Ask Ashley Koff, RD, what she recommends as a healthy diet. Her answer? It's always personal.
When it comes to pediatric pain management, nutrition is both challenging and essential for our patients. And the idea of nutrition can be overwhelming, and contradictory, for healthcare professionals as well. My guest, an award winning expert dietician, is also a master at taking big, complex and overwhelming concepts and turning them into simple, bite sized pieces that are easy to understand and put into practice.
Nutritional advice has become a fact sheet based afterthought of our medical practice. Most of us didn't receive the proper training that we need to provide useful guidance to patients, and we only realize this when we need to apply that advice to our own lives and family members.
What's worse, in this era of social media, there is so much emphasis on selling yourself as a physician that the baseline of our oath gets lost. As Ms. Koff puts it beautifully - We don't need to advertise what we can do. We have the tools and knowledge to help people, we need to dig deeper and share how it applies to each individual patients' lifestyles, instead of defaulting to a one size fits all answer. How many times have you said sugar is inflammatory without considering the diet of that season that the patient might be eating? Does the patient even have access to healthy options at home?
A natural marketer, Ms. Ashley Koff had an interest in selling from a young age and studied marketing at Duke prior to her dietetics and nutrition degree. During her own health journey, she herself tried fad and even self-described crazy diets and exercises, but never felt healthy, until a integrative gastroenterologist changed her life simply asking her the questions and showing her a better way to make better and appropriate choices. That started her on her current journey as one of the most respected and sought after Dieticians in the country.
In this episode, we discuss the mistakes we are all guilty of making when it comes to nutritional advice. She shares her best practices and free nutritional resources for you and your patients to use. And she specifically relates that to pain management, especially for children and how we can best support our patients and empower them to make better choices.
Free Resources: https://thebetternutritionprogram.com/free-resources-from-the-better-nutrition-program/
Episode 50: Stepping Up Pain Care Efforts for African American Patients
Episode 26: Manage Memory, Manage Pain!
Episode 10: Disparities in Pediatric Pain Care
Proactive Pain Solutions Physicians Academy
Clinicians Pain Evaluation Toolkit
An award-winning nutrition expert, Ashley helps lead the national conversation on better nutrition as a speaker, author, media and industry expert. Selected among CNN's Top 100 health makers, recognized in the Top 10 Social Health Makers in Nutrition (Sharecare.com) and among the top "50 Natural Influencers" in health and nutrition to follow on Twitter (NewHope360 and Shape.com), Koff was also selected for the first list of Top 10 Registered Dietitians in the US by Today's Dietitian Magazine.
Beyond running a thriving integrative nutrition practice working with top entertainment and national leaders, Koff's a highly sought after strategic nutrition consultant for companies like Procter & Gamble, Califia Farms, Nature's Path, Westin, SmartyPants and was appointed the California state representative for the Let's Move campaign. She's currently an advisor for Victress Capital, the Partnership for a Healthier America and Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition's Entrepreneurship Program and a partner at BeyondBrands.
