 Welcome back, dear viewers. Hope you enjoyed that segment with brother Ibrahim al-Sari's discussing Ziyarath Ashura. It's a Ziyarath that is very dear to my heart and I'm sure many of you as well. Now we are going to be speaking with our expert, Sister Barak Hussein, who's coming from Canada and she's a psychotherapist and on social media you can find her as the Muslim councillor. So join me in welcoming Sister Barak Hussein. Assalamu alaikum. Wa alaikum assalam. How are you today? Good, I'm fine. Are you up for our discussion about our relationship with food? Of course, let's do it. Excellent. So again, we have people, myself included, we come to a Friday night, you think I just need to eat something unhealthy, it's like you've been sort of good in the week. A lot of people refer to food as good and bad and I kind of look at it as healthy eating and then you can give yourself a bit of a break and not to be too extreme. And I hope that's pretty normal, I don't know about the relationship of food but that's why you're here to explain. When are things sort of a step too far in our relationship to food? How should we be looking at our intake of food and really how does it affect our mental health and well-being generally? Again, you asked such a big question, Sister, but very important ones. The relationship with food and mental health is huge, significant. What we put in our body is with that saying that we hear often, you are what you eat. So what you put in your body does have an impact on how you feel, your energy and I find with a lot of clients that come in who are dealing with the typical depression, anxiety and areas around that stress, it's because part of it is the lack of healthy lifestyle with the food, of course. So when you're eating healthy food, your balance, it's all about that balance. Healthy food intake, exercise, good sleep, good spirituality, good social networks, you're taking care of your mental health well and your overall well-being. And it will show, won't it? Absolutely, if one of these things are off, then it's hard to deal with challenges that come your way. So with food we want to make sure that it's balanced. You've got your protein, your complex carbohydrates, you've got your fruits and your vegetables and a variety of other nutrients in there. I'm not an expert in terms of dietitian, but this is my experience as a therapist with students over the years where I actually sit and make meal plans with them and I work with a dietitian where I will send students to them to get specific details on how to deal with that, including people who are dealing with disordered eating. So when you are constantly eating junk food, high sugar intake food, caffeine, you better believe that your anxiety is shooting through the roof and it could impact your glucose levels, your sugar levels, which can also give you that high and that low, which is why you feel so energetic sometimes and sad or low afterwards. So we really focus on making sure to have your breakfast. Why is it called breakfast? You're breaking your fast after fasting all night. So we've got a variety of healthy foods here, which I'm very happy to see. Having a banana smoothie, we're not touching those bananas. Fruit people. So having healthy bananas are great snacks, apples are great snacks. I always encourage my clients, especially because they're students, right? Who's got time to make a fresh meal every day? So we prepare a meal plan, working professionals, parents. This is a time management skill, financial tool as well to help you. So let's take a quick look at that and then we can get into, you know, this is healthy eating and what does disordered eating looks like? So healthy eating, hopefully. And I noticed here in London people don't do that. We're not great now. No, you're great with donuts and sandwiches and coffee and smoking. So breaking your fast, which could include a sandwich, can include a smoothie, oatmeal or you call it porridge here, right? So things like that are great in the morning because it's complex carbohydrates, which last longer because they take longer to digest. So you feel fuller longer, right? Not as hungry. White and rich flowers and breads, they go right through you. No nutrients. No, they go right through you. So you want things that are high complex, right? So in terms of fruit, someone told me that there's a hadith and I don't know which one it is or, you know, any reference to it. But eating fruit is better in the morning because it gives you, it's better for your wellbeing rather than eating later in the day. And I don't know if that's true, but would you say that just carrying fruit with you and having it as a mid snack between meals? Absolutely. And that's what you want to do is you prepare your snacks. That's why when we do that meal planning, breakfast snack, lunch snack, dinner, light snacks. Because if you can follow that flow throughout the day and I find it's easier when you're at work because you can prep the stuff over the weekend the night before and then you bring it with you. Whereas if you don't prepare, then you're running off to work with no breakfast, you grab a coffee or a donut, you're hungry, so you're going to grab that donut. Possibly that donut over that banana because that looks more attractive to your hunger, right? Yeah, you taste buds in your eyes. So what happens here is your sugar is off and you're just craving more sugar perhaps throughout the day and it just throws you off. Right, so when you have that breakfast, you know, mid-morning you are hungry, your metabolism is working which is what you want it to be doing. So you have a fruit, a banana is a great mid-morning snack. That's my usual. I have almost a set routine now because I'm used to it. Lunch is whatever I've had the night before, right? So the easiest way to plan about this is prepare dinner and lunch. What am I going to have for dinner and lunch for the whole week? Then the hardest part, it's done. You can use a slow cooker, you can cook things and freeze them and that way you're not tempted to go buy that sandwich or that burger or those fries. Because the thing with those, I mean even when I look at the sandwiches that we have in retail shops now, when you look at the ingredients and you think it's just a sandwich, a cheese or prawns, whatever it is and the calorific