I was threatened, says Sathyaraj’s daughter

Actor Sathyaraj’s daughter Divya Sathyaraj, a well known clinical nutritionist, has alleged that the representatives of a US company threatened her after she refused to prescribe some of their products because of the harm they could cause to those consuming them.

Explaining what happened in detail, Divya said that she was in the habit of meeting medical representatives at her clinic after she was done with her consultation.

The nutritionist made it clear that she does not prescribe medicines as she is not a doctor but that she prescribes vitamins, health drinks and other supplements for health and nutrition.

“A couple of days ago, manufacturers from the US (two men and a lady) walked into my clinic. Of these, two were from the US and one of them was Indian. From the minute they walked in, they kept talking about their political connections in India after which they started talking to me about their multivitamin and fat burner which could bring about dramatic improvements in overall health.

“When I told them that I do not prescribe anything that does not have scientific validity, they said they are working on the approvals. When I went through the ingredients I was shocked. The tablet contained an overdose of vitamins which could lead to hypervitaminosis, which is a condition of abnormally high levels of vitamins. The patient could have nausea, blurred vision, liver enlargement and they may not even realize it is because of the multivitamin as people think nothing could go wrong with just a multivitamin pill. Their fat burner also had a lot of harmful ingredients.

“When I said I cannot prescribe the tablet, they tried to bribe me. I was very upset and told them that patients come to us with a lot of faith and it is inhuman to kill that faith, I do not care about money. After that, the man said, “Since when did therapists in India get so concerned about scientific validity?, I will take my product to other celebrity nutritionists in Mumbai and they will be willing to prescribe it.'”

“I was very angry and told them to get out of the clinic, it was late in the evening and my receptionist and I were the only two women around. They started threatening us saying, “You Indians do not know how to treat foreigners. I am very well connected with politicians in India, how can you be disrespectful to foreigners? You people are unethical’,” she said.

The nutritionist said that she told him that no one could bribe or threaten her to prescribe a medicine that was not safe.

Stating that money will never be important to her, the nutritionist confessed that she was shocked that they had the courage to come to India to market their products and criticize Indians and Indian doctors.

“What will happen to all their major cosmetic products without the Indian market?” she asked.

Stating that being an Indian had a special status of honour and dignity, the nutritionist said Indian doctors were among the most respected in the world and that medical breakthrough in India was helping scores of patients across the world.

“As a nutritionist and citizen of the country, I believe we should work hard towards the idea of a nation where good health is priority. I would like to request all doctors and therapists to go through every single ingredient of medicines including multivitamins and sports drinks before they prescribe it,”she appealed and added that nothing in the world was more important than human health.

Divya stressed on the fact that it was important for people to do everything possible to prevent medicines without approvals from coming into the country.