davidson let a class on Heart Healthy Nutrition at Brandon Regional Hospital. Davidson used visuals such as the one revealing levels of plaque build up on artery walls to bring home the point about the need for healthy nutrition for a healthy heart.
Each month Brandon Regional Hospital offers a variety of community education classes that are available to the public. The classes offered are varied and deal with a plethora of issues such as heartt healthy nutrition, advances in treatment for a variety of conditions and ailments as well as prenatal and newborn advice.
Bland Eng, CEO of Brandon Regional Hospital, said, “The employees and medical staff at Brandon Regional Hospital are strongly committed to improving the lives of those who live in our community. Providing health education to our community allows the hospital staff to keep the public informed on a variety of health topics, while at the same time providing us an opportunity to learn about the health interests, needs and concerns in the community.”
Recently, Katherine Davidson, RD, LD/N, one of the three Registered Dieticians at Brandon Regional Hospital led a class called, “Heart Healthy Nutrition” on Wednesday, July 11. The saying “seeing is believing,” is true. Davidson showed the class a model of what plaque looks like in your arteries. She also displayed vials which showed the amount of fat in common products such as regular mayonnaise versus lite mayonnaise. The images were shocking, and if a demonstration such as this is not enough to change at least some of your dietary habits, then nothing will.
The Heart Healthy Nutrition class covered a good range of topics from how to lighten up recipes to how to decrease the amount of sodium intake. The class was interactive and attendees actively participated.
Dawn Ahomed of Brandon was one of the attendees. Ahomed said, “My family wanted to improve our eating habits. My mom went online and found out about this class. So far this class has been very helpful. I only wish my grandmother was here to hear all of this. We have three generations living together, and we are trying to break the habit of adding fat to foods.”
One of Davidson’s main themes throughout the class was “everything in moderation.” In fact, Davidson said, “I am not recommending that you completely eliminate items, just use less of them.” Davidson added, “Make fresh fruits readily available for snacks, get eight hours of sleep and drink eight ounces of water everyday.”
For more information on the upcoming classes at Brandon Regional Hospital, please visit www.BrandonRegionalHospital.com or call 653-1065.