value of it is extremely high. Because they use stressings and empty calorie things. It's just not. No, and you can replace it with hummus or avocado and it doesn't take a lot of time to prepare over the weekend. You're saving so much money and time when you do this over the weekend or the day off throughout the week, right? So lunch, you've eaten your lunch, what do you crave after? You've had something savory. Obviously sweet. I recommend people to eat dark chocolate. Dates which have a lot of spiritual and Islamic benefits that we know. And why do we break our fast with a date? There's so much sugar, fiber and glucose rather that gives you that energy, right? I like putting almonds or walnuts inside of them and I recommend for students eating lots of walnuts because they look like little brains. They give you the concentration and focus. Almans have been known to help with focus and attention as well and believe it or not, cashews to panala have anti-depression qualities in them and a handful of cashews a day have been effective against anti-depression medications. Do you advise your patients to have these kinds of medications? Absolutely. Especially when we know they're dealing with depression or anxiety. I will go through a meal plan with them in terms of giving ideas. I give them resources. I connect them with the dietitian to get into even more detail because again, not my area of specific expertise but I have experience now with helping students with that. Why do I know it works? Because when they come back and talk to me about, so I changed my diet, I've been walking a lot more, working on my sleep, I've been writing in my journal, I've been doing a lot more spiritual things, reconnecting with friends but it's the food I find when they come back and tell me, I feel a lot better because I've been eating better. Amazing because when you have the proper food intake and you develop a healthy relationship with food and cut out the negative food, you feel the impact of it in your body. So we're talking about people that have, you know, adults and it was a couple of days ago I was talking to my co-host Ali and we were talking about children and he was saying that, you know, for instance, perhaps young children have bad habits, they're eating chips, they're provided fries, as you call them in North America. And he's struggling, for instance, children struggle with eating healthily and is there a sort of a time that you think, you want your children to develop in a healthy way. So is it too early to start or is it never too early to start? It's never too early I have a personal example. My daughter wasn't allowed to touch sugar, she still doesn't, by the way. She grew up eating blueberries, blackberries, avocado, bananas, honey as the only sweetener. So by the time she reached her first birthday and I put that cupcake in front of her, she took one look at it, poked it, put it aside and asked for blueberries. Such a proud mama moment, you know. Until now, so what we do, for example, when she goes to centres and they throw out sweets and give out sweets, she comes back to me healthy, I'm like, no, it's not. And she's like, she will, you know, should I, should I not? I said, well, you know it's not healthy, what would you like to do instead? So what we have done is we have health food stores that sell sweets, as you call them, candies that are made from fruits, that are made from organic cane sugar, for example, rather than highly processed corn syrup and fructose and gluctose, which is just terrible and the chemicals that are used, which, by the way, have been linked to attention deficit disorder to children and hyperactivity, yes. So there's a lot of that, the sugar drinks, all of these things have a huge impact on a child's development. And cheap, and cheap, that's the thing, they're accessible. People, parents need to read and understand what are in the ingredients. I say this and it may be a little bit dramatic but you're feeding your kids poison. And I tell that to people, I said, do you want me to give my child poison with that lollipop? I will give her the fruit lollipop that I will pay a little bit extra for but she has that at home and I'll have it in my bag and I'll tell her to take these snacks with her. But you're very prepared, aren't you? I think that's a very good lesson. Well, this is what we need to be as parents, right, and for our own healthy eating. So you're saying too early, never too early. Teach them early because they will develop and my daughter does not have the taste to have sweets and whatnot because she knows what healthy sweets taste like and she will prefer her fruits. It's nice to hear that example because I've heard on social media there was, I think a couple of years ago, a story about a two-year-old that had never tasted sugar and then when you go into the article, the child actually did want sugar and was eating sugar after too because that was a bit... They got used to it. It's how we train ourselves and our child. It's how we train ourselves and our child and it's what you offer. She has a cupboard, for example. We have a cupboard full of healthy snacks. So every day after school when she empties her lunch bag, again routine, which is what kids need, right? Pick the healthy snacks you want for tomorrow and make sure there's a fruit and a vegetable. And she's old enough now, for example, to pick. So when you engage your children in picking and packing their lunches, it becomes an activity at home, bonding for the family, but then you're developing a healthy relationship and understanding of food. They get used to developing these habits early on. Now, when we talk about disordered eating, these kids growing up could be dealing with depression, could be dealing with abuse in the home, could be dealing with... sort of bullying as well, right? So being made fun of in terms of the way that they look. So this can develop potentially. I'm not saying it's the actual link. It could potentially harm their relationship with food if they have low self-esteem and negative body image issues. They start taking control of what they put in their body. And so we get into the clinical terms here of these mental health disorders of anorexia and bulimia. So anorexia is when they start calorie intake control of how much they put into their body and they become very