In a world where speed, compulsiveness and superficiality often characterize the days, learning to eat healthily and correctly, balancing foods and meal timesrepresents the first step towards general psycho-physical well-being.
Relying on an expert professional, able to direct the person on the right path to follow and maintain is essential for solving problems of a different nature that lead to turning to a specialist.
The doctor Stella Galbiati, graduated in Human Nutrition Sciences and registered as a Biologist, is part of the team of medical specialists at the Carnate Diagnostic Clinic. She is a nutritionist and is responsible for drawing up food plans for different needs (correct nutrition, improvement of body composition, for athletes, allergies, intolerances and health problems with confirmed diagnoses).
We asked her for an overview of her figure and a photograph of the patient and the path on which he is accompanied.
Doctor Galbiati, who is the nutritionist first and foremost and what are the reasons that push a patient to ask for a consultation?
The nutritionist is first and foremost a biologist, a nutrition specialist. Therefore a professional who has completed a long journey of specific studies. There are various reasons that lead to turning to a nutritionist: the desire to lose weight, aesthetic issues, health-related problems such as allergies, intolerances, heart problems. In fact, for a pathology that requires pharmacological therapy it is often necessary to combine it with a food therapy.
Is the nutritionist a separate sector, which has a history in itself or can it provide a modulated action on multiple fronts and specialties?
When we approach a patient we find ourselves building a medical path with him and for him and in many cases we have to do this taking into account other previous pathologies or specific needs that have brought him to us. There may be a need to lose weight to then help the orthopedist or the cardiologist or the diabetologist with a remodulation of the diet because the body is in pain. Very often eating disorders, such as compulsive and wrong hunger, are linked to stress and tension and therefore the psychological factor takes over which it is necessary to work on. Interaction between multiple medical figures is very frequent and here at the clinic we have many specialists with whom I collaborate and consult.
How do you identify the path to take and are there any tools to help?
The nutritionist first reconstructs the patient’s clinical history and “interviews” him on the reasons that led him to ask for his intervention, on the pathologies from which he is suffering, on the disorders and on his expectations. He takes a food history and to analyze body composition he uses bioimpedance measurement which allows us to understand a person’s physical structure and therefore the percentage of fat, liquids and muscle mass. At this point, once he has obtained a precise picture, he sets goals with the patient for weight loss by drawing up a food plan based on habits, lifestyles and tastes. He establishes checks (after a week, after a month) and verifies the achievement of the set objectives. The aim is to reduce the number of checks, spreading them over time in order to maintain the lifestyle achieved.
Today we talk about bad eating habits. How to recognize and fight them and what advice do you feel like giving?
First of all, do-it-yourself diets, without the advice of a professional, are the worst thing you can do, especially if you make extreme choices. Then we need to learn to read the labels of the products found on the supermarket shelves and there we would obtain a lot of information about the foods we buy and eat. We also need to make quality choices, which often involve an economic burden, but which guarantee us better nutrition. Today we eat too much of everything and poor nutrition is often influenced by time and life demands that lead us to run, not to stop, to make choices dictated by haste or by what appears beautiful, perfect, tasty to the eye. And maybe it’s not healthy. It is a long job, sometimes expensive from different points of view but in the medium to long term it brings its benefits and also its savings.
