We celebrate the news of Beebe Medical Center’s Distinguished Hospital Award for Clinical Excellence and applaud your current health initiatives to make Sussex County one of the healthiest in the nation. Despite these accolades, there remains an issue of great concern.
Beebe Medical Center has demonstrated in its treatment of patients that it does not recognize the critical connection between diet and chronic diseases even though it is an established fact that cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes and some forms of cancer can be prevented and even reversed by dietary change.
We are a group of residents of Sussex County who have discovered what has been known but largely ignored for decades - that diet has a dramatic impact on health. Following Bill Clinton’s example, many of us are choosing to eat a plant-based diet rather than the standard American diet of meat, dairy, sugar, white flour and oil.
The results have been phenomenal: dramatic weight loss, lowered blood pressure and cholesterol, elimination of medications and increased energy. These extraordinary results are being obtained across the nation as more and more individuals take charge of their own health through dietary change.
We need and support our community hospital and its medical staff and employees. But to make Sussex one of the healthiest counties in the nation, we believe that nutritional education toward dietary change is vital - for patients, for medical staff and for the community.
We urge the introduction of intensive and sustained nutritional counseling as an essential component in the hospital’s standard of care. To this end we advocate hospital-wide nutritional education and support for all medical staff and employees. Ideally, community nutritional education and support would follow.
We realize that dietary change is not easy, but it is vitally important in the achievement and maintenance of good health. Without such change the efforts of Beebe Medical Center to improve the health of Sussex County residents can never be more than marginally effective.
We stand ready to help Beebe Medical Center bring dietary change and good health to the residents of our extended community.
Dorothy P. Greet
Kathleen Baker
Brenda Butterfield
John V. Coleman
Carmela Coleman
Judy K. Turner
Thomas F. Warner
Mary Harris
Don Szczepkowski
George B. Williams
-
A letter to the editor expresses a reader's opinion and, as such, is not reflective of the editorial opinions of this newspaper.
To submit a letter to the editor for publishing, send an email to newsroom@capegazette.com. Letters must be signed and include a telephone number and address for verification. Please keep letters to 500 words or fewer. We reserve the right to edit for content and length. Letters should be responsive to issues addressed in the Cape Gazette rather than content from other publications or media. Only one letter per author will be published every 30 days. Letters restating information and opinions already offered by the same author will not be used. Letters must focus on issues of general, local concern, not personalities or specific businesses.
