Wednesday, July 15, 2009

PNC advocates for a healthy lifestyle

REPORT BY REMAI ALEJADO, ZAMBOSUR PPB

WITH the changing lifestyle of Filipinos, public health concerns regarding chronic degenerative diseases like diabetes, heart disease and cancer are becoming too significant to ignore.

That is why healthy diets, regular exercise, abstinence from smoking and moderate alcohol intake were recommended for one to develop or have a healthy lifestyle.

Creating a healthy lifestyle is making small changes in how one live each day and be healthy; this is the message of the Provincial Nutrition Committee (PNC) when it organized healthy lifestyle classes to Capitol employees since last week.

July is celebrated as Nutrition Month bearing the theme: “Wastong nutrisyon kailangan, lifestyle diseases iwasan.” The celebration is stipulated in Presidential Decree No. 491 or the Nutrition Act of the Philippines issued in 1974.

Governor Aurora Cerilles has urged the Provincial Nutrition Council (PNC) to coordinate with LGUs, NGOs, schools and communities for the nationwide celebration.

The governor said she wants everybody’s participation as this month’s celebration focuses on the role and importance of proper nutrition in the prevention and control of diet-related lifestyle diseases, also known as non-communicable diseases (NCD).

The four major NCDs, branded as the leading causes of death in the country, are cardiovascular diseases, cancers, diabetes mellitus and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases.

On the other hand, the PNC, led by Provincial Nutrition Officer Jocelyn Dajao along with Jocelyn Saludsod of the Provincial Nutrition Action Office, has urged Capitol employees “to become instruments to friends and families in making positive decisions for taking up healthy diets and healthy lifestyle behavior.”

Dajao and Saludsod both see to it that their healthy lifestyle classes, which ran July 6-10 among Capitol employees, are filled with attentive listeners.

“Keep your own food diaries,” Dajao once suggested. “Take small portions of food, eat slowly and exercise to keep fit. Ayaw pagpagutom kay mao nay hinungdan mokaon ka sobra pa sa kinahanglan sa imong lawas.”

In her classes, Dajao pointed out that diabetes, which in the past is caused by heredity factors, is now acquired through environmental conditions, such as obesity, lack of activity and excessive food intake.

She then advised that in order to have an ideal body weight, males standing 5” should only weight 112 pounds or 51 kilos, and for females of the same height, normal weight should be 106 pounds or 48 kilos.

Aside from their healthy lifestyle classes, the PNC initiated “Hataw” exercises at the AEC every Friday afternoons and there’s also the “Nutri-Hataw” competition among the 17 departments.

A fund-raising activity called “Weekly Nutri-Bingo Game” was likewise coincided every Friday and the “Nutri-Walk for a Cause” scheduled on July 21.

Proceeds of the fund-raising activities will be used for PNC’s Feed a Child Enterprise (FACE) project, which concentrates on iron deficiency in children.

In the meantime, Provincial Nutrition Action Officer Estrella Esma said Cerilles has been pushing for continued milk-feeding and iron supplementation to pregnant women in the province.