How important is a healthy diet for people with spinal cord injuries? - Donald Peck Leslie, MD

It has been said “you are what you eat,” nutrition is extremely important. We try to stress that to people. We try to get people who have a disability to be less than ideal body weight. Carrying around extra weight is bad your heart, your lungs, your joints, all the above, your skin. So, we give them the tools to do that and they have to pull in help—family, loved ones, local physicians, local therapists. If they’re from Timbuktu, and they are really in a remote place ,then it’s their own ingenuity. It’s websites like yours; it’s close as their phone, all kinds of help on the phone. You’ve got exercise programs that you can link into, you’ve got helplines, you’ve got local mental health in every community in the United States. It’s not as good as it could be, but it’s better than nothing. But the important thing is to give them the ability to reach out for help, if they get them the help, please reach outward, don’t just involute and think, “well, why? Why bother?”