Shaleen is a third year medical student at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington, DC Class of 2025. In 2021, she graduated from the George Washington University with a Bachelor of Science in biology and a minor in economics. Shaleen is passionate about nutrition education, community engagement, and culinary medicine.
A physician’s two favorite words: diet and exercise. Patients are constantly told that lifestyle interventions are the most important modifiable risk factors to prevent chronic illnesses like diabetes and hypertension.
Do-it-yourself (DIY) medicine is particularly appealing to those who wish to take their health into their own hands and remove costly, time-consuming physicians from the equation. Crucial, however, is the fact that these companies are independently run and thus are not regulated by any governing scientific body.
Nutritional education, as an appendage to conventional medical education, has the power to close the gap by equipping physicians with more well-rounded knowledge to help patients manage the more unmanageable conditions.
As medical students, we spend endless hours stuck in a library, with tons of books and piles of notes that we try to get into our heads … It is only logical that it is challenging to maintain a healthy diet and exercise routine while aiming for academic excellence.
As future doctors, we must advocate for a more integrated nutrition and lifestyle medicine education, one that is based not just in healthy eating, but also in the reversal of this global chronic disease epidemic. Let healthy food be thy guide to a happy body and soul.
Advice on how to eat is perhaps the most ubiquitous type of medicine we are exposed to throughout our day-to-day. Just look at Dr. Oz or recall the waxing and waning popularity of fad diets. While I struggle to define any sources as legitimate nutrition education, it stands to reason that doctors receive training about carbs, calories and fats, right?
A few weeks ago, Coca-Cola disclosed that they have donated almost $120 million in grants to medical, health, and community organizations since 2010. As medical students, we can all understand how scientists who receive grant funding from a corporation such as Coke are at increased risk for inserting biases, conscious or otherwise, into their scientific research.
Hippocrates, the ‘father of medicine’ said, “let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” The role of nutrition in health has been recognized since the beginning of medicine, yet somehow nutrition education has fallen by the wayside in most medical curricula. Given that 34.9 percent of Americans are obese and obesity has been linked to diabetes, heart disease, stroke and certain types of cancer, nutrition should be a focal point of medical education.
How can doctors-in-training incorporate nutrition in their delivery of health care? Anne, an extended fourth-year medical student planning a career in integrative family medicine, shares her dream to centralize healthy nutrition in medical practice. She also describes her nutrition research that examines the effects of an anti-inflammatory diet for Crohn’s disease patients.
“Americans don’t lose weight.” This was the favorite tagline of a gastroenterologist I shadowed as a second-year medical student. In the few hours I spent with him, he seemed to have a defeatist attitude towards the potential that patients have in caring for themselves. Unfortunately, I do not believe this physician is alone in his thoughts. The allopathic medical education culture lends itself to treat people with medications and surgeries.
Whether you are embarking on your Step 1 studying journey or starting your clerkship, it is absolutely essential to maintain your health and well-being throughout medical school. It can be very easy to get caught up in the flow of studying lectures or rounding on patients. Even though it may seem convenient to go for the bag of potato chips when you’re on the run in the hospital or plowing through lectures without taking a …
There’s no one moment I remember distinctly when I realized my love for cooking. Cooking has been part of me for as long as I can remember: recipes have long since been abandoned for the spontaneity of Thursday night creations. Tuesdays have become an excuse to make cookies. For my family, like for many, the kitchen was the center of our house. Maybe my love of cooking came early, sitting on the floor in my parent’s apartment banging …
Contributing Writer Emeritus
University of New Mexico School of Medicine
Before attending medical school in her hometown of Albuquerque at the University of New Mexico, Katharine graduated with a degree in Cognitive Science from the UCSD, where she worked in research labs studying everything from alcohol and drug addiction to language learning in children. She now writes and makes videos chronicling her daily life in med school on her blog LadyKayMD. When not living her crazy fourth year medical student life running between clinic, research meetings, or studying, Katharine fills her time with rock climbing, writing, and baking for anyone who comes within 20 feet of her house.
