Plant Docs Wants You To Take Fewer Pills
There's plenty of research that backs up the claim that eating healthy — emphasizing fruits, veggies, whole grains and low-fat options — can lead to a healthy life, reduce risk of heart disease and fight high blood pressure, among other benefits.
FEATURED IN THE BOSTON GLOBE
Written by By Alexa Gagosz
A longtime physician who has specialized in nutrition, Dr. Sandra Musial has wondered why her peers were not discussing plant-based options with their patients. She would reference The China Study, which looked at how consuming whole, plant-based foods can dramatically decrease a patient's risk of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. In many instances, Musial found, medication wasn't always the answer. In 2021, Musial left her job at Hasbro Children's Hospital and cofounded Plant Docs with Dr. Suyin Lee and Dr. Steven Stein. The nonprofit, which is based in the cellar of Plant City in Providence, helps educate people how going vegan can prevent - and sometimes even reverse - chronic diseases.
Former Hasbro Children's Hospital Doctor Launches Healthy Eating Nonprofit
There's plenty of research that backs up the claim that eating healthy — emphasizing fruits, veggies, whole grains and low-fat options — can lead to a healthy life, reduce risk of heart disease and fight high blood pressure, among other benefits.
FEATURED IN RHODE ISLAND INNO
There's plenty of research that backs up the claim that eating healthy — emphasizing fruits, veggies, whole grains and low-fat options — can lead to a healthy life, reduce risk of heart disease and fight high blood pressure, among other benefits.
As a former pediatrician at Hasbro Children's Hospital, Dr. Sandra Musial knows this very well. Musial, who previously taught pediatric residents and co-founded the HEALTH (Healthy Eating Active Living Through Hasbro) clinic, had specialized in nutrition, breast feeding, and pediatric obesity at the Rhode Island hospital until 2019, when she stepped away to create Plant Docs.
Plants Over Pills: A New Paradigm for the Management of Chronic Disease
We live in a country with the top hospitals and medical care in the world, yet Americans are dying in the greatest numbers from preventable diseases caused primarily by poor dietary choices. The Standard American diet is literally feeding multiple disease states that are defining Americans: obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease. How did we get here?
FEATURED IN RHODE ISLAND FAMILY MEDICINE
We live in a country with the top hospitals and medical care in the world, yet Americans are dying in the greatest numbers from preventable diseases caused primarily by poor dietary choices.1 The Standard American diet is literally feeding multiple disease states that are defining Americans: obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease.2 How did we get here?
Americans are so confused about what they should be eating. We are all bombarded by misinformation from all directions: whatever the fad diet of the year is, social media representing every nutrition angle possible, supermarkets full of unhealthy options, and the beef and dairy industry imparting their heavy-handed influence with billions of dollars spent on lobbyists and marketing (including an advertisement in the last RI Family Medicine newspaper with debatable information about infant feeding).
It’s no wonder people are confused. Even doctors offer conflicting advice on nutrition. It’s not surprising since we get little to no nutrition education in medical school. In addition, nutrition studies are quite hard to conduct and interpret, often contradicting one another. I’ve spent my professional career in search of the most accurate nutrition information to optimize human health beginning with an undergraduate degree in Nutrition Sciences, becoming a breastfeeding expert, training at Harvard for the Obesity Medicine boards, attending multiple lifestyle medicine and cardiology conferences, and receiving several nutrition certificates.
Here are 10 recommendations that most everyone can agree on:
Health Check Kids: The importance of play time
In this discussion between TurnTo10 and Dr. Sandra Musial, Musial discusses the negative impacts of giving children too much screen time and positive outcomes of giving them unstructured playtime.
FEATURED IN NBC10
Written by BARBARA MORSE SILVA
The American Academy of Pediatrics is concerned that free play has been greatly reduced.
It's directly linked to your child's development -- emotionally, socially and physically, so the organization is encouraging physicians to write a prescription for play at children's well visits.
"Unstructured play time is very important for our children and we're seeing less and less of it as people have very hurried lives and active schedules and both parents are working,” said Dr. Sandra Musial, a pediatrician in the health clinic at Hasbro Children’s Hospital. "I think the unstructured play allows children to learn certain things that they don't learn in structured environments.”
Rainbow Garden at Hasbro Children's Informs and Entertains
It’s the first of it’s kind for Hasbro Children’s, a rainbow vegetable garden outside the outpatient center. The goal, to inform and entertain the children who are there whether it be for an hour or the long haul.
FEATURED IN NBC10
Written by LINDSAY LADELUCA
PROVIDENCE, R.I., (WJAR) — It’s the first of it’s kind for Hasbro Children’s, a rainbow vegetable garden outside the outpatient center. The goal, to inform and entertain the children who are there whether it be for an hour or the long haul.
“I thought it’d be a great idea to grow vegetables in the gardens here at Hasbro as a simple of health and wellness and a symbol for children to eat their vegetables,” pediatrician, Dr. Sandra Musial told NBC10.
Planted this May by many of their very own patients. From seeds to stalks, the plants have started to grow with every color of the rainbow.