Tag Archive for: carol banister

Tele-health/Tele-nutrition Video Conferencing

/in /by

Have you been pondering an appointment with a dietitian to help you improve your diabetes management, food allergy or celiac disease issues, lipid challenges, improve your athletic performance, lose weight or once and for all heal from your eating disorder? Scheduling and keeping appointments are a hassle, sometimes inconvenient and an expense.

Beyond the actual cost of the medical nutrition therapy appointment there are additional costs. How much does it cost you to take off an hour early from work to schedule an appointment? Are you driving across town or from Clinton, Guymon, or Muskogee for an appointment? Gas is not cheap. If you are driving to the city from out of town you will likely have meal expenses involved also. Do you have to pay child care costs while you are at an appointment?

The additional costs and inconvenience can be eliminated with “tele-nutrition video conferencing” appointments.  Banister Nutrition now provides the option for you to schedule an appointment with one of our dietitians and you can be in your kitchen, office or favorite coffee shop, where ever you please. We have a HIPPA compliant software program that allows us to easily connect with you via an e-mail address you provide. We offer packages of 3-4 appointments at a reduced cost, payable at the time of purchase with credit card.

“If” you want your insurance to cover your medical nutrition therapy appointments, insurance companies have placed limitations on what they will cover. These restrictions include:

  • Your referring physician must be located in a medically deprived area of the state which of course means rural Oklahoma.
  • At the time of your video conference you must be sitting in your physicians’ actual brick and mortar office space.
  • Medicare will cover 3 appointments per year for diabetes and renal disease only.

 

To assist patients with insurance coverage, if you have a rural physician you would like for us to approach regarding making this service available to you please provide us with your physicians name, office address and phone number . We will contact your physician to try make these arrangements for you.

Our experience has been that both physicians and patients living in rural Oklahoma have been very pleased with having medical nutrition therapy available via video conferencing. Initially we all (physicians, patients and dietitians) thought video conferencing would be a little awkward, relationships would not be easily built, and nutrition therapy via this platform would not be effective.  We are pleased to say this has not been the case. Everyone involved has found this new, convenient resource to improve your health care has been very appreciated and helpful.

 

CB

What are You Thinking?

/in /by

Does your thinking align with your goals and aspirations? Does your thinking support the positive direction of change which you desire? Do you realize your thinking tends to continually bring to mind the negative experiences of past efforts to lose weight, better manage your blood sugar, recover from your eating disorder, or improve your athletic performance because you are not eating to fuel your body properly? Do any of the following thoughts sound familiar to you?

“I can never lose weight.”

“Regardless of what I do my blood sugar is still all over the board.”

“I am so tired from my chemo/radiation, I will never be able to eat to get my strength back.”

“Trying to follow a gluten free diet is exasperating, I can’t do it.”

“I hate to exercise; I was never athletic even when I was younger.”

If some rendition of the above comments is frequently circulating in your head and you are really frustrated because you are not achieving your health and fitness goals, please do not be surprised. Negative thoughts/self-talk will never translate into positive action or positive change.

Check your thoughts more frequently than you check calories, grams of carbohydrates or fats, your blood glucose meter or nutrition labels. Your thoughts precede every decision you make. What are you thinking?

 

Some ways to turn around that negative self-talk:

  1. Change your (inner) tone of voice – Be attentive to the way you talk to yourself and change judgmental and harsh tones into empathetic and gentle ones.
  2. Write down your thoughts – When you hear the negative voice in your head, write it down to get a clear understanding of what you are saying to yourself and how you’re feeling.
  3. Smile more – Faking it until you make it can really pay off. Smiling can help change your mood about the day or a certain situation. Take a minute to think about a couple things you are grateful for to help you feel like smiling.

CB