Doctor gives advice on nutrition at RTL Tonight

Recently, television clips on nutrition are often forwarded to me from the Dutch media asking if I agree with them.

RTL Tonight

Funnily enough, every time, these are items where a doctor gives nutritional advice. I even got several from the programme RTL Tonight in recent weeks.

I can't get my head around it. For instance, doctors have often expressed fears that lifestyle coaches would interfere too much with medical problems. They should not sit in the doctor's chair. Here I totally agree and in the hormone coach training as a teacher, I make sure students know their place very well.

But then why do some doctors think they can sit in the chair of a nutritionist or lifestyle coach without being trained to do so? Don't get me wrong, I really do believe in the good intentions of these doctors, but it just doesn't add up.

Somehow I understand that editors of television programmes make mistakes, but as a doctor you just say no to such an invitation, don't you? And yes, of course you can google a few things, so you can get by to some extent. You can do that as a lifestyle coach, too, when it comes to medication. As a lifestyle coach, you're not going to say yes to an item about the pros and cons of different types of corticosteroids, are you? So I think several doctors in the media are routinely out of line.

But this also applies to different nutrition specialisms. For example, a nutrition professor has no experience in 1-on-1 coaching of people towards healthier behaviour and should not present himself as a nutrition coach. I think it is a good idea if you work in the field of nutrition, lifestyle and health to ask yourself what your specialisms, areas of knowledge and practical experiences are.

Specialisms, areas of expertise and practical experience

To clarify, I will list a few:

• A dietician is an HBO-trained specialist in the field of nutrition, advising on eating and living patterns in both health and illness. The title 'dietician' is a protected title and requires a completed HBO education in Nutrition and Dietetics. Dietitians specialise in different areas, such as diabetes, gastrointestinal disorders, kidney disease, oncology and sports nutrition. Other specialisms include nutrition in children, the elderly, gestational diabetes, and food allergies and sensitivities.
• A personal trainer is a fitness professional who guides individuals or small groups to achieve their specific sport and health goals through tailor-made training programmes and lifestyle advice.
• A lifestyle coach is a professional who guides people to modify their daily habits to develop a healthier lifestyle. The coach does this by focusing on aspects such as nutrition, exercise, sleep and stress management, and helps clients make sustainable behavioural changes to achieve personal health goals. The aim is not to tell clients what to do, but to discover with them what works and how to sustain it.
• A hormone coach is a lifestyle coach specialising in improving hormonal balance and complementary lifestyle counselling for people with hormonal complaints.
• A nutritional psychologist is a professional who focuses on the psychological aspects of eating behaviour, such as emotional eating, motivation and the relationship between food, mood and thoughts. This specialist helps people change their eating behaviour and build a healthy relationship with food by addressing the underlying reasons rather than just prescribing a diet. They combine psychological knowledge with an understanding of nutrition to improve psychological and physical health.
• An orthomolecular therapist is a healthcare provider that focuses on optimising the body's health using nutrition and supplements, such as vitamins and minerals. The aim is to achieve and maintain optimal health through the right molecular environment by supplementing deficiencies and strengthening the body's self-healing ability. The therapy can be used for various complaints, such as digestive problems, allergies, hormonal imbalance and chronic fatigue.
• A nutrition researcher is a scientist who studies the relationship between nutrition and health in order to formulate reliable nutritional advice. They study different aspects, such as the composition of food, nutritional needs of specific groups, and the influence of nutrition on disease prevention and treatment. Examples of specialisms include toxicology, epidemiology and microbiology.

Hopefully this has helped me clarify a few things. Whether the editors of television programmes will change their card index of phone numbers and/or the publicity-hungry doctors will do something with this? I wonder, but at least I have explained it here.