A healthy diet that includes fish, fruit and vegetables can reduce the chances for heart disease, a US doctor said Thursday.

That nutritional balance was once common in Cambodian food, but that is changing, Taing Tek Hong, a Florida-based physician, told “Hello VOA.”

To understand heart disease, it is important to understand the heart, which itself looks like a papaya, the doctor said Thursday.

“There is a hole inside the heart and there are four rooms in the hole,” he said. “Two rooms are in the upper level, and another two are in the bottom level. The heart pumps blood to feed brain and body.”

The most significant symptom of heart disease is a pain in the chest when a person is exerting himself, but sometimes there are no symptoms, the doctor said. (more…)

Despite a growing economy and rapid development, Cambodia suffers from high rates of mental illness, and very little treatment. Aubrey Belford recently visited the Cambodian community of Kampot and reports on one of Asia’s worst mental health crises.

Cambodia is a country with a more traumatic past than most. Recent decades have seen civil war, followed by genocide and more civil war.

Now, the country is at peace and the economy is booming. But mental health workers say the psychological scars have yet to heal.

Psychiatrist Sotheara Chhim, who heads the Cambodia office of Dutch aid group, the Transcultural Psychosocial Organization, or TPO, says the country’s dark past bubbles up in an exceptionally high rate of mental illness.

“In my opinion I think the past plays a very important role in attributing to the problem. I think every Cambodian is like a glass carrying some water, meaning the traumatic past. If more water is put in, the glass fills easier than an empty glass.” (more…)