‘Hispanic Dr. Oz’ Educates Underserved Communities on Impact of Nutrition

More than one-third of adults and approximately 12.5 million children in the United States are obese, reports the CDC, making the U.S. the world leaders in epidemics of obesity and chronic disease.

Many of these chronic diseases have been caused by poor diet, bad nutrition and inappropriate eating habits – and these trends are even more pronounced in America’s Hispanic communities. To change our health, one cardiologist points to a relatively easy fix: We must change how we view and eat food.

“Food quality has changed,” says Jorge Bordenave, MD, FACP. “Western diets consist of highly-processed, calorie-dense and nutritionally poor foods – foods that are manufactured with various components of corn, and are high in pro-inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids and chemicals. These foods are causing chronic inflammation at alarmingly high rates, which is, in turn, the underlying cause of most of our epidemics of chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancers, Alzheimer’s, stroke, dementia and arthritis.”

Ultimately, says Dr. Bordenave, we must begin to view food and nutrition as a medication: one that can either maintain our health or cause disease. A practicing cardiologist for more than 15 years, Dr. Bordenave grew tired of seeing young, overweight patients treated with an onslaught of medication. He sought more education from the University of Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine in Tucson to learn natural methods of treating patients.

The result? An easy-to-read self-help manual on nutrition called Change Your Diet, Change Your Health, available in both English and Spanish that explains how our diets have changed over the last decades, how foods are the primary culprit of disease and how changing our nutrition can actually heal us from these diseases.
“We have become a nation of overweight people who suffer from increased numbers of chronic diseases, many of which are preventable,” says Dr. Bordenave. “We have to learn to view food and nutrition as a type of medication instead of just as something that tastes good or passes the time.” Dr. Bordenave’s book can be found on www.amazon.com.

“Changing your diet and lifestyle doesn’t have to be a difficult or costly transformation,” Dr. Bordenave says. “You have the power to make the changes that will result in a long, healthy life. You just have to take the first step.”