Ward 105 residents in Alexandra came in droves to East Bank Clinic for World Diabetes Day on November 14 and also to learn about healthy habits, the types of foods they should eat, and how best to cook them.
To teach them the types of foods to eat and how to cook those foods was none other than former President Nelson Mandela’s chef Vusani Nkosi of EyeNkosiEmpire, who encouraged residents to start growing their own vegetables and eat them in their natural state with no addition such as milk byproducts or with minimal spices.
Nkosi told residents that one of the greatest dangers in food is too much salt, sugar, and oil and that they should learn to consume these three items in their foods sparingly,
Consuming too much salt leads to hypertension which means there is too much salt in your body than it can dispose of and the same with sugar in the body system which ultimately leads to one developing diabetes.
He added that too much oil in your body is like a car engine filled up with used oil. “This tends to choke the engine and it then fails to give the maximum power needed to enable the car to drive smoothly as the sludge in the oil throttles its performance.
“This throttling effect causes your heart to work even harder in trying to pump blood into all of your body systems hence you then have a stroke as the heart can’t work any harder anymore,” Nkosi said.
When they arrived in the morning a fitness coach drilled them on exercises and aerobics which she told them were also critical to keeping healthy. A fit person is a much healthier individual who is less likely to fall victim to obesity and thereby become vulnerable to what has become known as ‘lifestyle diseases’.
Clinic operations manager Sister Idah Makgalemele told Alex News that the annual commemoration of diabetes day was to create awareness within the community, while at the same time urging residents to make use of the clinic facilities.
“It is often said that what you put into your mouth is what you will get. Put too much salt and get hypertension and the same goes for sugar as you will get diabetes. “We also educate them on the work being done by our ward-based outreach teams which visit the elderly in the comfort of their homes,” Makgalemele said.
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