thin because they're losing a lot of weight. But in their minds, it's never thin enough. Right? And so it becomes a disorder when they're not eating healthy and they lose a lot of weight. They're losing hair. So what are they seeing somebody else in their reflection? They're not seeing perhaps because you see images of young... Social media models and whatnot. Yes, that's a part of it as well. I want to look like that. That's what they perceive as beauty. Don't forget the huge impact of social media on our youth and even the elders in terms of how they should be looking out there, how they present themselves. What is beauty? What is attractive? The expectation is on women as well, isn't it? I want a size 8 model. It puts pressure on women, doesn't it? Absolutely. That's a part of it as well. So you've got the anorexic end of the spectrum and the other is the disordered overeating and then vomiting. So this is a different type of control where you're overeating, you're binge eating. That's beyond comfort eating. Beyond comfort eating. It's okay to do comfort eating. You can have that pizza and wings once in a while. It's about moderation. You have that healthy food all week. Friday night, relax. That's fine. It's in moderation and you're hitting the gym next week. So it's fine. It's when it becomes a loss of control and I heard my clients describe to me that everything that I could find my hands on and it felt good at first but then I feel disgusting and I want it out of me. Gosh. So then they resort to that behaviour. What does that do on a physical level? Excessive vomiting, frequent vomiting? Well the acid can damage the inside of our body, the esabagus, the teeth. Of course there's a lot there. A lot of damage can occur there. But it's also the psychological damage here. So we've got a couple of minutes in terms of treatment. How you help clients. Are these treatable? Absolutely they can be. And it's a specialised area. So we have specialists in the area where we would refer clients to institutions, to programmes. There's a bit of a wait list sometimes. I know this in Canada, I'm not too sure here. But you can again access the Muslim Youth Helpline as a start and they can direct you to resources in your area here. There is treatment. Please don't lose hope there. Sometimes it's hard for you to admit that you are dealing with this issue. Because this is your way of managing your stress. There are much healthier ways of dealing with that. And sometimes you could be a recovered person dealing with these issues. But because another stressor comes into your life and I've seen that with people they will relapse. And so it's great when they come to get the support. They said I want to make sure that I have the support in place so I don't get to that dark place again. So it sounds like it's the catalyst for these kind of emotional which then the symptoms are showing that they go towards eating disorders. And next up we are actually going to be discussing smoking habits with Dr Yasamadhani. And again that's a stress reliever isn't it for a lot of people. But is this a similar thing with food that people it's the sort of maybe a stress fact that's got a catalyst to those conditions developing? Absolutely. Like we were saying with stress there's so many different ways that people exhibit it. Right? And so when you're dealing with the disordered eating body image issues self confidence and all the other things bullying, abuse and whatnot they're all interconnected. And it's the stress that could trigger the response to that. It's so unfortunate isn't it because I think with children especially when they go through schools and parents do everything right but what happens in their life is their own environment and we can teach them as much as we know but again those elements of support and understanding and again we haven't even touched on people recognising this and again as a specialist you probably would if you saw somebody quite under way with us you know we have this whole could be under way, over way, oh it's okay. Or they're just naturally thin right? And it comes down to the interesting conversation of and I've had this with my 8 year old when she was younger she one day she's very slim body type and I think this is a conversation we all need to have family, members and friends this conversation in particular where she out of the blue said I'm fat as a 6 year old that's quite shocked to hear that and like mama what do you mean by that? Oh I don't want to get fat I don't want to gain weight so this is modelled in front of her I don't know where because we embody healthy eating habits in my home and so we had the discussion where I explained to her and explained again recently to her fat is a positive thing fat is a good thing fat keeps our bones together keeps you alive there's nothing wrong with fat it's when you eat unhealthy and excessively that you gain weight that it becomes unhealthy so there's a difference between fat fat is a good thing we need it but it's the unhealthy habits the unhealthy eating that is the issue here so we need to have that conversation understanding around that because people are afraid of gaining fat and weight you need that fat to stay alive and it's shocking it's a 6 year old because I've heard from your experience you can share that but I don't know how many people are out there parents actually prepared that a passing comment with a child is something for you to trigger you thinking where did that come from and it needs to be dealt with immediately immediately because we want to develop that healthy relationship with food and understanding that food is great for you healthy food that is and balance and moderation to any parents out there any individuals you can get more information as you mentioned it's the Muslim health Muslim youth youth helpline we'll double check or sister Barakasyn is on social media I'm sure she's got a wealth of knowledge and not to inundate her but I will refer you to the appropriate specialist but it's really good to have that sometimes you hear parents talking they're very valid points so thank you so much I really enjoyed that session and inshallah we'll see you another morning inshallah and as I mentioned we have Ali and I are going to be speaking to Dr Yasamudhani and smoking it's been an interesting topic do join us