Disease & lifestyle go hand in hand: Anjali Hooda

In an interview with G20, Dr Anjali Hooda, India’s first functional medicine practioner and the founder of Live Nutri Fit app, talks about how a healthy lifestyle can save us from myriad health issues. Excerpts:
Q. Tell us something about Functional Medicine?
A. Functional medicine is going to the root cause of the disease and formulating a treatment with the patient as a team’s work, using a holistic, natural, non-invasive testing and treatment. Functional medicine doctor will assess the internal health including your gut health and then find the cause which mostly lies in the gut.
The doctor will take a detailed history from birth to now, along with assessing the patient for toxin (environmental or food-related) exposure, and physically examine the patient for any nutritional deficiency along with prescribed testing to formulate the treatment.
At the time of visit, the doctor may also want to assess any area which may seem to be contributing to the said condition of anything pertinent that comes up in the history taking, for example, mental health questionnaire or hormonal health questionnaire etc
Q. You are a renowned TEDx speaker and have written a best seller book, Think Live Eat Smart. What›s the gist of it?
A. My talks and book are always centred on the fact that disease and lifestyle go hand in hand, food is medicine is always the right approach, also improvement in lifestyle is not a difficult thing to do, and sometimes you just need professional help to guide you.
Q. Your expertise lies in Diabetes, Obesity, and Alzheimer›s disease. How can one stay healthy?
A. Lifestyle change by doing the following:
Having antioxidants via food or supplements if needed.
Sleep improvement.
Eating foods in the most natural form and wholesome foods.
Exercise or activity daily Staying hydrated.
Q. Which are the significant problems that are rampant among the Indians.
A. India is a land of Ayurveda but now due to modernisation, we are surrounded by artificial foods, bad eating habits, pollution and sedentary lifestyle.
Diabetes and Obesity are increasing very rapidly in our country, we have more diabetes type 2 than any other developing nation.
Q. You are the founder of a mobile-app Live Nutri Fit. Please tell us something about it.
When I built the app, it was to get the right advice on nutrition to even most remote places in India, It a weight loss and health prevention app, with personalised nutrition and fitness program with a personal coach with real-time tracking Most apps are AI-driven, but in this app, there is an option in customisation in terms of language food, as per the geography and traditional customs of the client. Every geography has a lot of different foods and food habits so the plans are made as per the options selected.